What is poetry? This question appears to simply be somewhat of a rhetorical question. Throughout this semester in poetry, I have learned to analyze poems in ways I never would have before; to dissect the very essence of a word and determine why a poet chose to use that word and not another. I have analyzed poems to the point of where I can no longer see simply the face of the poem, but the heart of the poem and see the writings as if through the eyes of the poet themselves. So what is poetry then? Like the title states in Jack Gilbert’s writing, poetry is “the forgotten dialect of the heart”, it is a language in itself created by poets themselves. We can find poetry within everything in our lives, the simplest or most intimate details of ourselves can become poetry; and this is what makes poetry so unique; poetry is within each one of us because in essence, we are all poets.
