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# System prepended metadata

title: 'Synecdoche, Poetry'

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![](https://i.imgur.com/fVBsujo.jpg)

# Synecdoche, Poetry 

A couple of weeks ago, I've conducted a little experiment on my hive family. Sitting together in a posh restaurant named Pinewood, I asked them to evaluate [a piece of poetry](https://peakd.com/hive-190212/@notacinephile/an-attempt-at-poetry) I wrote—which was actually not a poem, but rather a piece of prose work of mine I just reassembled into small lines to give it an appearance of a poem. And they actually praised it! :D It should be noted that they write poetry quite often and thus I was laughing inwardly for successfully tricking them! However, it also pushed me further toward understanding poetry, and later on, Shelley wiped the smug smile I initially had from my face. He declared prose works are indeed poetry and it was a paramount point in his essay "A Defence of Poetry" in which he used that argument against Plato. 

Plato didn't see poetry in a favorable light, in his view, it was merely an imitation of another imitation (The funny thing is that, according to Plato, something tangible, like a house is an imitation of its idea, and not the other way around, and the poem written about a house is an imitation of the imitation), and cannot convey the truth. He championed philosophy instead. It took nearly two millennia for Sidney (*An apology for poetry*) to argue, that poets were philosophers in disguise and chose poetry in Plato's time as it was a more popular medium to reach people. Shelley enforced the idea more and took it further, he declared, that Plato himself was a poet. Shelley did not make any distinction between poetry and prose work and he found poetry in the inner wordplay and expressions of Plato. 
In his words—
> "The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendor of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action..." 
— A Defence of Poetry  (1821) 

If we are to take Shelley's word then, I have always been a poet (as I am a prose writer) and always understood poetry. My attempt at reshaping a prose work into poetry by arranging it in small sentences was needless, yet when it was done, it was indeed a poem, as it was before any such arrangement. 
I also see the appeal in Plato's rejection of poetry in its lyrical form, which feels like an extra step I do not want to take. This is also funny, as I usually obsess over the form quite a bit, and the same me now wants to ignore the form in this case and go blind from here on. 

— notacinephile


