Can anyone direct me to an academic book about what poetry is?

then try an academic search like on jstor or a library database

A lot of people here recommend (or used to recommend) Frye's "The Ode Less Travelled."

I've not read it, but I imagine it's decent.

Personally, I recommend Cleanth Brooks's "The Well Wrought Urn."

>>8740896
Uh, Aristotle's Poetics?

>>8740924
uhh, try reading a book before recommending it based on the title?

Do you need a definition for something serious (a scientific article, for example) or just out of curiosity?

>>8740921
>The Well Wrought Urn

Great book. Check it out OP.

>>8740924
Fucking idiot.

>>8741019
I'm more interested in a survey than a definition.

What poetry is: what kinds of things it does, with statistics and lists. A book by an academic who does not spin his wisdom out over the course of decades and hundreds of pages, as if he was worried he might run out of it if he didn't water it down.

>>8740921
>Frye's "The Ode Less Travelled."
Surprisingly great, and I hate this memetic bong

>>8741200
Roman Jakobson's Linguistic and Poetry
he has a kind of scientific view of poetry though, the actual definition of poetry has been at the centre of academic inquiry for centuries so you won't find a definite answer any time soon. Jakobson on the Poetic function is a good start for someone looking at it analytically.

ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound

4chanlit.wikia.com/poetry