Poetry is an Art that is based mostly on sounds. Because it is Art, it is an expression of the self, and because it is poetry, the best expressions use sound to make clear what is being expressed. Many poems rhyme for this reason, but rhyme is not the only tool of sound that a poet can use; two other major tools are meter and stress. As artists and readers we might notice that the best poems are the ones we can read out loud or hear in our heads, where the sound and meter create a definite, unique impression that communicates some of what the artist intended. As students we've been taught these tools and many theories on poetry but the sole, unifying purpose of any poem is that it is Art.
Art, as I have already said, is expression of the self, but being that is not enough. If that were the entire definition of Art, then it would not be something shared successfully with others, and in the case of poetry, this means it would never be well-read. Readers who happened upon what is only an expression would fail to comprehend and would not pass it on to others as something enjoyable or understandable. Poetry takes more care than, say, a scream, which is also an expression of the self, because a poet must take the time to right down words with enough care that, once read, will produce the affect a poet wants. The difficulty of poetry lies in the fact that the neutral medium of words is used, while the splendor of it lies in the fact that such a medium can be eternal. Poetry can be spontaneous, as the best of it expresses an emotion, but it must be somewhat constructed so that, once translated to the medium of words, it is in a form others have the chance to interpret. In order to be interpretable there has to be something that makes a collection of words a poem, or else even if one were called a poem it would not truly be so. This expression called poetry is accomplished when it can be read, analyzed, felt, or understood through some underlying and connecting factor such as a theme or an emotion.
Ultimately a poem must not only be an expression but must also convey what it expresses to others to some extent. A poet's goal is to express a feeling, reaction, or idea in a manner that anyone who has experienced or imagined a similar thing can understand because of a common ground that the poem creates. Sometimes, however, the change from artist's intent to reader's interpretation is an alarming difference. Is it, then, still poetry? The same set of words can produce more than one common ground, in which case the poet is only responsible for the one he or she intended. A poem can always be interpreted the way that the poet wants it to be, it is simply that sometimes that way of interpretation is less likely than others that spring from the same words. In many ways a poet who creates a poem like this had failed, but the poem itself has not, just as a person shooting an arrow might miss entirely and yet the arrow works exactly as it is supposed to and even hits something even though it be other than the target. A poem will always have a correlation to the poet, but when a poet fails the correlation is weak and the poem can seem to exist on its own, being interpreted many different ways or even just one single way differently from what its creator intended. Yet in some ways, if only one person sees the common ground that a poet intended, that poet has succeeded in communicating in this particular form of art.
What if the poet has no intent to begin with? First we must define intent. It is quite possible for a poet to create a poem that expresses his or herself without the poet understanding or consciously intending that expression. The human mind and the human heart from which a poem springs can be very complicated and not always aware of its intentions and its thoughts on an entirely conscious level. Sometimes poems created this way make absolutely no sense to anyone, in which case they can not be called poems because they both fail to express and to communicate, but sometimes a poem that at first seems ambiguous to its own creator can turn out to either express a suppressed or self-misunderstood emotion, reaction, or idea of the poet's. If others can see this in the poem (even when the poet can not) then this, also, can be called poetry. However, if the poet has no intent, either known or unknown to his or herself, and readers perceive no intent conveyed, whether it be something they projected through the common ground that the poem creates or something that the poet unknowingly expressed, then the poem is a complete and utter failure: it is NOT poetry.
Everything else, however, is poetry, and so poetry has a lot of freedom. Form and meter, tools as they are, can be played with and bent like wire to form a definite shape and effect. At the same time, poetry can not and should not be treated as a toy; it should be created with intent so that it is certainly a poem, and hopefully an entirely successful one.
~Micaella