Well, the definition of "poetry" has always been arbitrary, in the first place, and like all ideas of art it's continually in the process of being redefined. The Modern poets, after World War I, did a lot of that redefining--experimenting with form and thinking outside of traditional rhythm and rhyme in order to express new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ideas of order and how the world worked. (Actually, that whole movement in all areas of art is pretty fascinating.) A very, very broad definition of poetry as it stands today might be that it's written work which depends heavily on form to express meaning, as opposed to prose, which depends on narrative to express meaning. But that's my definition, and it changes; ask another poet on another day, and you'll get a different answer. It doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be called poetry any more than Shakespeare's sonnets don't deserve to be called poetry because they aren't the same as the Odyssey.
Arrangement on a page holds as much meaning as rhythm or form does--line breaks can denote tension, denote a whole thought, draw attention to a word, and create a visual structure that lends another layer of meaning to a work. Like punctuation, in a way. Greater freedom with form doesn't mean that there are no standards anymore; the truly successful poets are successful for a reason, and it is because they are able to manipulate words and form to evoke clear images and emotions in the reader. Shakespeare did this with a form whose meaning and implications were understood by his audience in his day (I'm thinking mainly of the sonnet here), and e.e. cummings likewise did by experimenting with form in a way that was understood by his audience to hold meaning (playing with spaces, spelling, capitalization, and syntax in a time in which such things are far more standardized). [I theorize that this may also be due to a higher expected literary rate among poetry readers--poetry can afford to look pretty on a page rather than pack meaning into audible rhythm if you expect that your reader will be personally looking at it. But that's just my theory.]
One of the wonderful things that Modern art has created is the idea that art of any sort is a dialogue between the artist, piece, and viewer. No two poets might agree on the right place to put every break or space, but that doesn't mean they're arbitrary; recalling my time in Poet's Collective, it was surprising how often we agreed upon the right place to break a line for the same reasons, and how strikingly different we could render a poem by simply arranging it in a slightly different way. I don't deny that rhythm and form is something a poet should learn in order to be able to experiment with it, in the same way that artists should learn anatomy, perspective, and classic technique in order to be able to create experimental or abstract art. However, poetry no longer requires that the poet fit their words into a grid in order to be meaningful; the poet must learn how to manipulate rhythm and form in their own way in order to convey precisely what they wish to convey, and what they wish to convey may very well be something that works best as a sonnet, or it may be something that works best by putting words into clusters removed from syntax and placing them in different corners of a page.
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Arrangement on a page holds as much meaning as rhythm or form does--line breaks can denote tension, denote a whole thought, draw attention to a word, and create a visual structure that lends another layer of meaning to a work. Like punctuation, in a way. Greater freedom with form doesn't mean that there are no standards anymore; the truly successful poets are successful for a reason, and it is because they are able to manipulate words and form to evoke clear images and emotions in the reader. Shakespeare did this with a form whose meaning and implications were understood by his audience in his day (I'm thinking mainly of the sonnet here), and e.e. cummings likewise did by experimenting with form in a way that was understood by his audience to hold meaning (playing with spaces, spelling, capitalization, and syntax in a time in which such things are far more standardized). [I theorize that this may also be due to a higher expected literary rate among poetry readers--poetry can afford to look pretty on a page rather than pack meaning into audible rhythm if you expect that your reader will be personally looking at it. But that's just my theory.]
One of the wonderful things that Modern art has created is the idea that art of any sort is a dialogue between the artist, piece, and viewer. No two poets might agree on the right place to put every break or space, but that doesn't mean they're arbitrary; recalling my time in Poet's Collective, it was surprising how often we agreed upon the right place to break a line for the same reasons, and how strikingly different we could render a poem by simply arranging it in a slightly different way. I don't deny that rhythm and form is something a poet should learn in order to be able to experiment with it, in the same way that artists should learn anatomy, perspective, and classic technique in order to be able to create experimental or abstract art. However, poetry no longer requires that the poet fit their words into a grid in order to be meaningful; the poet must learn how to manipulate rhythm and form in their own way in order to convey precisely what they wish to convey, and what they wish to convey may very well be something that works best as a sonnet, or it may be something that works best by putting words into clusters removed from syntax and placing them in different corners of a page.