I don’t have a comprehensive definition of poetry on hand, but I also don’t think that’s terrible important. A cursory look should suggest that this version has several qualities that the original, prose version did not (and vice versa), and whether we call those qualities “poetry” or “blarglflarg” is largely irrelevant.
Okay, then to be more specific: I also do not have a readily-accessible full list of qualities that look like poetry to me. However, what you have written does not pattern-match as poetry. It seems to me as though it imitates some superficial aspects of poetry, but is missing the essential point that poetry requires that equal attention be paid to the form as to the content (this is not a sufficient condition, but I think it is necessary). It is not poetry, but prose with line breaks.
Of course, it could be that something you are doing is going over my head. So in order to give you the benefit of the doubt, I am asking: what about the form have you given sufficient attention to qualify it as poetry?
I’m less concerned with defending it as poetry than defending it as a good idea that accomplished particular goals.
Perhaps worth noting—in earlier versions of this I was paying attention to line length, working in small amounts of rhyme and alliteration when possible. For example:
A mother’s child shares her genes And so a mother loves her child It’s not that hard to comprehend How love could form within the wild.
It probably pattern-matched better as poetry then, but it also became less successful at the thing I was actually trying to do—which was to preserve as much of the original emotional qualities of the prose-version as possible, in a spoken-word presentation. (While making small modifications to tie in with some other material I’m presenting, as long as they didn’t harm the overall impact)
Some of that intent is still present. For example, the opening line:
How, oh how could the universe, itself unloving, and mindless, cough up creatures capable of love?
Is altered from the original:
How, oh how, did an unloving and mindless universe, cough up minds who were capable of love?
With some attention paid to how the words flow, how the lines look, where the syllables land and where the emphasis is. But I found that most of the work didn’t really benefit from that style in the same way.
Perhaps it might be better to refer to it as “Spoken Word Artform.” Poem, play, verse and speech are all subcategories that you could argue about it belonging in, but they’re not natural categories.
The rough metric I judge it by (and what I judge poetry by) is “does it sound beautiful when spoken aloud, or when you imagine it being spoken aloud?”
Edit: honestly I think this is fairly well explained in the OP. I use the word “poetrized” in the title because it’s a single word that approximately captured what I meant, but in the opening paragraphs I say that it ended up more of a play than a poem.
Also, if you believe there are ways to improve the quality of the form, without sacrificing the essence of the original, I’m very much open to suggestions (or hell, a complete reworking of it).
I think it is likely that, somewhere in spoken-word-space, there exists a poem that accomplishes everything the original prose did, while having a more beautiful form. I think that poem would have to have changes so extensive that it would effectively be a different work. I could be wrong about that. But it seemed likely, and my goal was to preserve the original, so I went in a different direction.
Why do you call this poetry?
It looks like poetry to me?
I don’t have a comprehensive definition of poetry on hand, but I also don’t think that’s terrible important. A cursory look should suggest that this version has several qualities that the original, prose version did not (and vice versa), and whether we call those qualities “poetry” or “blarglflarg” is largely irrelevant.
Okay, then to be more specific: I also do not have a readily-accessible full list of qualities that look like poetry to me. However, what you have written does not pattern-match as poetry. It seems to me as though it imitates some superficial aspects of poetry, but is missing the essential point that poetry requires that equal attention be paid to the form as to the content (this is not a sufficient condition, but I think it is necessary). It is not poetry, but prose with line breaks.
Of course, it could be that something you are doing is going over my head. So in order to give you the benefit of the doubt, I am asking: what about the form have you given sufficient attention to qualify it as poetry?
I’m less concerned with defending it as poetry than defending it as a good idea that accomplished particular goals.
Perhaps worth noting—in earlier versions of this I was paying attention to line length, working in small amounts of rhyme and alliteration when possible. For example:
A mother’s child shares her genes
And so a mother loves her child
It’s not that hard to comprehend
How love could form within the wild.
It probably pattern-matched better as poetry then, but it also became less successful at the thing I was actually trying to do—which was to preserve as much of the original emotional qualities of the prose-version as possible, in a spoken-word presentation. (While making small modifications to tie in with some other material I’m presenting, as long as they didn’t harm the overall impact)
Some of that intent is still present. For example, the opening line:
How, oh how could the universe,
itself unloving, and mindless,
cough up creatures capable of love?
Is altered from the original:
How, oh how, did an unloving and mindless universe, cough up minds who were capable of love?
With some attention paid to how the words flow, how the lines look, where the syllables land and where the emphasis is. But I found that most of the work didn’t really benefit from that style in the same way.
Perhaps it might be better to refer to it as “Spoken Word Artform.” Poem, play, verse and speech are all subcategories that you could argue about it belonging in, but they’re not natural categories.
The rough metric I judge it by (and what I judge poetry by) is “does it sound beautiful when spoken aloud, or when you imagine it being spoken aloud?”
Edit: honestly I think this is fairly well explained in the OP. I use the word “poetrized” in the title because it’s a single word that approximately captured what I meant, but in the opening paragraphs I say that it ended up more of a play than a poem.
Also, if you believe there are ways to improve the quality of the form, without sacrificing the essence of the original, I’m very much open to suggestions (or hell, a complete reworking of it).
I think it is likely that, somewhere in spoken-word-space, there exists a poem that accomplishes everything the original prose did, while having a more beautiful form. I think that poem would have to have changes so extensive that it would effectively be a different work. I could be wrong about that. But it seemed likely, and my goal was to preserve the original, so I went in a different direction.