by Katherine Wright

Created on: July 14, 2008

Unlike the "who comes first? the chicken or the egg?" question, it is obvious that the best poetry is born through feeling, or the heart. Poetry can come from the mind. For example, a professor wants you to write an abstract poem for an assignment, however, that is not "the best" poetry. The best poetry comes from feeling. It is an expression of the result of a certain experience. Each poem is different because each poem comes from a different individual. The best poetry is not about the words-it is about the feeling it evokes from the reader. A single poem can be interpreted in a thousand different ways. It is about what you feel when you read it, not the words. However, the mind obviously must assist in the process because the feelings have to be expressed in written form in order to qualify as a poem.

Essentially, the best poetry evokes feeling from the reader. The words, though important, are irrelevant. As silly as this may sound an example would be the poem "The Jabberwocky." The words make no sense, in fact many are made up. Lewis Carroll is merely trying to tell a story by evoking feeling. The sound of the words, their placement in the poem, etc. all help to evoke feeling from the reader. The actual words themselves...are not even real. Another example would be poetry in another language. You can read a love poem in Spanish or French and have no idea what the words mean, but when spoken, the poem evokes feeling.

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