Difference between poetry and prose?

[rowens]

I understand that. But in the case of the poetry of something like a bible, the reader lives the poem, the reader translates his own worldview and how he experiences things through it. It isn't necessarily very beautiful at all. Subjectively it might not be poetry to me or you, but to some people it's plain fact. Like Shakespeare or Greek mythology, it's a poetic source that breeds more poetry. They call it religion, and we do too, but it lives through symbols. Symbols that are one and the same time "only symbolic" and "true", when it comes to affective experience. Leanne, you love many of the Romantic poets, don't you? You see what I mean about poetry as religion?