What Happened to Poetry?

[Madrigal]

I spent my teen years reading poems about Love and Death. These are the two themes, right? But they were all old poets. What happened to poets? What happened to those themes and are they hiding in another format I'm not aware of? Is poetry dead? If so, when did it die and what killed it?

[LongSilence]

Marx helped kill it.

[Ghost-Girl]

It's alive. A lot of the newer poets have taken more to the spoken word than to the page, but both formats still have a thriving audience.

If you're talking about publication, however...yes, poetry is mostly off the map in comparison to the large volume of fiction writers.

[MacGuffin]

Poetry, and literature, have been on the decline in terms of cultural influence since the majority of people had a television in their homes.

[Scarecrow]

Allen Ginsberg? He's the most recent (readable) poet that I could think of.

...apart from that, I am pretty sure that it was mayflow who killed poetry.

[outmywindow]

Formats come and go in terms of both popularity and their ability to adequately capture the 'times,' for lack of a better word. In Western Europe, verse was eventually supplanted by prose as a way for most writers to best express themselves. Film and television might be currently supplanting the written word (in all forms) from a popular standpoint, but I wonder whether or not most writers would argue against of the overall cathartic effectiveness of the motion picture.

Forms of media go in and out of fashion just like, well, fashion. Sometimes the changes are due to practical reasons, sometimes aesthetic, sometimes both, and sometimes for reasons which appear to be entirely arbitrary.

[JazzTulip]

Try Francoise Petite, an Anglo-French poet currently living in Wales. She writes incredibly sensual poetry about love and death in the style of the Achmeists.

Or just read the Achmeists. But they're mostly now dead, so that kind of makes your point, really.

[Madrigal]

I dunno but I have a sneaking suspicion Americans are to blame somehow. :D

Marx helped kill it.
Marx wrote poetry. About love. Bet you didn't know that!


It's alive. A lot of the newer poets have taken more to the spoken word than to the page, but both formats still have a thriving audience.
Which poets?


Poetry, and literature, have been on the decline in terms of cultural influence since the majority of people had a television in their homes.
This is the theory I want to reject. Or at least set aside while I look for other reasons.


Allen Ginsberg? He's the most recent (readable) poet that I could think of.

I read some but I haven't found a poem I like yet...


but I wonder whether or not most writers would argue against of the overall cathartic effectiveness of the motion picture.
What do you mean?

Try Francoise Petite, an Anglo-French poet currently living in Wales. She writes incredibly sensual poetry about love and death in the style of the Achmeists.
Okay.

I was wondering if it has anything to do with the stigma attached to unhappiness after WW2 when productivity became a greater cultural imperative (in a Brave New World sense). Doesn't seem like there's much room or tolerance for tragedy in that context. Or maybe it's the death of existentialism in an increasingly alienated/distracted society. Or the result of cultural products becoming available for mass consumption under postmodernity. (Maybe I should re-read The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction by Benjamin?)

[earwax]

My city seems to have a flourishing (or maybe floundering) poetry scene. There are a lot of poetry readings and slam competitions. They seem to be fairly well attended, but I think the audience is mainly other poets - who, ironically, talk during other people's readings and then complain when others talk during their's.

[Oso Mocoso]

People realized that compared to other artistic forms of expression, poetry kind of sucks with only rare exception. Well, unless you want to consider hip-hop a modern form of poetry. If you do, then there's been kind of a renaissance of interest in poetry among the masses.

[JazzTulip]

I was wondering if it has anything to do with the stigma attached to unhappiness after WW2 when productivity became a greater cultural imperative (in a Brave New World sense). Doesn't seem like there's much room or tolerance for tragedy in that context. Or maybe it's the death of existentialism in an increasingly alienated/distracted society. Or the result of cultural products becoming available for mass consumption under postmodernity. (Maybe I should re-read The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction by Benjamin?)

That's a couple of interesting points you've made. I'm going to think about that.


People realized that compared to other artistic forms of expression, poetry kind of sucks with only rare exception. Well, unless you want to consider hip-hop a modern form of poetry. If you do, then there's been kind of a renaissance of interest in poetry among the masses.

