Poetry is like ice skating: you can turn quickly. Prose is like wading. It also has a lot of good. You can see your toes, for example.–Robert Pinsky
A poem is not a laundry list or a legal document. Nor is it a novel or a letter, although these latter may have “poetic” moments when they share some of the distinctive qualities of poetry.–Gerald H. WIlson

So poetry is not prose. Poetry uses language and linguistic devices to produce an effect. Poems use paralellism and alliteration and assonance and rhyme. Poems use meter and rhythm, images and similes and metaphors. Yet prose can use some or all of these things and still be rather, well, prosaic. And a grocery list, if not a laundry list, can be poetic if it’s written by someone with a poet’s ear for language. Prose often tells a story, narrates; so does a narrative poem. Some poems don’t rhyme and have hardly any rhythm. A poem is a poem because it feels like a poem and it looks like a poem (usually) on the page and it reads like a poem, preferably out loud. A poem turns quickly.

Poem for Today: A Wreath by George Herbert, Christian poet born on this day in 1593.

A WREATHED garland of deserv’d praise,
Of praise deserv’d, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee,
To Thee, who art more far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity.
Give me simplicity, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know Thy ways,
Know them and practise them : then shall I give
For this poor wreath, give Thee a crown of praise.

I just discovered this poet, a contemporary of John Donne and of Shakespeare. If you liked the poem for today, you might also enjoy these poems by George Herbert.
A Dialogue-Anthem (between the Christian and Death)
Grief
Jordan (1)
Love (III)
Mortification
I am thinking I could spend a whole month just blogging about the poems of George Herbert.