We distinguish on sound technical grounds between prose and verse. But the non-technical distinction between prose and poetry is more difficult to sustain, and may be fundamentally unsound, because the difference, in a healthy state of mind and language, is a matter of degree and not of kind. However, if one does make that distinction, then of course it follows that poetry can be written in either verse or prose, and so too can prose; or, to put it another way, it follows that verse can be a medium for both prose and poetry. We naturally think of verse as getting more out of words than prose, as heightening or intensifying the prosaic into the poetic. But verse may also be used to keep language down to a prosaic level by flattening out or repressing possible meanings and intensities.

Eliot was one who did distinguish between prose and poetry, that is, as he saw it, between the prose of ordinary consciousness and the poetry of metaphysical thought and vision.