What Is Poetry

It may use condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear; it may also use devices such as assonance and repetition to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poems frequently rely for their effect on imagery, word association, and the musical qualities of the language used. The interactive layering of all these effects to generate meaning is what marks poetry.
Because of its nature of emphasising linguistic form rather than using language purely for its content, poetry is notoriously difficult to translate from one language into another: a possible exception to this might be the Hebrew Psalms, where the beauty is found more in the balance of ideas than in specific vocabulary. In most poetry, it is the connotations and the "baggage" that words carry (the weight of words) that are most important. These shades and nuances of meaning can be difficult to interpret and can cause different readers to "hear" a particular piece of poetry differently. While there are reasonable interpretations, there can never be a definitive interpretation.

What Is Poetry

Poetry is something beyond rhythm and rhymes.
It is said, that what an elder sees while sitting down, a child can never see it even if standing up. Now I'd like to bring poetry into this. Imagine a beautiful rainbow picture, with all six colors. Now bring those who never sit to imagine what they'll be like in years to come, and those who do wonder, whether they'll achieve the UN-achievable, those who sit to wonder whether they'll live to see there great-great-grandchildren, those who sit to wonder whether they'll achieve greatness, will most likely see the incredibility behind these colors, this natural beauty filled with hidden stories, stories that only those who understand poetry can see, and be able to recognize.
Everybody has a way of expressing poetry. It is this little thing, that those who don't know poetry would see and say, "this is pathetic" but those who've seen and lived poetry, would see and say, "Magnificent". Something that can not be explained by just any man. Something that I'd look at and say, this is immortal, but those who don't know poetry, wouldn't see it and not even wonder what it is, why it's there. People who never sit to wonder, people who never imagine, people who never live an imaginary moment will less likely see the true magnificence of poetry. It is hidden and only those who see it and begin to wonder stories behind it, will discover it. It is only open to those who know it and understand it.