Why can the boundary between poetry and prose be difficult to draw?

Distinguishing between poetry and prose is often difficult because, while they are distinct modes of expression, they share fundamental elements like rhythm and are both arts of time. The boundary is frequently blurred by writers who experiment with form, leading to works that defy simple categorization.12

Several factors contribute to this ambiguity:

• Visual Convention: Readers often identify poetry by its appearance on the page. When poetry is presented in a prose format, readers tend to categorize it as prose, even if it contains traditional poetic devices like rhyme.3
• Technical Definitions: While verse serves as a technical counterpart to poetry, there is no symmetrical term for the mechanical structure of prose.3
• Subjectivity: Definitions often fail to account for "borderline cases." As noted by T.S. Eliot and others, the distinction is less like a scientific classification and more like differentiating between weather patterns—everyone understands the general difference, yet some instances remain ambiguous.3
• Performance and Orality: Poetry originated as an oral art form, and its close historical relationship with song continues to challenge modern attempts to separate lyrics from poetry.4