Where Have All The Poets Gone?

I'm of the opinion that poetry has, for all intents and purposes, become rap. They work on the same fundamentals, and I think any distinction is more cognitive than objective.

Maybe a better way of putting it would be that they're two heads of the same animal. Their focus is the words over any accompaniment, and they both take liberties with grammar for the sake of rhyme/rhythm.

William Haskins said:

it's a great point. or to put it more plainly:

why is poetry dying?
because poets are killing it.

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I didn't quite follow that curve; care to say more?

William Haskins said:

it's a great point. or to put it more plainly:

why is poetry dying?
because poets are killing it.

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In what way are poets killing it, William? That's a serious question, btw.

NRoach said:

I'm of the opinion that poetry has, for all intents and purposes, become rap. They work on the same fundamentals, and I think any distinction is more cognitive than objective.

Maybe a better way of putting it would be that they're two heads of the same animal. Their focus is the words over any accompaniment, and they both take liberties with grammar for the sake of rhyme/rhythm.

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I have to wonder, then, if you read POETRY. For me, they are about as related as SOCKS are to MITTENS.

Ari Meermans said:

In what way are poets killing it, William? That's a serious question, btw.

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I'm thinking along the lines of the dadaist declaration, "Die Kunst ist tot!" Poets, at least poets who have aggressively sought to walk among the rest of the artists in the wreckage of the world wars, who have come in the wake have largely abided by that declaration, seeking new form and what not. Is it a twentieth century romance that critics and poets alike have wed themselves to? And in doing so have largely slayed poetry and the boastful and insidious proclamations of Kipling, DC Scott, and the sort.

The emergence of the recording industry has provided a new venue for stark word.

William Haskins said:

they're now rappers?

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Not all, but some, sure. They were/are also the folk, rock, and country singers of the previous century. With the advent of radio, and millions being able to hear the same music, is it any wonder some with strong poetic talent channeled it into music?

Did audiences love Bob Dylan for his musicality and sex appeal, or for his meaningful, poetic lyrics? Or, as the title of this thread may inadvertently echo, was Pete Seeger a glorious musician, or a fine poet?

"Where have all the flowers gone?"

We remember lyrics better, with music attached. IMO, a lot of born poets did morph into musicians. Their words did move people.

An example of that is Donovan singing "Universal Soldier." If interested, check out a youtube version, and keep watching as his audience goes completely silent. When the camera finally shows them close up, they are rapt with attention, clearly drinking in every word and finding it profound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC9pc4U40sI

I don't think poetry is equivalent to rap. Certainly there are many rappers who rap without accompaniment, but many of the most famous don't. Rap is sold in separate venues, by separate groups. Maybe slam poetry is somewhere in between the two, but if poetry is all the water on Earth, then rap is more like the Pacific Ocean.


As far as poetry becoming more like therapy or personal angst, I often write poetry to explore an issue I am having trouble conceptualizing, and I consider some of my poetry only for my personal consumption. But I write other stuff I intend to have an audience beyond myself. I dislike how the "therapy" allegation is somehow construed as derogatory. Just because someone intends a piece of writing mostly for themselves doesn't automatically make it inferior.

I've talked to plenty of written poets, slam poets, and people who do both, and I don't think they make themselves inaccessible as a whole. Many of them are incredibly accessible, sharing personal issues and yet having broad appeal in terms of their topics. Also, I've been reading Edna St. Vincent Millay, and I find her as applicable now as when she was alive.



I do think that the prestige culture in the West, especially in America, has shifted since the heyday of poetry. It's not so much that poetry has become less relevant, but that the people to whom it may always have been less relevant have more of a voice in society, and the art forms they most appreciate are now gaining more traction. That's not intended as an insult either to the old culture or the new.

If poets have retreated, though, why has that happened? Isn't this really a circular question too? (Which came first, the disengagement of the audience or the distancing of the poets?)

And I think you're right with the Venn diagram, except I don't think that includes the spoken word segment. If those YouTubes are getting many hits (which I believe is so) are they all from other poets?

Surely a lot of this is to do with the nature of reading and how the current attention span is attenuated by the barrage of input most of us bathe in. It takes an effort and a reset of a kind, to pay deep attention to written words on a page, if you've been imbibing more, um, intrusive media. Or maybe that's just me.

