Well, Poetry is as various as Music - both in style (Bach, Bebop, Bacharach, Bantu) and purpose (lullabies, soundtracks, hymns, songalongs, propaganda, etc). If two people say they like music, one might be into Garage and the other Plainsong. Two poetry enthusiasts might also have little in common.
In music, fusions are quite possible (Jazz-rock etc). I think that in poetry it's harder to see the joins when styles and purposes are mixed, and switches are more common - The Waste Land's polyphony (with some fragments a word or line long) is hard to do in music.
Music fans make no apology for specialising - if they like brass bands they choose their music friends accordingly - but sometimes I feel that poets who don't understand/like each other's work feel they should stick together anyway to show solidarity against the unbelieving masses. I think some fragmentation of the poetry world is inevitable. I know of poets who say that Larkin's not a poet. I've heard others say that Prynne isn't. And there's the stage/page split - not everybody thinks that Hollie McNish's pieces work off the page. There's Flarf, Doggerel and Found Poetry.
And then there's the march of time - I think some UK pieces that were considered poetry in the 1990s are Flash now. I'm reclassifying some of mine that I wrote back then. And there's the international perspective - there's a tendency in certain periods/countries to view "bad" (or rude, or unpatriotic) poetry as non-poetry.
E-mail and social media has increased the amount and speed of interaction between poets. In the old days a fashion might dominate a nation for years. Nowadays the turnover is so fast that no single style has time to take root - less fashionable styles are frequently re-integrated. This could lead to homogenisation. Fortunately, the improved communication also gives people a chance to find like-minded people, so sustainable niches are more common now, ensuring variety.
Looking back, it's tempting to label poetry eras - "The Movement", etc - but of course many styles of poetry were present in those eras. Nowadays these unfashionable styles remain more visible than before.
So my answer to the original question is the standard one - it depends who you ask, when, and why. Some texts have been considered poetry by many people for a long time. Among those people are academics who influence (at least nationally) what we categorize as poetry. More than ever though, we need to carefully think about what definitions are for.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
I have a video saved somewhere where a number of famous poets (supposedly, although mostly unknown to me) define poetry and mostly their "definitions" are what make non-poets sneer. Music has form and can be defined and there are so many genres but people can pretty much always recognise when sound is music and not just noise (Cage's 4' 3" being the one exception) but poetry has done itself no favours over the last hundred years by offering up these non-definitions. I couldn't find the video I was looking for but here's a
ReplyDeletesimilar one that's just as bad.
In recent years I've started writing less structured pieces focusing more on meaning as opposed to form. Some veer very close to prose but for the life of me I cannot seem to find a way into the prose poem. Flash, to my mind, despite its length is still story-oriented even if the "story" is just a slice of life. Poetry less so. These days anyway although John Cooper Clarke manages to still do both with panache. Although there are still difficult authors out there most prose can be skimmed and the gist retained. Poetry not so much. Even straightforwatd stuff like mine. There're layers and careful readers are rewarded. There must be a few still out there.
A few things provoked this post - Hollie McNish read at my local writers group, and seemed to go down well with the non-poets; I've noticed more seamless segueing in my poetry, mood-changes without signposts; my poetry is becoming more extreme, less easily classified as prose. Flash is such a big field nowadays that sub-genres abound. Some mags say "no prose poems". Quite a few insist on a narrative. I know of a few poets who think that their quiet works with hidden depths aren't being read because of the sensationalist, competition-obsessed, attention-seeking nature of the poetry world nowadays. I'd suggest trying Flash markets - some (ex) poets have found a home there.
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