WEBVTT

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Mohammed Ali spent years training
to become the greatest boxer

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the world had ever seen,

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but only moments to create
the shortest poem.

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Ali captivated Harvard's 
graduating class in 1975

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with his message of unity and friendship.

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When he finished, 
the audience wanted more.

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They wanted a poem.

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Ali delivered what is considered
the shortest poem ever.

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Me, we.

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Or is it me, wee?

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No one's really sure.

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Regardless, if these two words are a poem,
then what exactly makes a poem a poem?

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Poets themselves have struggled
with this question,

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often using metaphors to approximate
a definition.

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Is a poem a little machine?

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A firework?

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An echo?

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A dream?

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Poetry generally has certain
recognizable characteristics.

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One - poems emphasize language's
musical qualities.

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This can be achieved through
rhyme, rhythm, and meter,

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from the sonnets of Shakepeare,

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to the odes of Confucius,

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to the Sanskrit Vedas.

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Two - poems use condensed language,

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like literature with all the water
wrung out of it.

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Three - poems often feature
intense feelings,

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from Rumi's spiritual poetry

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to Pablo Neruda's "Ode to an Onion."

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Poetry, like art itself, has a way
of challenging simple definitions.

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While the rhythmic patterns 
of the earliest poems

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were a way to remember stories
even before the advent of writing,

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a poem doesn't need to be lyrical.

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Reinhard Döhl's “Apfel”

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and Eugen Gomringer's "silencio"

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toe the line between visual art
and poetry.

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Meanwhile, E.E. Cummings wrote poems
whose shapes were as important

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as the words themselves,

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in this case amplifying the sad loneliness
of a single leaf falling through space.

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If the visual nature of poetry
faded into the background,

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perhaps we'd be left with music,

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and that's an area that people
love to debate.

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Are songs poems?

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Many don't regard songwriters as poets
in a literary sense,

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but lyrics from artists like Paul Simon,

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Bob Dylan,

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and Tupac Shakur

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often hold up even without the music.

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In rap, poet elements like rhyme,
rhythm, and imagery

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are inseparable from the form.

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Take this lyric from the Notorious B.I.G.

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"I can hear sweat trickling 
down your cheek

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Your heartbeat sound 
like Sasquatch feet

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Thundering, shaking the concrete."

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So far, all the examples we've seen
have had line breaks.

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We can ever imagine the two words
of Ali's poem organizing in the air -

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Me, We.

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Poetry has a shape 
that we can usually recognize.

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Its line breaks help readers navigate
the rhythms of a poem.

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But what if those line breaks disappeared?

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Would it lose its essence as a poem?

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Maybe not.

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Enter the prose poem.

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Prose poems use vivid images
and word play

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but are formatted like paragraphs.

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When we look at poetry less as form
and more as a concept,

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we can see the poetic all around us:

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Spiritual hymns,

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the speeches of orators like
Martin Luther King Jr.,

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JFK,

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and Winston Churchill,

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and surprising places like social media.

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In 2010, journalist Joanna Smith tweeted
updates from the earthquake in Haiti.

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"Was in b-room getting dressed
when heard my name.

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Tremor. Ran outside through sliding door.

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All still now. Safe. Roosters crowing."

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Smith uses language in a way
that is powerful, direct,

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and filled with vivid images.

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Compare her language to a haiku,

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the Ancient Japanese poetic form 
that emphasizes bursts of brief intensity

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with just three lines of five, 
seven, and five syllables.

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The waters of poetry run wide and deep.

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Poetry has evolved over time,

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and perhaps now more than ever,

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the line between poetry, 
prose, song, and visual art has blurred.

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However, one thing has not changed.

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The word poetry actually began
in verb form,

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coming from the Ancient Greek poesis,
which means to create.

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Poets, like craftsman, still work with
the raw materials of the world

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to forge new understandings

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and comment on what it is to be human
in a way only humans can.

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Dartmouth researchers tested this idea
by asking robots to pen poetry.

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A panel of judges sorted 
through stacks of sonnets

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to see if they could distinguish those
made by man and machine.

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You may be happy to know that while
scientists have successfully

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used artificial intelligence 
in manufacturing,

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medicine,

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and even journalism,

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poetry is a different story.

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The robots were caught red-handed
100% of the time.