I lost about a third of my readers about 18 months ago when I dared to say that I didn't regard poetry as poetry if it didn't have rhyme or rhythm.

I asked a professor about that during college days and he said that meaning was lost if one used rhyme or rhythm.

To my mind, if rhyme or rhythm is not there, then prose can do the job as efficiently. I don't need poetry to give me meaning in my life, to release me from pain, to find words - I am able to do all that without it. What I find fun about poetry (when I do find it) is the rhyme, the rhythm, and the clever story or message that goes with it. That takes a lot of skill.