What's the diffrence between poetry and delineated prose?

[dukealien]

Must admit to having skimmed the discussion up to now a bit.  So if this point has already been made or passed, apologies.

Another way to look at the distinction between prose and poetry (or verse) is that poetry is performance while prose is communication - in its pure form, without performance.  (It's possible to speak or write prose artfully, but without its becoming poetry... so this may be incomplete or incorrect.  On the other hand, some free verse - especially political poetry - becomes very prosaic in its single-minded attempt to deliver a message despite compressed language and extended typography.)

One last thought, also likely inaccurate:  prose translates, poetry does not.  Maybe it employs a language's unstranslatable backstory where prose contains only elements all languages have in common.

P.S. It's easy to imagine a language the basic grammar of which has rules resulting in what would look like verse to us - rhyming, rhythm and the like that native speakers would supply as unconsciously as English-speakers use thuh or thee, a or an depending on the next word, only a bit more complex.  Its prose would be enjoyable (for us) to hear, but still prose because it was natural, neither made special nor performance.