Quote: "Mobiius is right. Poetry can follow a pattern or not, it's up to you."
Not exactly. A novel is definitely not poetry, for instance.
I studied German literature for a year, and literature can be split into two groups:
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prose text
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not prose text
Prose text, as the wikipedia article describes, is any form of the written language with a more "ordinary grammatical approach" rather than "a rhythmic approach". The term is extremely loosely defined, which has lead to debate over what category some pieces of literature should be classified as.
Another thing that keeps prose text apart from non-prose text is the narrator. The narrator usually can't be identified in a non-prose text (but not always).
Prose text has sub-categories such as novels, "romane" (in English this also translates to novels for some reason), dramas, news articles, etc.
Non-prose text has sub-categories such as lyrics (poetry, ballads, anthems etc.)
Lyrics can contain rhythm, but don't have to. If they do, you can sometimes determine the "metre" of the piece (anapest, dactyl, trochee, and all of the others I forgot). Lyrics almost always have verses, but not always do they make sense.
Bottom line, it's very loosely defined. So, getting to your poem:
Quote: "I think I found hell.
I think I found out that I have nothing.
That I have nothing in the place for me.
I think I will leave everything.
I think I will run away.
That packing my bags and leaving now would be for the best.
I think how I have screwed up
I think how I am a failure
That I should just give up.
I think I am lost in the depths of hell.
I think I am being swallowed by the darkness
That I can't hold on much longer."
This is definitely classified as a non-prose text, and is a poem. I'm not going to go too deep into analysing it, as I don't really see any deeper meaning to it, but let me point out two things I'd base an interpretation on.
1. The absence of full-stops in poetry is a huge deal:
I think I found hell.
I think I found out that I have nothing.
That I have nothing in the place for me.
I think I will leave everything.
I think I will run away.
That packing my bags and leaving now would be for the best.
I think how I have screwed up <-- HERE
I think how I am a failure <-- HERE
That I should just give up.
I think I am lost in the depths of hell.
I think I am being swallowed by the darkness <-- HERE
That I can't hold on much longer.
It controls the flow of how you read it in your head, and writers of poems always play around with this to help overlap the feeling expressed from one line to the next. It's hard to tell if it was done on purpose or not, because it doesn't reveal any deeper meaning.
2. Repeating statements (in this case: "I think") are used to emphasise a point. Here it's obvious what it's emphasising.
Poetry almost always has more than one abstraction layer. This is what makes it so much fun to read, because you get to discover deeper and deeper hidden meanings every time you read it. The one you posted makes its point clear in the first pass, the narrator is made clear too, and thus, even though I would classify it as poetry, I wouldn't qualify it as an outstanding piece of literature, but a mere attempt
TheComet
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