It's true a lot of poetry that's written is actually b*****ks, and that's from a English Phd of my ex- acquaintance. I find a lot of it is either emotionally overwrought or underexpressive and iron-cold. Occasionally though I find something that's wonderful, but it's rare.

[YHWH]

People realized that compared to other artistic forms of expression, poetry kind of sucks with only rare exception. Well, unless you want to consider hip-hop a modern form of poetry. If you do, then there's been kind of a renaissance of interest in poetry among the masses.

If what people realized mattered, hiphop would be the highest form of art.

[outmywindow]

What do you mean?
I mean that from an expository standpoint, film is limited by many criteria which simply don't apply to prose. The fact that during adaptation, novels of even a relatively short page count have to be condensed in order to fit into a film demonstrates one of more literal limitations of film. More importantly, in my opinion, is the fact that film is by its very nature a demonstrative medium. Very few screenwriters and/or directors have the finesse to create a coherent film that is more than images passing before our eyes. Charlie Kaufman comes to mind as a screenwriter who is able to treat film in a very literary way: non-linear storylines; allegorical characters; 'unnecessary' tangents; self-awareness of character and film. I'd say he's the exception that proves the general rule. If a more abstract kind of filmmaking was more commonly possible, then arguably Kaufman wouldn't stand out nearly as much as he does.

[Bking]

I've been in this creative constipation for over a year now. I can't write lyrics to save my life. Its so frustrating.:rolleyes2:

I will probably end up emotionally breaking down the the middle of the afternoon on a tuesday after seeing a national geographic commercial about the true story of Jesus. And then write a song.

[djm]

I think a lot of people that may have written poems 50 years ago are more likely to be writing song lyrics these days. Good lyrics are poetry set to music in certain respects.

There are still some reasonable modern poets though. Seamus Heaney springs to mind, then there are poets not long since dead like Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Phillip Larkin and WH Auden.

I don't much go in for the mangled English of fellow brummie Benjamin Zeppaniah but he is quite popular - it isn't quite dead as a literary form in Britain yet.

[outmywindow]

I think a lot of people that may have written poems 50 years ago are more likely to be writing song lyrics these days. Good lyrics are poetry set to music in certain respects.

There are still some reasonable modern poets though. Seamus Heaney springs to mind, then there are poets not long since dead like Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Phillip Larkin and WH Auden.

I don't much go in for the mangled English of fellow brummie Benjamin Zeppaniah but he is quite popular - it isn't quite dead as a literary form in Britain yet.
Your average American has no idea who he is (sadly).

Also, I think you make a good point about poets versus lyricists.

[djm]

Your average American has no idea who he is (sadly).

Also, I think you make a good point about poets versus lyricists.

Neither does the average Brit (even more sadly) :mellow:

[camille]

Poetry is alive still, it's just that publishing companies aren't really pushing it anymore. Voices aren't as new and pushed as they used to be either. Some poets copying what was done in the 50s, 60s. Maybe that is because society is much more open than they used to be so the topics poets wrote about during that time don't come across as controversial and popular amongst the youngsters.

[LongSilence]

Marx wrote poetry. About love. Bet you didn't know that!

I never said he tried to kill it himself- it's what his cult did with his ideas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_literary_criticism) that aided the decline. Marxist thought promoted the deconstructive analysis of literary forms and structures while adamantly pointing out how everything from language and grammar to translation and verse have arisen clad in cultural bondage. And when the proletariat* [*insert repressed class here] have been so cruelly oppressed and silenced throughout history it's only right that the established constructions of elitist literature be broken down and discarded in this postmodern age, right?

Anyway, my point is that Marx might well have been human enough to take pleasure in poetry and its romantic inclinations but those who have latched onto his ideas so wholly since have tended to miss the beauty of the forest, instead choosing to chop down the trees that swallow all the moisture and block out the sunshine from those below. So, now we get a far more postmodern age where art should not concern itself with the canopy of lofty exploitative ungrounded leaves of poetry and rather cater to the needs of mushrooms.

That, or our current world feels disconnected for people and lacking in individual grandeur or tragedy. Who relates to a literary form designed to move the heart and head at the same time in tones and rhythms that no-one nowadays would ever speak in on a day to day basis anyway?




