Poetry means,
Expessing yourself,
Writing from the heart,
Wether funny or serious,
Romantic or not,
As long as you mean it,
And it about what you want,
You are a poet.
mm. it's true. poetry is hard to pin down, but if you stick to the advice given in this poem as far as writing poems goes, you won't go to far wrong. of course it is so very hard to mean the things we say...
I appreciate where you are coming from, however poetry is not necessarily anything anyone thinks it is. Poetry is as old as communication is between people, it is more than just words, no matter how heartfelt. The earliest peoples most certainly used rhyme and rhythm as memory devises and to communicate their experiences and beliefs not only from one to another but also for those who followed. Before the advent of printing presses, most communication was oral. The educated wrote down the oral tradition. All cultures evolved their own poetic traditions. With modern communication, we have more evolution, in that much poetry is only written. The oral tradition is most represented today in popular songs. Rap, for instance, is elemental in rhythm and rhyme. That probably accounts, in part, for it's popularity.