Is this poetry. Please discuss.

someone found a sign that belonged to an old factory that is now closed down. This is what the sign read:

In case of a fire
sound the alarm
and leave by the
nearest exit.
close the door behind
you as you leave.

Is there anyway this can be poetry? If not, why not? If so, then why? I'll give you my views later.

I'd call it a warning...there isn't any poetic feel...just a single stanza set up so people will read it. I dont think I'd call it a poem, I guess it could be interpritied as one though...

If you had wrote that and it had a significant meaning to you would it not be poetry? Though I read it as just a warning sign another may find something deeper in it. I'm sure there are many poems you have read or could read in the future that will have no poetic feel to them (in YOUR opinion) so that I don't think is a valid reason to not call it poetry.

What do you think Mel?

If the writer wrote it only in order to warn people, it is not poetry. But if he wrote it, and arranged the words in that special way, so that it would look/sound better, then I would consider it to be poetry.

you could find a lot of meaning in that. for example it can show a life changing event which would be the fire. the alarm which is the tough fight or stuggle you have to face (because alarms are anoying and loud and hard to deal with a long time). leaving the nearest exit could be trying to move on with your life. closing the door behind you is letting go of the pain and hurt and again trying to move on. close the door on your past since you can't change it any way. just depends i guess what ever you want to consider it.

~PLP~ lil slam~

depends on the writer

yes but we don't know the writer so we can't judge it on that in this situation.

~PLP~ lil slam~

it personally does not seem like poetry to me... but then poetry only has to mean something to the person who wrote it...

*jackie*

Ok. Jacklyn was thinking more on the lines that I was thinking. Incidentally, we were given this on an undergraduate course in the late 90s. The subject was 'Text and Context'.

The responses were as diverse as the posts above. There is no right or wrong answer. The idea was to 'prize' meanings from a variety of subject matter. The factory sign was one of them.

My view was:

Within the context of a functional factory (where the sign was taken from) the sign is 'closed' to its intended meaning: Instructions of safety procedures. However, within the context of a 'found'object and taken away from the factory, the sign can take on a new and more subjective meaning/s. We are being challenged to visualise the factory, its workforce, their skills and the era. We begin to wonder if there was actually a fire that put and end to the factory - and was there a loss of life in the fire. Also, there is something interesting about 'the door' that does not exist. A door is a powerful signifyer and can take on heaps of different meanings within many different cultures.

So, yes, I feel that the sign taken out of context can become literary and maybe even poetic. J.Harrison was in tune also, when he said 'it depends on the reader'.

Now your turn..........

so you were given this sign in a class? thats cool. plus it's cool that someone was thinking along the same lines that i was thinking. i agree it depends on the reader too because someone can get some thing out of it like i did or someone would just get nothing from it.

~PLP~ lil slam~

i still think it just depends how much you can get out of it, which we have found a way to get some thing out of it at least i found a way to get something out of it.

~PLP~ lil slam~