a point arose about this is not poetry

[milo]

shem, I adore you, but you are not getting chewing gum for dinner ever again -- it plays havoc with your bowels and the place is uninhabitable for days.

What makes a glass of water on a shelf into an oak tree? Context. I don't understand how this fundamental concept can have escaped entire generations -- probably thanks to the education system's relentless modernity and boxes and labels and standardised bigotry.

Taken in a vacuum, virtually nothing is anything but its most obvious elements. A painting is colours on canvas; dinner sustains our physical being; a dog whistle is a shiny silver object; and a poem is a selection of words on a page.

Context allows me to draw upon prior knowledge and understanding to recognise that Paul Klee's Flower Myth is not just variations of red to go with the decor; that Heston Blumenthal can charge £300 for a cucumber starter because it's gastronomical; that the dog whistle is the one that was used by that sick bastard down at Number 12 to control his daughters; and that a selection of words I've never seen before is a poem, because it's posted as a poem with the intent that it be read as a poem and it uses poetic devices, even though they're in an unusual pattern.

That's not a value judgment. It is not necessarily a good poem because it is new and interesting -- and it may be a terribly bad poem because the only reason it's presented that way is that the writer had no clue how to present a poem, therefore had no idea what other elements go into a poem other than the very basic and obvious element of structure.

But because it's presented in the context of being a poem, then as a critic we should read it as such, then make suggestions on how to make it a better poem, not how to alter its structure to make it what we've seen before.

So poetry doesn't exist unless it is presented as such.
That makes sense.