"Poetry, of course, has many names in many languages.  Its English name comes, as you know, from Greek, from the verb [peio, peiein]which means to do or to make.  In early Greek, peiein isn't a word used for feeble-bodied creatures sitting at desks with pencil and paper; poein is what capenters and ironworkers do.  It's the verb the Homeric poets use to talk about making a sword of a ploughshare or building a house."

--Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning