[Julie Steiner]

Riffing on a small portion of what Michael and Nemo said, and possibly taking it where they had absolutely no intention of going....

Poetry's importance as a marker of class is one of the external incentives that has declined dramatically since the mid-twentieth century. And I'm not sorry to see that decline.

Formerly, everyone who was anyone in certain social and business circles had been forced to study, and often even memorize, the same canon of edifying "great works" by "major poets." In social and business situations, if you didn't recognize a reference to a famous line from that canon, others knew that you were not quite up to their social level, and would treat you accordingly.

Generally, people are still expected to have encountered certain lines of Shakespeare and other literary giants in the course of their education. But that shared canon has shrunk over time, as English classes have expanded to include voices from a broader range of experience. Many of them "minor poets." (Is it such a crime to be a one-hit wonder, if that hit has a genuine and unique impact?) Or even, heaven forfend, not "page poets" at all, but producers of pop music lyrics and rap.

As I grow older, I find it increasingly annoying that I don't catch all the pop culture references, which are their own type of shibboleth, determining who is and isn't up to snuff. And it can be tempting to think that the shibboleths that I grew up with are more important and meaningful than the newer ones, and I am of course horrified when my kids, now in their twenties, don't catch all my references.

But I realize that my kids' shibboleths are important and meaningful to them, if not always to me. And I'm okay with that.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing for children of all races, ethnicities, and economic levels to be encountering interesting, engaging writing by people of all races, ethnicities, and wealth levels. I don't think it's a bad thing that a canon that was almost exclusively written by and for the White and wealthy is no longer the only kind of literature deemed worthy of students' limited classroom time. Yes, even if that means the use of (gasp) non-standard vernaculars and "incorrect" grammar in the classroom. I support teachers' freedom to present a range of material that might interest and delight their students, rather than having a panel of experts decide what everyone everywhere should and should not study—nay, even should and should not enjoy.

I'm confident that civilization will survive the acknowledgment that civilization itself consists of people with varied perspectives, and the acknowledgment that the great works and major poets that many of us grew up with were often being promoted as part of an implied, if not downright overt, insistence that European and European-inspired culture is superior to everything else, and that colonialism is therefore a positive, uplifting, "civilizing" thing for those being colonized.

Popping back in with another thought:

Could the fact that many people today who enjoy writing poetry have no interest in reading contemporary poetry be due to the notion that:
1) There exists an undisputed Canon of Worthy Works by Major Poets, and
2) That canon has had no significant additions in several decades (if not centuries), and
3) Therefore there's no contemporary poetry worth reading—except, of course, what these poets are producing themselves with their eyes firmly on the rear-view mirror?