Wherefore Art Thou Poetry?

I'll be frank: I can write argumentative essays, hard-hitting exposés, dystopian fiction, creative nonfiction…but poetry eludes me.  I am expected to put my entire message, filled with emotional nuances and flourishing detail, into three stanzas?  But surely you jest.  I can hardly capture what I want to say in ten pages, let alone ten phrases.

Poetry requires more

than a skilled pen: you are changing the tone

by where you direct the reader's eye on the page,

creating a new feel by how

s t a c c a t o or how

fluid you make the spacing.

You

       can

    create

     drama

by

    forming

pictures

  with

the

words,

or theatrical

emphasis by how you arrange

each

sentence.

What I, as a prose writer, would explicitly state, a poet would shape and hint at through obscure imagery and subtle formatting.  This is why I hate it.  Not reading it, before any of you take offense: just writing it.  I need the ability to blurt out what I have to say: I cannot veil it with surreality--hell, the mere thought makes my head spin. Poets must tell entire novels--people's portraits, histories of nations--in only so much space as could be fit on both my forearms.  It takes more imagination than I possess.  And so, when I hear, as I have many times, that as a writer I am an artist, I must disagree.  A prose writer tells a story, one that appeals to the subconscious and rolls off the tongue as it is retold; a poet truly paints with words, and that, as a talent which I cannot fathom, I admire all the more.