Or the result of cultural products becoming available for mass consumption under postmodernity. (Maybe I should re-read The Work of Art in the Age of Technical Reproduction by Benjamin?)[/QUOTE]

[Llewellyn]

I wouldn't know if there is less poetry. It does seem typically something that doesn't depend on quantity (or even presence). It's the reflection of a state of mind, apt at expressing (obscure) themes, themes that are also incorporated in other fields these days (like science, I recognize, and maybe others, maybe even programming, the internet, of course pop music). So the wait would be for a new form of it to eventually incorporate. I foresee an importance for the medium as we're probably heading to a less material future, where we use poetic recipes to create us things in stead of mass transport of already (partly) assembled things. I think poetry grows where there are things not ready-made.

[pangolin]

I don't know exactly what happened to all the themes, but all the poets turned into musicians. Some of them still treat 'heavy' subjects.

[Ghost-Girl]

Which poets?

Took down my book of contemporary American poetry off the shelf and had a look at some of the more recent names (they're all alive as far as I know):
Robert Hass, Marilyn Hacker, Sandra McPherson, Michael Palmer, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Yusef Komunyakaa, Edward Hirsch, Jorie Graham, Mark Doty...there are more, but those are the names that I recognize most readily.

Two other page poets that spring to mind are Marge Piercy (mostly, though, because her poetry annoys me) and Erica Jong.

When it comes to performance poets: Derrick Brown, Anis Mojgani, Taylor Mali, Marty McConnell, Bob Holman, Morris Stegosaurus (He's a bit like an improved Gregory Corso-lots of odd imagery and non sequiturs), Buddy Wakefield, Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Dan Leaman... Again, names that I recognize the most.

There are a lot of young performance poets, I think, in comparison to the number of younger page poets because it's easier to get their material out faster and to a wider audience that way...it's still difficult to become a recognized, published poet. I have two books on my shelf by young poets and both were put out by an independent press. (Those, by the way, Atacama Poems by Adrian Arancibia and Blue Wizard is About to Die: prose, poems and emoto-versatonic pieces about video games by Seth "fingers" Flynn Barkan.)

[LongSilence]

Yeah, many would-be poets followed the stream of money and adoration to music. I mean, if you seek to gain an audience, a women's heart or just cold, hard cash then music is the way to do it nowadays. Music became something that was so much more easily reproduced- you no longer need a grand piano or concerto to make music that people want to hear and so the men of words were drawn to it as a way of speaking to the world. And so it evolved and the world began to revolve around it, fulfilling as it did people's desire for emotional movements. With moving pictures giving them vivid images that before they could only imagine poetry could only struggle to compete.

But then, fine art, plastic art and perfomance art have survived, haven't they? They still have their patrons though who are willing to finance and adore / give attention the artists. Poets no longer really have their support from the social elite so much anymore: no-one hands over a bucketload of cash for a poet to sing their praises.

[Harion]

poetry is dead?
no more poets?
am i the last living one then?

[slant]

I think it's just because most people don't like poetry. Like me, for example.

[Harion]

^^ lol. i bet you like music.
and lyrics.
it's just that ppl like you don't recognize poetry even if you're singing it

[slant]

What if I said I liked music without words?

[decades]

Poetry is coming back. Regis Philbin said so this morning.

[JazzTulip]

b*****ks? What's that? Bollocks?

Yes, 'bollocks'. (Who was that? MacGuffin?) I was trying not to swear in front of the children. And it was my friend who actually said it, or words to that effect.

So yes, much poetry written and published today is apparently 'bollocks' ..... out of the mouth of someone who studied it for a Phd.

Me? I don't really 'get' poetry. Now art I know. I can talk about art till you, me and the person next door is blue in the face. Without repeating myself. But poetry I don't really get.

I think the point made by several of the contributors is correct and maybe the collective drive for poetry has transmogrified (post-WWII with the invention of the 'teenager' in the 1950s) into a drive for popular lyrical music. The thing is though, I think music, however meaningful the lyrics might be, feeds a different hunger to that fed by poetry so I wonder if there's an emotional outlet missing.