I think it's just you.

I do think for a lot of people, analysis of poetry kills it. I think it's true for short stories as well. There are enough people whose first exposure to novels is pleasurable that people enjoy them, I think.

Audience singing along with Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" They're clearly engaged with the words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pZa3KtkVpQ

My point is, adding music doesn't make it less poetry, to me. If the words are the focus it's a poem to this reader/listener.

Xelebes said:

I'm thinking along the lines of the dadaist declaration, "Die Kunst ist tot!" Poets, at least poets who have aggressively sought to walk among the rest of the artists in the wreckage of the world wars, who have come in the wake have largely abided by that declaration, seeking new form and what not. Is it a twentieth century romance that critics and poets alike have wed themselves to? And in doing so have largely slayed poetry and the boastful and insidious proclamations of Kipling, DC Scott, and the sort.

The emergence of the recording industry has provided a new venue for stark word.

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In my humble opinion, Dadaism in its more extreme forms is rather more whatnot than form. Nonsense shall always be nonsense to me; but, then, I'm old and rather set in my ways, so . . .

Art, any form of art, is communication and if it fails to communicate, it ceases to be art. Again, my opinion. Old. Set in my ways. And so on.

William Haskins said:

it was part tongue-in-cheek, but i think poets have contributed to the incestuous and cloistered nature of the craft. poets have retreated into classrooms and workshops (and locked critique forums).

one could make the case that the mainstream public appetite for poetry has greatly diminished in a world of more passive and sensationalized entertainment and that it is merely an antiquated art form, like quilting or yodeling, that is only going to appeal to a narrow group of aficionados.

but another argument is that poets have failed the mainstream reader by not producing work that is vital or meaningful, works that challenge the reader to actively engage and participate in the experience of the poem.

if you were to construct venn diagrams to illustrate novelists and readers of novels, or musicians and listeners of music, there would be some overlap of readers who are also writers and listeners who are also musicians, but there would be significant numbers who are one or the other.

a venn diagram of poets and readers of poetry would damn near be a perfect circle.

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Like Kyla, I wonder why this may be so. I believe the audience is there waiting for the upswell of those voices.

Kylabelle said:

If poets have retreated, though, why has that happened? Isn't this really a circular question too? (Which came first, the disengagement of the audience or the distancing of the poets?)

And I think you're right with the Venn diagram, except I don't think that includes the spoken word segment. If those YouTubes are getting many hits (which I believe is so) are they all from other poets?

Surely a lot of this is to do with the nature of reading and how the current attention span is attenuated by the barrage of input most of us bathe in. It takes an effort and a reset of a kind, to pay deep attention to written words on a page, if you've been imbibing more, um, intrusive media. Or maybe that's just me.

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[Emphasis mine.] I think if you feed someone a steady diet of fast food from birth, that's what they seek out when they're hungry. YMMV

Ari Meermans said:

In my humble opinion, Dadaism in its more extreme forms is rather more whatnot than form. Nonsense shall always be nonsense to me; but, then, I'm old and rather set in my ways, so . . .

Art, any form of art, is communication and if it fails to communicate, it ceases to be art. Again, my opinion. Old. Set in my ways. And so on.

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That is not the point. The point was that the old ways of art were ozymandian, that had contributed to the near-destruction of mankind. And so the dadaists and those who came in their wake sought to keep the art relevant and alive by reforming itself. And this meant taking on the new technologies that were coming along (cinema, phonograph, photograph) to make sure that they did not make the same mistakes.

What I mean is that I do not think that when it comes to art people naturally want instant gratification. We're always limited by what data a format can hold. When everyone is buying paper books, the length of these books are dictated by the expense of making them. As binding practices allowed for longer books, we find everyone started reading longer books. With electronic media there's no marginal cost of having a shorter or a longer book because there's no paper involved at all, and guess what? People still want longer books, when if we wanted bite-sized entertainment we'd be seeing a rebirth of the short story, which doesn't seem to be happening. People seek webcomics with enormous archives like Homestuck and read every last word of it.

