This brief communication delineates 10 outstanding characteristics of poetry. These include poetry's expression of preverbal experience, blending of primary and secondary processes, musical use of words, enhancement of mentalization, reduction of mental pain, cathexis of links and bonds, manifestation of culture, synthesis of neurophysiology, acceptance of the oedipal situation, and its location in the transitional realm. The paper then moves on to deconstruct the form of its message thus far and in the process sheds further light on the “work” of writing poetry.