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Wednesday, June 15, 2016

POETRY IS DEAD

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
- Robert Frost

"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought, and the thought has found words.”
  - Robert Frost



Has poetry become the slide rule of literature, of the arts?

The knee-jerk instinct is to strongly deny that assertion.  

But sadly wanting something to be true does not make it true.


In 1992, 17% of Americans had read ONE poem IN THE PRIOR YEAR. ONE IN A YEAR'S TIME.

In 2012, 6.7% had read ONE poem IN THE PAST YEAR.  6.7%!  ONE POEM!

Since 2002, the number of poetry readers has contracted 45% --  

the steepest decline in any literary genre.

Poetry is less popular than jazz, dance, and knitting.  

It only beats going to the opera by a slim percentage.

From 2004 to 2015 Google Searches for poetry have fallen faster than a brick kite.  

Today's Google Searches for poetry are only 20% of what they were ten years ago.


Our hearts want it to be otherwise, but the numbers say different.


Still, I read poetry daily for it sings to me as no other prose does and whispers my soul's thoughts:


I live alone, I look to die alone:
Yet sometimes, when a wind sighs through the sedge,
Ghosts of my buried years, and friends come back,
My heart goes sighing after swallows flown
On sometime summer's unreturning track. 


 - Christina Georgiana Rossetti
 



14 comments:

  1. You're a fellow poetry reader! And I thought I was the only person I knew who still reads poetry. But there's one semi-positive observation I will make: after watching the Tony Awards on Sunday, in which as expected Hamilton walked away with the lion's share of awards, I thought about how the hip hop etc. rhymes and rhythms of Hamilton's songs are so appealing to so many people. Maybe poetry reading dropped off because too much modern poetry doesn't have rhythm and rhyme but are instead free form?

    Then again, I love the modern poetry of Seamus Heaney, but even his work is very musical.

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    1. Everything evolves I guess. Hear that whirring sound? It is Robert Frost spinning in his grave hearing Rap and Hip Hop called poetry. :-)

      Greetings to a fellow poetry reader.

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  2. Hmmm...those stats don't look good.

    Christina Rossetti and Frost both close favourites of mine.

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    1. No, not good at all. :-(

      I am happy to meet another Frost and Rossetti reader. :-)

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  3. Hi Roland - I've started to read more poetry ... but not enough by any standards of the imagination ... I probably need to take a poetry course, to understand some of it ...

    Loved the Robin Williams clip - we probably need to remember how often the arts is interlinked permanently with the practical side of life ...

    Helena's comment rings true - I'd seen the Hamilton clip at the Obama's do .. and found it fascinating ...

    Fortunately we have a number of bloggers who include, and write poetry ... cheers Hilary

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    1. Yes, writers (your posts are lovely by the way) all tend to be drawn to some poetry. I've not seen that Hamilton clip but hip hop is not my brand of tea. :-)

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  4. As I follow several poets, I read four to ten a day.

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    1. Good for you. Keep poetry alive. As we both are science fiction fans, I thought you might find a bit of verse from Slyvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song interesting (though I am sure she was unaware that at the end of the universe all will shift from the red to the blue spectrum.) --

      "The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
      And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
      I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

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  5. Wow. Those are some scary statistics.

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    1. Aren't they though? The statistics for those who read anything for pleasure aren't much better. Ouch!

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  6. Poetry takes time and introspection. In our fast-paced world, that time is spent on social media. Also: Poets aren't known for making lots of money, are they? I prefer the classic poets for the most part, then the beat poets, and at the last, a very few modern poets. Last poetry read: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje. One of my oldest books on poetry: Love Poems of Ovid, purchased while in college and idealistic.

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    1. I've been meaning to read The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje. We are becoming an increasingly emotionally cut-off society preferring Vox and texting to human to human interaction. :-(

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  7. I read and write enough poetry to help make up for all the people who don't read it. Or write it.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. It would be nice to think so. :-) Sadly, numbers or the lack thereof do not lie. Poetry is withering as a viable art form

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