what is a poem

Ray Johnson thought it was ok if other people called him a poet, but that he'd never call himself one.

Joe Brainard said, "writing for me is a way of talking the way I'd like to talk."

Robert Frost said it was for others to say if you were a poet, almost the same thing Ray Johnson thought. The poet James Dickey said that reading Frost's poems left "the taste of sand" in his mouth.

Jerry ______, a Marxist from Los Angeles, always says when introduced to a poet at a party, "you know what Stalin said about poets? That paper will tolerate anything."

Norman Dubie, a poet and Professor of English at Arizona State University, known for work "that invokes the voices of artists such as Chekhov, Proust, and Rodin," has written a poem called "The Arbor"  that is the POEM OF THE WEEK on Narrative, an on-line journal. Whether Dubie's  poem is a poem or not is to miss the point somewhat, as it might just as accurately be classified as a piece of prose. 

http://narrativemagazine.com/node/155446

Ezra Pound thought poetry should be just as well written as prose, whether what was written was a poem or wasn't.