poetry is, a poem is...

Poetry presupposes its purpose. [JF]
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The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions.
—Henry David Thoreau
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Poetry is a soul inaugurating a form.
—Pierre-Jean Jouve (quoted in Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space)
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Poetry proves again and again that any single overall theory of anything doesn't work. Poetry is always the cat concert under the window of the room in which the official version of reality is being written."
—Charles Simic
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A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words.
—William Carlos Williams
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A verbal-textual construct that either calls attention to its content through the craft of its making and/or actually creates content by the craft of its making. [JF]
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