SAMUEL JOHNSON (from Preface to Shakespeare):
"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (from Preface to Lyrical Ballads):
"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind."

ROBERT FROST

"A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words."

ROBERT PINSKY

"Poetry...is an ancient art or technology: older than the computer, older than print, older than writing and indeed, though some may find this surprising, much older than prose. I presume that the technology of poetry, using the human body as its medium, evolved for specific uses; to hold things in memory, both within and beyond the individual life span; to achieve intensity and sensuous appeal; to express feelings and ideas rapidly and memorably. To share those feelings and ideas with companions, and also with the dead and with those to come after us."

DOUGLAS McGILL
(A journalist/poet from Rochester, NY)

A piece of writing is poetic when it:

1. Sings
2. Moves
3. Shimmers
4. Cracks the whip
5. Has an undefinable "woo woo" quality
6. Recreates the early childhood pleasures of moon, Mom, and mud
7. Forces an epiphany
8. Imitates nature
9. Contains the music of plain speech
10. Marries sound and meaning
11. Just sounds good
12. Shatters self-important, secluded views of the world
13. Snaps you into a different state of mind
14. Sets off your indicator lights
15. Is the exact opposite of a gazebungle
16. Connects the reader with an interior "otherness," sort of like music
17. Brings the whole soul of man into activity
18. Offers the most accurate possible symbolic image of objects which when they are actually seen cause distress (corpses, worms, etc.)
19. Instructs by pleasing
20. Proposes pleasure, not truth, as the immediate object of attention
21. Creates a sort of religious feeling
22. Is nothing else, so is poetic by default
23. Remembers things silently gone out of mind
24. Induces movement by precise expression
25. Transforms contemplated emotion into actual, felt emotion
26. Breathes the finer spirit of all knowledge
27. Looks before and after
28. Sees relationships and love everywhere
29. Binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society
30. Feels as if it was always intended to be written as a poem and does not feel like prose in drag
31. Achieves a certain level of song that exceeds the limits of human language
32. Causes a crackling blue spark to arc from the page to the reader's mind
33. Purges pity and terror
34. Ritualistically recalls horrible memories in loving detail
35. Is news that stays news
36. Hits you with a brick
37. Lives beautifully for a moment and then dies
38. Burns for the joy of it
39. Rings your bell
40. Lifts you off

Also see "Poetry and Pleasure" by Doug McGill.

BRYANT H. McGILL (from Preface to Existence)
"Good poetry does not exist merely for the sake of itself, but rather, is a byproduct of yearning and growth; great poetry canonizes that yearning for the growth of others."
(sent in by S. Hernandez, Sierra Vista, AZ)

BILLY COLLINS
"Introduction To Poetry"

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

ARCHIBALD MacLEISH
"Ars Poetica"

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as he sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown-

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds

*

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind-

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea-

A poem should not mean
But be.

YOURDICTIONARY.COM
Main Entry: po.et.ry
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 (a) metrical writing; verse (b) the productions of a poet; poems
2 writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound and rhythm
3 (a) something likened to poetry especially in beauty of expression (b) poetic quality or aspect

CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH
Entry: "poem"
· "poem" noun [C]
a piece of writing in which the words are chosen for their sound and the images and ideas they suggest, not just their obvious meaning. The words are arranged in separate lines, often ending in rhyme.

If something has poetry, it is very beautiful or expressive.
This film has a savage poetry and brilliance.
The young gymnast's moves were poetry in motion.

ASK OXFORD at askOXFORD.COM
Definitions from the Oxford Paperback Dictionary and Thesaurus and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

poetic
1 emotive, flowery, imaginative, lyrial, metrical, musical.

poem
/"p:m/ noun 1 metrical composition. 2 elevated composition in verse or prose. 3 something with poetic qualities

1 ballad, eclogue (short, pastoral poem), elegy, epic, haiku, lay, limerick, lyric, ode, pastoral, rhyme, sonnet, verse.
…
3 poetic or tenderly pleasing quality.

lyric
/"lrk/ adjective 1 (of poetry) expressing writer's emotion, usually briefly. 2 (of poet) writing in this way. 3 meant or fit to be sun; songlike.
Noun 1 lyric poem. 2 (in plural) words of song.

Lyrical
Adjective 1 lyric. 2 resembling, or using language appropriate to, lyric poetry. 3 colloquial highly enthusiastic.

1,2 emotional, expressive, impassioned, inspired, melodious, musical, poetic, rapturous, rhapsodic, sweet, tuneful. 3 emotional, enthusiastic, impassioned, rapturous, rhapsodic.