John William Mackail on poetry as an art

    J. W. Mackail, in his contribution about poetry to the Oxford English Dictionary, says this:

In general, the essence of poetry as an art is not so much that it is rhythmical (which all elevated language is) or that it is metrical (which not all poetry is, except by a considerable extension of the meaning of the word), as that it is patterned language. This is its specific quality as a ‘fine art’. The essence of pattern (in its technical use, as applied to the arts) as distinct from ‘composition’ generally, is that it is composition which has what is technically called ‘a repeat’; and it is the ‘repeat’ which technically differentiates poetry from non-poetry, both being (as arts) ‘composition’. The ‘repeat’ may be obvious, as in the case of rhymed lines of equal length, or it may be more implicit, to any degree of subtlety; but if it doesn’t exist, there is technically no poetry. The artistic power of the pattern-designer is shown in the way he deals with the problem of ‘repeat’; and this is true of poetry likewise, and is probably the key (so far as one exists) to any technical discussion of the art.

    (Quoted from Volume Two, page 165, of Life and Letters of Edmund Clarence Stedman, by Laura Stedman and George M. Gould. New York: Moffat, Yard and Co., 1910.)
    For a brief biography of J. W. Mackail, click here. For images of or relating to J. W. Mackail, click here. For a brief biography of Edmund Clarence Stedman, click here. For images of or relating to Edmund Clarence Stedman, click here.