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My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath.

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

Poetry is not only a set of words which are chosen to relate to each other; it is something which goes much further than that to provide a glimpse of our vision of the world.

Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.

As far as I am concerned, poetry is a statement concerning the human condition, composed in verse.

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

And the second question, can poetry be taught? I didn't think so.

Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.