Final answer:
Poetry can be recognized by its use of line, meter, and stanzas. It evokes feelings in the reader and is constructed using words, lines, and stanzas.
Step-by-step explanation:
Poetry is difficult to define, as it is amorphous: often, one can recognize poetry by its use of line, meter, and stanzas (i.e. it is not written in prose), but poetry can also (though less commonly) be written in prose. A poem may rhyme (or not), but usually the emphasis of poetry is to evoke a feeling in the reader in surprising ways.
In poetry, there are three units of architecture, or structure: words, lines, and stanzas. As with all forms of writing, words comprise the most basic level of form. But what makes poetry unique as a genre is verse lines which work as both a unit of sensibility and music.
Ben Johnson referred to the art of poetry as "the craft of making." Two basic metaphors for the art of poetry in the classical world were carpentry and weaving. "Whatsoever else it may be," W. H. Auden said, "a poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle."