Kevin-
If you want to throw a rock to reach poetry, the rock has to go through a visual medium. Literature isn't going away, but it's subordinate now to the visual medium. That doesn't mean the arts are worse off, just that literature is.
Karaoke isn't complete without a video screen and words at the bottom of the screen.
Most people in the West today would not reply to the question, "What did you do last night?" with "I wrote poetry." Even if one did write poetry last night, you just know it's better to only tell certain confidants, and otherwise everyone else one knows will give you weird looks. It's especially not wise to talk about having written poetry last night in the workplace. Whereas, it would have been a common reply in the mid 19th Century to say. "I wrote poetry last night."
Try talking about cinquains to some gossipy coworker in a nearby cubicle. The same people who were calling French fries American fries are the ones who make the audience for American Idol. It's a risk to talk about poetry in public, let alone make it publicly known that one writes poetry.
It's true that the epistolary form has been flourishing lately, without many people knowing that's what they're doing. But links are becoming a necessity with this epistolary era. and the links connect the new letter writing to the visual medium. E mail is frequently as incomplete without a visual link as karaoke is without a video.
[This message has been edited by albert geiser (edited April 18, 2005).]
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