Poetry is no longer culturally relevant in this country due to the advent of free verse. Many/most poets today write in free verse because it offers the most creative freedom. Or, if they do not write in strictly free verse, they modify traditional forms beyond recognition. Metered end-rhyming poetry is, by and large, a dinosaur of a cultural artifact. Poets pretend to like it, but don’t write it, and don’t approve of those who do write it with any regularity (they are a sub-sub-culture). Most poets put relatively masked formal elements into their poems, somehow hoping to connect with the past tradition of poetry, and also giving them some po-cred at the same time. It never serves the same function as rhyming poetry used to.

Yet whenever I mention poetry to some random schmuck on the street, s/he tells me that she adores Frost, or Dickinson, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Keats, Blake or Tennyson. Some people give me Plath or Ginsberg, but even those two were much more formal than most. I must admit that I too feel limited by rhyme, but maybe it’s because I, like most “poets,” am not a poet at all but a lover of words who likes to write them. I’m okay with that, but I don’t expect to be appreciated.

Ferlinghetti wrote an essay called “Modern Poetry is Prose (But It Is Saying Plenty).” I’d say that, as a whole, poetry is saying less now than it was when he wrote the essay, but his assessment was pretty much right–and it also means that poets have abandoned their role as makers of sonorous language that can be appreciated by just about anyone. This is why “spoken word” and rap today are more popular than “poetry.” Rhyme and meter have powerful effects.

But maybe we shouldn’t need rhyme–maybe poetry could have changed and remained relevant. It’s possible that our education system has failed us in this regard by emphasizing technical/job skills over the older model of a liberal arts education, creating an “upper class” that has all the money, but is all but ignorant of their own cultural history. Notice that this change in the American system was somewhat concurrent with the disappearance of rhyme from poetry. I’m not smart enough to figure out what, if anything, that means.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with where “poetry” is, but some of you seem to want a diagnosis, as if this situation were something to be fixed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. This article presents a somewhat valid perspective, but it is by no means a complete one. I feel that it descends into wishful thinking about the power of poetry at the end. He’s conflating poetry (which does not instruct us on the particulars of how to live) with poets (who tend to be politically idealistic and anti-commercial).

~shrug~ It’s easy to get all riled up about these things, but the fact is that we don’t have enough information to come to a concrete and incontestable truth on the subject. In the meantime, I’m going to continue being what I am and writing what I do.

Poetry is no longer culturally relevant in this country due to the advent of free verse. Many/most poets today write in free verse because it offers the most creative freedom. Or, if they do not write in strictly free verse, they modify traditional forms beyond recognition. Metered end-rhyming poetry is, by and large, a dinosaur of a cultural artifact. Poets pretend to like it, but don’t write it, and don’t approve of those who do write it with any regularity (they are a sub-sub-culture). Most poets put relatively masked formal elements into their poems, somehow hoping to connect with the past tradition of poetry, and also giving them some po-cred at the same time. It never serves the same function as rhyming poetry used to.

Yet whenever I mention poetry to some random schmuck on the street, s/he tells me that she adores Frost, or Dickinson, Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Keats, Blake or Tennyson. Some people give me Plath or Ginsberg, but even those two were much more formal than most. I must admit that I too feel limited by rhyme, but maybe it’s because I, like most “poets,” am not a poet at all but a lover of words who likes to write them. I’m okay with that, but I don’t expect to be appreciated.

Ferlinghetti wrote an essay called “Modern Poetry is Prose (But It Is Saying Plenty).” I’d say that, as a whole, poetry is saying less now than it was when he wrote the essay, but his assessment was pretty much right–and it also means that poets have abandoned their role as makers of sonorous language that can be appreciated by just about anyone. This is why “spoken word” and rap today are more popular than “poetry.” Rhyme and meter have powerful effects.

But maybe we shouldn’t need rhyme–maybe poetry could have changed and remained relevant. It’s possible that our education system has failed us in this regard by emphasizing technical/job skills over the older model of a liberal arts education, creating an “upper class” that has all the money, but is all but ignorant of their own cultural history. Notice that this change in the American system was somewhat concurrent with the disappearance of rhyme from poetry. I’m not smart enough to figure out what, if anything, that means.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with where “poetry” is, but some of you seem to want a diagnosis, as if this situation were something to be fixed. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. This article presents a somewhat valid perspective, but it is by no means a complete one. I feel that it descends into wishful thinking about the power of poetry at the end. He’s conflating poetry (which does not instruct us on the particulars of how to live) with poets (who tend to be politically idealistic and anti-commercial).

~shrug~ It’s easy to get all riled up about these things, but the fact is that we don’t have enough information to come to a concrete and incontestable truth on the subject. In the meantime, I’m going to continue being what I am and writing what I do.