Sauntering in Utah State University’s library, in old bound issues of The Atlantic Monthly, we found an article, “Poetry Considered” (vol. 131, 1923, pages 342-343), where Carl Sandburg listed and numbered his thirty-eight one-sentence definitions of poetry. These we especially like:
6. Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.
14. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration.
15. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.
19. Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.
36. Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
38. Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.
For a brief biography of Carl Sandburg, click here.
Comments