Where Have All The Poets Gone?

Yes. (I'll let you pick which one that answers.)

I think good poetry requires thought, even as it stirs emotions.

And, if the numbers are any indication, the public doesn't like to read, let alone think.

It's sad.

Where Have All The Poets Gone?

They're compoetsting.

^You see what I did there? (It's kind of hard to see actually)

They're on tumblr.

The same thing has happened to statesmen, I'd suggest.

And boxing.

Answer: Muhammad Ali for President

And nope, your jeans look hot.

I don't know why it's not as mainstream as it used to be, 'cause there's still tons of great stuff being published. I love poetry, modern and classic.



I disagree somewhat that poetry has to have a political component.


Plus slam poetry has become pretty popular, has a huge community, and many well-known slam poets. They're constantly being featured on UpWorthy and similar sites, and they get millions of youtube hits.



I wonder if this isn't more connected to the fact that area of prestigious critics is ending (or so some say), and so there's no one to trumpet the merits of the most prestigious poets and poems?

And poetinahat always has the best siglines.

I remember some point when I was young, realizing that poetry seemed to be a sort of cultural highbrow backwater, whereas historically this was far from the case. I learned that in some other countries, at least, this was not true: Russia, Latin America, and maybe other places lionized and lauded their fine poets. Maybe Japan did also?

I remember there was a fair bit of talk about this phenomenon, and why it might be so. Some gave it out that it was the fault of poets, for being so, yanno, snooty and high falutin' and not even ever really trying to be accessible. I thought there might be some truth to that but there had to be more to it, because clearly some poets were, in fact, accessible, they just usually were not very stirring or interesting.

Then several things happened. One was Rap, which at the beginning I had hopes for as a tonic for poetry. (Is this where I might use the word "poesy"? I've always wanted to, sort of.) And maybe it did provide that tonic (witness some of the awesome spoken word stuff around these days) but for a while it seemed to go only dark and vengeful and not in a terribly creative way.

Another was the Poetry Slam movement, as L de V mentions (we cross posted), which was delightful. I dipped my toe in briefly. It was fun. But it didn't do what I think its instigators hoped, which seems to have been to get poetry to be received by the public with the same enthusiasm as sports.

The final thing that gave me a bit of a counter to the sad state of Poesy was learning that Gary Snyder actually made a living writing poems. And his books sold well. Huh. Whoda thunk it?

Still it seems there is something about American culture, probably summed up by Williebee -- people don't really like to think too much and they usually don't like to feel too much either, or else they already are, feeling too much, so the thing is to numb out. Why it's that way here more than other places I don't know. If that's even true.

I remember too, being friends briefly with a woman from Bulgaria -- she and I were both employed together as caregivers for the same elderly lady. She talked in puzzlement about American movies, how fluffy and insubstantial they were, and she maintained that, in Europe, people took the grievings of the heart, the sufferings of normal life, as important to know and pay attention to and make art with....Unlike, she maintained, Americans.

I don't know what the real situation is, but these are places I've been, while looking into it.

I'll answer the easy one first:

does my ass look fat in these jeans? No; but we all know daffodil isn't your color.

does poetry matter anymore? Of course it still matters. Poetry always has mattered. Always will. Poetry is the form that most reflects (to me) the human condition. Poetry evokes the emotions not only of love—I'm not much on "floral tributes'; but, hey, to each her own—but also of grinding desperation, of despair, and of all the aspects of here-ness that depict the prickling rawness of life.

is anyone writing anything important or provocative anymore? I can't really answer this one. I'm still hanging out with Pound and Bukowski. I suspect I need to get out more.

do prose writers even care about poetry? I really shouldn't speak to this one because I am not a writer; but I am a reader of prose and I love when (good) poetry is incorporated. I'm flat out nuts about lyrical prose. And I read and care about poetry. I care about poetry because it makes me experience other perspectives and "see" my own perspectives reflected back in the myriad ways I don't have the words for.

None in the Land can say
To us black men Today:
"You smash stock markets with your coined blitzkriegs,
And make a hundred million guinea pigs.
You counterfeit our Christianity,
And bring contempt upon Democracy."

-- Melvin B. Tolson, from "Dark Symphony"

The link is to Tolson reading this poem. Very stirring.

Well, I answered the question before I read the article. (I tend to do that; not a good habit.) So this morning I went back and read it to see what I missed.

Liosse picked up on this bit:

At its root, poetry is the language of protest. Whether centered on love, beauty, or the ills that plague a nation, it's all inherently political, and it all holds up as a force in any conversation. What seems like forever ago, poetry unflinchingly opposed corruption and inequality, civil and national.

