[Hilary Biehl]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

But if you think of all the lines and pieces that have resonated and survived the one thing they have in common is that they're strongly evocative.

Of course. As you say, that's not necessarily prescriptive, as there are many ways to be evocative. Though I'd say the lines that stick in the popular imagination usually have a successful marriage of sound and meaning.

[Yves S L]

For fun! What is poetry?

(One of) Yves' definition: A piece of text is poetry to the extent that each syllable contributes to how much emotional information the text enfolds per word.

The trick is applying the definition to the reading and writing of poetry.