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I feel like a philosopher right now, so I'm going to philosophize. And yes, that is a word.

I've been contemplating the definition of poetry. Robert Frost said that a poem is not a poem unless it has definite meter and rhyme. I firmly believe and support this principle, because I believe art must be a name given only to a painting that is deserving; the same concept applies to poetry, which is a form of art. Anyway, as I sat with my sister in our living room, she expressed her desire to read poetry. Somewhere along the way, Mr. Frost was mentioned, and I spoke of his philosophy on poetry and my own support of it. My sister vocalized her disagreement, so I have been provoked to thinking on this subject over the past several hours.

I have come to the conclusion that some people just don't deserve to be called poets. I no longer, or perhaps never did, believe that poetry must have meter and rhyme, but that it must be beautiful to hear and be such a wonderful expression of what one feels that that feeling translates to the reader or listener. I still do believe that rhyming makes the best poetry and that anything else should rather be called "prose," but I concede to the fact that a beautiful line of un-rhymed prose may be called poetic merely for the reason that it is beautiful and touches the soul.

Earlier this evening, I accompanied the same sister, my younger sister, and my younger brother to Borders. There, my younger sister, Hannah, also commented on poetry(though I'm not sure how it came up). She told me of a classmate of hers who questioned the sadness and lamentation that is so prevalent in poetry. It is my deduction that poetry is a form of self-expression and is incredibly suitable to be called upon in a state of deep depression or lamentation. I say lamentation because it can refer to one being in love, a state from which much poetry is born, but it is not necessarily a depressive situation. And, when one is under the pressure of such heavy emotions, expression and closure of such feeling is needed for the survival of the soul. However, when a poet is happy, he needs not to relinquish his joy. He keeps it for as long as it will make him its host, and so he does not even think to identify such feeling with a poem, thus confining it to pen and paper. And for that very reason, there is so much less "happy" poetry in the world.

That's really all I have in my head to say.