Poetry versus Prose in Shakespeare's Hamlet In any discussion of poetry versus prose that is worth using its stanzas, questions regarding devices such as the meter, rhyme and format. These are, after all, the most obvious defining characteristics of poetry, and must surely be fundamental in determining the definition, and indeed the nature, of poetry. However, a broad term like “poetry” is not as easily quantifiable as simply attributing physical characteristics to it and letting all writing fall into or out of that category. Poetry is determined by its effect on the reader. It is an individual opinion, and so defined by the collected (individual) reactions. Queen. There is a willow that grows by the stream, showing its hoary leaves on the glassy stream, with which it has made fantastic garlands of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples to which liberal shepherds give a cruder name, but our cold maidens call them the fingers of dead men. There on the hanging branches her crown weeds climb the hand, an envious fragment breaks, when her weedy trophies and herself fall into the weeping stream. Her clothes spread out, and like a mermaid they supported her for a while, and at that moment she intoned passages of ancient praises, like one incapable of her own anguish, or like a creature native and induced to that element. But it could not be long until his robes, heavy with drink, tore the poor wretch from his melodious disposition to muddy death. - Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act IV Scene VII Take, for example, the above-quoted text from Hamlet. One of the most emotional monologues in the play, it describes Ophelia's death in specific and poignant terms. Think of the public re... middle of the paper... ceases. One can only hope it's better than "You know, until I die in the mud." Poetry is the feeling that arises when a person sees something that strikes a chord in his chest that reverberates in the beaten rhythm. How many times have you heard anything other than verse poetry passionately described as “poetic”? It's a common word because it describes that wonder we feel when we read really good verse. It is a common word because after hearing it once (in that poem), we know it again in other forms. Not all of those shapes rhyme. Poetry is not the position of the line, it is what the position of the line helps to express. It's simply a more effective (and technically more difficult) thing to make if placed in the meter. Poetry is that song that finds its way from within when we see it in some form before us, regardless of verse or verse.