Is the old man and the sea poetry?

no. The Old Man and the Sea is a novella written by Hemingway in Cuba in 1951. This work revolves around the story of an old Cuban fisherman fighting with a huge marlin in the Gulf Stream far from the shore. Although Hemingway's old man is tragic, he has Nietzsche's "Superman" quality, accepts defeat with equanimity and faces death calmly and bravely. The "tough man" embodies Hemingway's philosophy and moral ideal of life, that is, the fighter spirit that human beings will never bow to fate and never admit defeat and a positive and optimistic attitude towards life. So it's not poetry.