Despite noises to the contrary, poetry is doing just fine in the 21st century, and by all lights, it should continue to do well into the far distance future.
The noises to the contrary
“Don't these critics and poets realize that their art form is dead?” —Bruce Wexler, Newsweek May 5, 2003
“Popular poetry is dead, dead, dead.” —John Derbyshire, National Review Online, August 30, 2006
“. . . the sad fact is that poetry, as anything other than a private concern, or a parlour game between a closed circle of devotees, is a thing long gone.” —Alexander G. Rubio, Bits of News, February 13, 2007
"You may have noticed that poetry is dead. The obituary has already been written.” —Quotation of Martin Amis in The Guardian, June 9, 2007
Voices are raised periodically, announcing the death of poetry. However, poetry is not dead. Poetry is as vibrant and vital as it has ever been. In fact, poetry cannot die; it is an integral part of art and language.
Where poetry lives
Poetry lives first of all in the hearts, minds, and souls of all people. For the doomsayers and poetry-obituary writers like those above, poetry may, in fact, be dead. Wexler, for example, claims that with his busy life of career and mortgage payments, he lost interest in poetry, even after being quite an aficionado in college and even after writing poetry. So what? That he lost interest in poetry doesn’t mean everyone has. Such is truly a warped logic.
Movies are probably the most popular artistic medium that attracts the largest number of people, and movies often quote poems or stanzas from poems, which send people searching for poem and poet. Recent examples are Four Weddings and a Funeral, in which Auden’s “Funeral Blues” is recited.
Actually, between 1946 and 2004, no fewer than 93 poets from Joseph Addison to W. B. Yeats have poems represented in movies, and many of the poets have more than one poem represented. Auden, for example, has three poems in three different movies, William Blake has ten poems in nearly twenty movies, and W. B. Yeats has eight.
The nature of poetry
Poetry has always been a quiet and shy art. Novels are more boisterous, songs and plays more tumultuous still. Paintings are more spread throughout the landscape than poems are. Any art form from architecture to sculpture to Zen gardening will attract more people than poetry. The nature of poetry dictates its popularity. But popularity does dictate the vitality of poetry.
Poetry lives in small spaces. Even performance poetry, slam poetry, and especially sedate poetry readings attract far smaller audiences than rock concerts, dance recitals, and gallery openings for individual painters.
But many books of poetry are published every year. Many poetry readings are conducted. Many web sites are devoted to poetry. Place the word “poetry” in the Yahoo! search engine and you get 205,000,000 entries! In Google, 170,000,000 entries!
Ruth Lilly
If poetry is dead, someone should tell Ruth Lilly, heiress to the Lilly fortune, who gave Poetry Magazine $100,000,000 back in 2002. According to Joseph Parisi, the magazine’s editor from 1983-2003, that bequest guarantees the magazine’s existence “into perpetuity.”
So even if poetry should die some time in the future, the magazine named for its sake will not.
The copyright of the article The State of Poetry in Poetry is owned by Linda Sue Grimes. Permission to republish The State of Poetry in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
Present day poetry suffers from the dumbing down of nearly every human
endevour that requires work. At current recitals one has to listen to
monologues of people emptying their emotional intestines in chopped prose;
most couldn't tell you why a line starts and ends. Poetry is an art form,
and in the forms that keep in touch with ordinary human beings, has a wide
and appreciative audience. Art requires work; poetry requires form. Poetry
need not rhyme; it must sing in the heart and head, therefore, as the human
spirit craves for order in this crazy universe, it must have form. One can
borrow successful patterns, as an examle my best prize winning poem was
built on the skeleton of Dylan Thomases 'Fern Hill'. I thought it was good
when I submitted it, but to hear it read by a trained actress and drama
teacher at the prize giving was an experience I shall never forget. Let us
not write poetry for an emotional laxative, but entertain, and send the
spirit of quite a large portion of the thinking world soaring in the
Heavens.
Dec 20, 2007 2:02 PM
Linda Sue Grimes :
Dear Tom,
Certainly every art form has its "poetaster"
equivalents. The masters are always few and far between.
Thanks
for posting. I enjoyed your "portrait of a gasbag."
Jan 18, 2008 7:37 PM
Danny Hocken :
Dear Linda Sue Grimes, I liked how you started off your article with
quotes from the critics of poetry, in essence, saying that poetry is dead.
You then lead on to eventually talking about how if you google poetry, you
get thousands or millions of hits. Obviously pointing out that poetry is
definitely not 'dead'.
I think the thing is about those
critics who may have once loved poetry just don't help themselves from
being drammatic with their comments. I think there is a flourishing of
poetry in our country, probably also around the world, and because of this,
there's bound to be much poetry which isn't well-crafted. So the critics
might be thinking that poetry's dead because of all the so-called 'bad'
poetry out there.
I think that this flourishing of poetry
is great though. Because even with all that the 'bad' poetry making some
people cringe, my theory of literary evolution is that the survival of the
fittest poets and their poems in our culture and memory will make our
current century look like a golden one.
Jan 20, 2008 4:41 AM
Linda Sue Grimes :
Dear genXpoet, I think you are correct. Time has a way of winnowing
out the mediocre. And to mix metaphors: the old adage "the cream rises
to the top" comes to mind.
Thanks for posting and best of
luck with your poetry.
May 5, 2008 7:04 PM
Guest :
Poetry has come and gone throughout my life, and again just recently has
sprung back into life after several years nothing but poetic expression.
There is not a day that goes by that I don't express something poetic. My experience is one that I cannot control, rather I am moved by my
inspiration, and when it is gone well it may not be due to the death of
poetry in my life I just stopped writing it down on paper. The real
Funny thing is that I don't fit into the slacks of what some may call a
poet, but then again who really does. I can't kill it off like some
parasite. POETRY WILL NEVER DIE, IT IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF HEART AND
SOUL, IT SPEAKS FROM LIFE TO LIFE AND DEATH TO DEATH, AND LIFE UNTO DEATH;
AND AS SOME WOULD WILL FROM DEATH TO LIFE. THE DAY POETRY DIES IS THE END
OF MANKIND...OR IS IT?!!!