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Which I also disagree with. Not that I don't see the political weight in many outstanding poets, including all the ones Juan Vidal mentions, but poetry goes way further back in human mind and time than this. Poetry often played the role of the voice of state. Poets were newspapers for the outlying villages. Poets were encyclopedias of magical rite and its components. All this long before "politics", as we currently experience that facet of life, existed. (I can already hear the counter-arguments: But, all that IS political! )

Still, there's a good point being made, though I don't think it's being made very well. Poetry has the capacity to serve as a vehicle and transmitter of complex and crucial matters that need to be shared among all people, or shared among specific people. It does seem that right now poetry is languishing in a kind of valley of disuse, between jobs as it were.

That's always uncomfortable, whether you're a person or a literary form.



Poetry, I maintain, is not going away, it's just waiting for its next assignment.

I adore great poetry, though I am a middle-of-the-road poet at best. I have found a new market for my work: I incorporate my poems into book art pieces, and end up selling them for usually far more than I'd make in a one-time sale to a poetry journal.

I agree: not all poetry is aimed at political or social protest. Why should a discipline as wide as poetry be limited to one aspect?

Mainstream poetry still exists, and is still consumed by the masses. It's called the music industry. A better comparison might be made to the wandering bard, where the dynamic has gone global. (The bards board jets instead of wandering from town-to-town on foot.)

Spoken poetry, on the other hand, is different. A few years ago I asked a question here about why so many people WRITE poetry, but so few buy or READ contemporary poetry. Poetry is now looked at as something personal, and often the domain of angsty teens who need to let the melodrama out into their notebooks. Rather than art, poetry now appears to be pretension or therapy.

That, and forcing teenagers to "analyze" massive poems line-by-line in high school English Lit sort of kills any affection or appreciation for the rest of time.

Yeah, I'd say modern poetry has given way to rap and music. And wasn't it always as lyrics that came first? Americans just don't care for the intermediary step of having to look at it on a page, something that was once a huge technological development to share it but now is a forced form that to Americans seem unessential.

How do they know poetry isn't as "mainstream" as it once was, if it ever was? I'm getting along in years, but I sure don't remember poetry being any more mainstream or visible when I was young. I read poetry then, and I read poetry now.

But I do remember a fair number of articles talking about poetry being dead. I once read every issue of The Writer and Writer's Digest our library had, and they had them all the way back to the beginning. They show that nothing ever changes. People complained about poetry being dead, about the novel being dead, about short stories being dead, even back in the twenties. Name a complaint writers have today, and chances are good writers had the same complaint back then.

Cyia said:

Mainstream poetry still exists, and is still consumed by the masses. It's called the music industry. A better comparison might be made to the wandering bard, where the dynamic has gone global. (The bards board jets instead of wandering from town-to-town on foot.)

Spoken poetry, on the other hand, is different. A few years ago I asked a question here about why so many people WRITE poetry, but so few buy or READ contemporary poetry. Poetry is now looked at as something personal, and often the domain of angsty teens who need to let the melodrama out into their notebooks. Rather than art, poetry now appears to be pretension or therapy.

That, and forcing teenagers to "analyze" massive poems line-by-line in high school English Lit sort of kills any affection or appreciation for the rest of time.

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Really good points. I thought of music lyrics after I'd written my post, as a place poetry has gone recently.

I also agree that poetry is so often seen as self therapy, the disciplines and reaches of the art have been obscured for many people. And in contrast, the dull way much poetry is taught in schools often renders a killing blow to any spark of interest.

You're not wearing jeans.


I tend to care only that poetry matters to me. I used to exalt it. Now I merely sleep with it. We are strange bedfellows, as we do not particularly like each other. But, by God! The love!

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I wonder if this isn't more connected to the fact that area of prestigious critics is ending (or so some say), and so there's no one to trumpet the merits of the most prestigious poets and poems?

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This is where my mind went to.

Don't tell me what the poets are doing, those Himalayas of the mind. Don't tell me what the poet's been doing in the long grasses over time. Don't tell me what the poets are doing, on the street and the epitome of vague.

My question?

Where have all the cowboys gone?

William Haskins said:

they're now rappers?

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This.

Country-rap is a strange, strange beast.

Xelebes said:

This.

Country-rap is a strange, strange beast.

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But country punk rap was way cool in the 80s. Haysi Fantayzee lives, yo!

KTC said:

But country punk rap was way cool in the 80s. Haysi Fantayzee lives, yo!

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That was more Blitz Kid, I thought.