I don't think people's attention spans have gotten much shorter. I think it's more a matter that when most people read, they don't read for "art" or "beauty." I think, possibly, when someone picks up a long book, they're seeking to get to know something or someone, and when they pick up a whole series they want the familiar characters and world.

It seems like with most modern poetry, you don't get that. You might be able to get epic poetry to have a comeback. You should try that.

William Haskins said:

did you read it as words on the page before you heard it the first time?

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Oh, but the living roots of poetry are in a past where very few could read, and encountered poetry as sound.

And, whoever mentioned Bob Dylan, thank you. His early lyrics are definitely poetry by my definition, even great poetry. LOL! YMMV on that one!

I guess I am one of those ignorant, mindless people who's supposedly bringing about the end of poetry, because I never "got" poetry. Song lyrics (with music), sure. But poems? Nope.

In middle school and high school, we had to analyze some poems, and I struggled with such assignments. I never understood the meanings of the poems, so those assignments were a pain. My eyes tend to glaze over poems, and if a novel had poems in it, I tend to skip right over those poems. I wonder if it's because I prefer prose (novel-length) stories and visual mediums (ex: tv/movies/comics/manga/art/games/etc)?

Or maybe I'm too "dumb" to understand poetry, lol? (I'm not fond of literary novels, either).

William Haskins said:

did you read it as words on the page before you heard it the first time?

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I probably heard it as a song first, although I'm not certain. It was certainly around before my time, and possible I read the lyrics first.

It's hard for me to imagine, as sound-reliant as most early poetry is, that it didn't begin in spoken form rather than written. I'm not claiming all lyrics are poetry, but there are clearly a lot of 20th century musicians whose success hinged on their words much more than on "pretty" tunes.

As I was saying before, those who were inclined to become poets were also much more attuned to music, with radio reaching nearly everywhere. It's not a great leap from meaningful words with rhythmic sounds to a tune. So, where I think most of the poets have gone is into the songwriting biz.

I wonder if Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his essay "Milton", had something apt to say about this:

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age.

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[emphasis added]

I've posed this before at AW, and was generally laughed off the stage. But possibly Macaulay was on to something. We certainly are a civilized age, and, it seems to me, poetry has certainly declined.

bunny-gypsy said:

Or maybe I'm too "dumb" to understand poetry, lol? (I'm not fond of literary novels, either).

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Same. I've never liked poetry so I must just be dumb, too.

Bukowski used to get over $400 to read his poetry at clubs in Los Angeles. Documentaries about him have footage of the events and they were rather contentious, the people in the venue (bars, it seemed) were drunk and rowdy and he gave it right back to him. He said he hated those gigs and when he earned enough from his books, he stopped doing them.

I find myself writing crappy poetry, rhyming and non-rhyming, at about 2:00 A.M. after the 9th or 10th glass of wine. When I look at it the next day, it's like all other poetry I've ever read, it makes no sense at all. (I love nursery rhymes and limericks, though. I can still recite small bits of poems I had to read when I was in third grade 42 years ago.)

bunny-gypsy said:

I guess I am one of those ignorant, mindless people who's supposedly bringing about the end of poetry, because I never "got" poetry. Song lyrics (with music), sure. But poems? Nope.

In middle school and high school, we had to analyze some poems, and I struggled with such assignments. I never understood the meanings of the poems, so those assignments were a pain. My eyes tend to glaze over poems, and if a novel had poems in it, I tend to skip right over those poems. I wonder if it's because I prefer prose (novel-length) stories and visual mediums (ex: tv/movies/comics/manga/art/games/etc)?

Or maybe I'm too "dumb" to understand poetry, lol? (I'm not fond of literary novels, either).

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Hapax Legomenon said:

Same. I've never liked poetry so I must just be dumb, too.

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Whoa. I sure don't think anyone called anyone else dumb and I don't believe anyone meant to imply that either. I didn't.

And clearly neither of you is dumb.

So, um, what's this about, then? Serious question.

The poets have gone into MFA programs. And NPR. And slam sessions. And journals and chapbooks and the New Yorker. And the music business. And Twitter, short form. And basements and garrets, as ever.

They're out there.

Like the Dude, they abide.