Ignorant 19 Year-old's Opinion on Poetry

Abby: So how was your birthday? What did you do? Did ya get me anything?

Me: Great. Went to my English class, went to a Switchfoot concert, came home, ate ice cream cake. I did not consider getting you anything, sorry.

Abby: That's okay! What did you talk about in your English class?

Me: We talked a little about poetry, which I don't really understand.

Abby: Why not?

Me: I'm not really sure. I guess I don't know what is considered a "poem." I can easily look up a definition in a dictionary, but I don't get what distinguishes a poem from another form of writing.

For instance, "The Colonel" by Carolyn Forche seems like a well written short story, but it is classified as a poem. I don't get what makes my blog considered a blog and what makes a poem considered a poem. Perhaps I'm just really ignorant I don't understand art or writing or whatever. Perhaps I just need to "open my eyes" to this medium to fully appreciate it. Or perhaps the author wants you to think their writing is deep when really it is only a few pretty sounding lines.

That brings me to another question: how short can a poem be in order to be a poem? Vsauce, an educational YouTube channel, discusses this question in his video "What is the Shortest Poem." The video briefly mentions Aram Saroyan's poem "Lighght" (purposely spelled that way). That word is the only word in his poem, yet he made $500 from it. There are even one letter poems, such as "Fit", where the letter is "n." While less can sometimes mean more, like Marjane Satrapi's illustrations in Persepolis, this sometimes makes me wonder when to draw the line for that rule.

Abby: Ever think you're over-thinking things?

Me: Actually I think I'm under-thinking things.