Then again, this assumes poetry was ever a meaningful art form within popular culture. I'm not so sure it was. I think songs, rhymes, stories and plays have long been part of popular culture but I suspect the only reason we think poetry ever had mass popularity is because we can see books of classical and traditional poetry in bookshops and that validates poetry as a culturally meaningful art form and encourages us to assume it always had a highly visible place within life. I wonder if it actually did.

If it didn't, and poetry has always been a minority art form, understood and used only by a limited few, then the same few probably still get their hit the way poetry lovers have always got their hit. Whatever that way might be.

[Henry]

If people aren't reading as much poetry as they once did , I'm inclined to blame the Modernists like Eliot and Stevens. Too many abstract, esoteric fragments, often indecipherable to anyone who isn't part of the clique of academe. Not so say some new poetry it isn't good - just inaccessible.

I agree with much of what Bukowski says here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1e5Jeh2Fk0):

Poetry is generally very dull, very pretensive. Those who say the poet is very private and precious person, I don't agree with. Generally, he is just a dumb, fiddling asshole writing insecure lines that don't come through.

and I have an especially soft spot for Al Purdy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPKeczB3wrg):

and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beer or flowers
or a goddamn thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man.

but they're both dead too.

[Curtis24]

I spent my teen years reading poems about Love and Death. These are the two themes, right? But they were all old poets. What happened to poets? What happened to those themes and are they hiding in another format I'm not aware of? Is poetry dead? If so, when did it die and what killed it?

Television, the Internet...

[Curtis24]

In seriousness though, I think the self-expressionistic nature of the Internet *has* led to a decline in poetry. Before the Net, people wrote poems to express themselves; now they just update their blog or Facebook page.

[Harion]

What if I said I liked music without words?

okay. don't ever sing lyrics then.
keep on humming.

you're so hypocritical.

[Henry]

Well, so much for my theory about what kind of poetry has mass appeal. Looks like the British love Tom (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6272012/T.S-Eliot-named-favourite-poet.html).

[Dirac]

okay. don't ever sing lyrics then.
keep on humming.

you're so hypocritical.
This is stupid. I dislike almost all the lyrics in music I like, but I still sing them. It helps to have something to wrap your voice around when singing. Humming is nowhere near as satisfying as singing - even if the lyrics are crap.

[stopharian]

Marx wrote poetry. About love. Bet you didn't know that!




How incredibly bourgeois of him. Mother fucker was probably a landlord as well.

Luckily the revolution was just a dream for him or his ass would have been sent for reeducation.


I shouldn't be so mean though, its counter intuitive, but the pinkos have produced some of the worlds best poetry.

Neruda

[slant]

okay. don't ever sing lyrics then.
keep on humming.

you're so hypocritical.

no I was just trying to save my arse from being lit afire

[JazzTulip]

In seriousness though, I think the self-expressionistic nature of the Internet *has* led to a decline in poetry. Before the Net, people wrote poems to express themselves; now they just update their blog or Facebook page.

Usually by vomiting their knee jerk reaction over the reader.

You know what? I miss the days when people thought before they spoke..... (dashes off to the Old Farts forum)




...... I shouldn't be so mean though, its counter intuitive, but the pinkos have produced some of the worlds best poetry.



The Achmeists! As I mentioned in my earlier post. Maximum emotional meaning using the minimum of words. Very mini-max. I always did suspect they were a bit of an NT thing.

[1104]

more comprehensive system, mass communication, less emphasis on development of culture, it doesnt fit into the system

[helsabot]

I love poetry, but I think one of the main reasons that many people don't is because they actually have to think about what the poet is saying. We live in such an instantaneous society that people want things handed to them and don't want to have to work to reap rewards. Fiction sells big because it's so easy to "get". Some works of fiction have multiple layers, but the bottom layer is always so straight forward that it's easy enough for the average Joe Schmoe to read and not need to think too heavily about in order to get the gist of the plot.

There's sort of the same dilemma with films. People generally like the big blockbuster hits because they're straight forward and you don't have to think to be able to get what's going on. Foreign films and independent films are rarely acknowledged by the general public because those types of films would require them to (god-forbid) think to understand the plot and to see the complexities of the storyline, characters, etc. on more levels than what is directly shown.