Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?

I enjoyed your essay but I do not agree. I believe poetry is alive and has evolved over time. I could not name one poet but I do write and will educate myself on the poets of the past and current. I believe poetry is a way to express true words of the heart. I enjoy the symbolism, metaphors, and the play on words. For me, writing heals. So, don't stop believing and never stop writing. I lived a fast life and no matter how waisted I was I wrote every night. I hate I threw away those journals because of the explicit content. Now, I know it was just a phase in my life and now the words are lost forever. So, today i continue to write. It is art. Art of the soul and mind. It is true beauty.

Obviously, the writer of this essay is out of contact with the reality of poetry. I find it difficult to believe the author would have this perception about poetry, more so with him living close to Chicago since the Chicago metropolitan area is one of the bastions of poetry in the United States (go to ChicagoPoetry.com). Yet this perspective is held by mainstream America. I know since I???ve been a poet all my life and in my experience Americans in general do not regard poets or artists for that matter with respect or admiration as in other countries. For example, the portrait of Juana de Ibarbourou, a poet from Uruguay, is on the 1,000-peso bill. The author is right in some of his comments. Poetry does require work and therefore the mentally challenged ???as the author- will find poetry difficult to read.
cheyo

Obviously, the writer of this essay is out of contact with the reality of poetry. I find it difficult to believe the author would have this perception about poetry, more so with him living close to Chicago since the Chicago metropolitan area is one of the bastions of poetry in the United States (go to ChicagoPoetry.com). Yet this perspective is held by mainstream America. I know since I???ve been a poet all my life and in my experience Americans do not regard poets or artists for that matter with respect or admiration as in other countries. For example, the portrait of Juana de Ibarbourou, a poet from Uruguay, is on the 1,000-peso bill. The author is right in some of his comments. Poetry does require work and therefore the mentally challenged ???as the author- will find poetry difficult to read.
Jose Bono Rovirosa

It would be nice if comments came from literate commentators, who know how to spell, for example, "vernacular" and "ethereal" or who could take time to edit their own comments. As is true of most literature, there is a pop expression and an intellectual expression of poetry. Alas, as is also the case--not many intellectuals left, and a whole lot of junk at the bottom of the social ladder. Poetry ain't been a mass market item since the time of Homer.
Solon

Interesting how he links today's venacular and lifestyle (that shuns etheral illusions of meaning and the work needed to pull the message from the words) to the demise of poetry. I mean, like, you know, like, whatever, but totally, definitely rad.

How blind and deaf this man is! Try reading, yes reading "the Boss" Bruce Springsteen, His words stand out full, without any work involved. "The moon skimming the stars away" Or even an Americian soldier questioning policy and his own soul in Devils and Dust.......What!!! you think great poets are in books that a poetry mag reccomends.....and what kind of educational background you did you come from???? Poetry is in the everyday around us, Seek and you might find.

dam rappers have made it sickining to even hear a dam rhyme

I would no sooner live in a world without poetry than in a world without music or flowers.

I'm glad this is 6 years old because this article disgusts me

She stares into the wall... as if every living thing is dead... she has lost hope in everything she once believed in... she worked in a factory... she paid her taxes, she paid her health insurance, .... she is now sitting in a nursing home, broke, paying for her lovers death...a drug Merck made............ she is sitting in her death~ she is stirring in her death, she is living her loss everyday she has to live, without kidneys, without arteries, without a live someone took from her... she is living in hell where angels can't fly

A dark gray cloud, a distant cry... what have we become.
I watch.
It watches me.
I watch...
it watches me.
I act... it attachs me...
I attached it..
Then I have a new day and see in the distance a nation crying for forgiveness, ... and I stand UP! I shout... GOD BLESS America! and the women that gave their sons for thee~

I care... Poetry is life in motion... my mom in nursing home , staring at wall, blue , blank, a blanket underneath the stars.... Rita Gray~

Wings of My Soul

I would reach up into the sky and give you the moon and all the stars
if such would make you smile
I would capture the sun for you so you'd have a light no matter where you are
if you would laugh for awhile
I would bottle fresh water and make it quench your thirst
if you asked me to
I would shelter you from any storm and keep you from being hurt
if it were in my power to do
I would chase away the demons who infest your dreams
the ones who make you worry by bringing you thoughts that make you scream
I will hold you in my arms for as long as I live
and in my heart you enjoy all the love I have to give
I want you with me always, without you I could not be
your are my life, my love, my soul, you are the other half of me

Wings of My Soul

I would reach up into the sky and give you the moon and all the stars
if such would make you smile
I would capture the sun for you so you'd have a light no matter where you are
if you would laugh for awhile
I would bottle fresh water and make it quench your thirst
if you asked me to
I would shelter you from any storm and keep you from being hurt
if it were in my power to do
I would chase away the demons who infest your dreams
the ones who make you worry by bringing you thoughts that make you scream
I will hold you in my arms for as long as I live
and in my heart you enjoy all the love I have to give
I want you with me always, without you I could not be
your are my life, my love, my soul, you are the other half of me

What a sad essay! When life loses its ability call up the deeper mysteries from the inner depths where poetry plays, we're doomed to repeat the mundane over and over until terminal ennoi takes over. Wordsworth (a poet, of course) said it best: The world is too much with us; late and soon,/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:....

Poetry can never die as long as humans live, for it originates in the cadence of the human heart as the fetus lies curled in the womb. The lullaby eases the restless infant to repose. The earliest human response to the terrifying and to the divine took form as tribes worshipped gods and placated demons by chanting and the playing of instruments. Song is the first poetry. The bardic curse that, at a hundred paces, could shrivil an enemy where he stood was song at work on the battlefield. Bad poetry is the abuse of language and the human spirit. A poem that works for you will carry you to a level of experience beyond ordinary wisdom, beauty, terror, delight and love.

Poetry is not obscurantist, and by ditching it we haven't signaled a return to 'clean and clear communication.' Rather, we've embraced the culture of befuddling therapy speak. Buzz buzz buzz, not a clear and precise note. Poetry may be dead because you're brain dead, awash with the kelp of verbiage?

I think it's universal that the majority of highschoolers hate poetry. And the ones who don't pretend to hate it. And the ones who do like it? Well they write, they don't speak up about it. (Although they should. ) I am sixteen years old and I don't think poetry is stupid. In fact in my short lifetime so far I've written thousands of poems. It's not a dying artform and I know many who enjoy it. Those who deem it pointless and irrelevant are in fact themselves missing the point. It's just a way of expression like any other form of art. It's just ignorance to say it doesn't matter if it's dying. Try finding poetry you like. Most of the people who hate poetry I've found are people that are afraid to be in touch with their feelings or go any deeper than the surface. Maybe that's true for you, maybe not. Saying though that poetry is irrelevant is like saying theatre, or painting, or sculpture, or true classic literature is irrelevant. Your article is unfair and I'd ask you to step back, take a good look, and wonder to yourself if what you're saying is really plausable or not. Thanks.

I find it difficult to believe anyone can claim that poetry is dead. Songwriters produce poetry every day. Not all may be good; some may be trash... Some may be brilliant. -- all, like poetry has always been, is subjective. Our children are now learning poetry and lyricism through music and media, but they are still learning it, developing it, absorbing it, and passing it on...much as our grandfathers did in the time of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart et al.