The Heart of Art

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

“A poet is only as good as their definition of poetry. To write without a clear vision of the constraints of the art is-”

Carl swallowed a sigh, his attention slipping away from Professor White’s unrelenting drone. It was surely true, surely necessary that you memorise genres and styles and structures before taking the bold step of writing down Art. That at least one degree was required to be able to write a poem. Or a story. Or a song.

All these rhymes and snippets and lines which fogged his mind, clamouring to burst out, forming and reforming combinations over and over with as much unstoppable force as White’s monotonous lecturing… they needed to be tamed. To be labelled. To be controlled.

If he couldn’t learn to squash that wild impulse he would never be an artist. Who would read a poem without first checking precisely how it was filed? The algorithm wouldn’t know who to show it to, so would bounce it back. You needed clear categories. Blurring the lines would only bring confusion and loss of audience.

So he pulled his wandering listless mind back to the genres and structures and classifications. The true heart of poetry.

Prompt this time was the first sentence.

[I wish to clarify that I have no problem with these structures etc existing, they are useful analysis tools. But prescriptive applications of them annoy me.]