all they mean by poetry is poems

Herakleitos - evidently the earliest prose poet whose work survives - says... "All things think and are linked together by thinking." Parmenides answers to him in verse: "To be and to have meaning are the same." These are concise definitions of poetry and brief explanations of how it has come to exist. Poetry is not manmade; it is not pretty words; it is not something hybridized by humans on the farm of human language. Poetry is a quality or aspect of existence. It is the thinking of things.

Language is one of the methods we use to mime and to mirror and admire it, and for that reason poetry, as mirrored in human language, has come to be taught in the English Department. They know at least as much about poetry in the Physics and Biology departments, and in the Mathematics and Music departments, but there they always call it by different names. If they are really old-fashioned, they might even call it Truth or Beauty. If they are really up to date, they will never use such words, and the silence they put in their place is the name they use for poetry. Those who are really up to date in the English Department now and then still mention poetry. But all they mean by poetry is poems. Poems are the tip of the iceberg afloat on the ocean of poetry.

...

When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If someone hears you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?

Simone Weil wrote something once in her notebook about the purpose of works of art, and the purpose of words: "Their function is to testify, after the fashion of blossoming apple trees and stars." When words do what blossoming apple trees do, and what stars do, poetry is what you read and hear.

 

- Robert Bringhurst, from his lecture "Poetry and Thinking," delivered to Luther College, University of Regina in 2001 and published in Thinking and Singing: Poetry & the Practice of Philosophy (ed. Tim Lilburn, Cormorant Books, 2002).