Poetic licenses
Here's a text:
A scientific question and answer
What quantity of timber could
Arctomys monax be expected to propel,
assuming
A. monax were capable
of propelling timber?
A. monax would propel timber
to the maximum of its capacity,
assuming
A. monax were capable
of propelling timber.
and the source from which it was derived:
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
A woodchuck would chuck
as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck
if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Now some folk may prefer the first version and some the second, and it would be interesting to know why. But a much more interesting question is – which (if indeed either) is a
poem? Which raises the further question of how much freedom we have as poets to express things in our
'own way' before getting our poetic licenses revoked.
1 I'd love to hear from you with your opinions on this.
[1] which basically means getting ignored by the reading public (except possibly by a small clique of camp followers).