Quote:
Originally Posted by Julie Steiner
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?
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I'd say there's something to this. One of my problems with reading has been time.
If I'm going to dedicate time to reading poetry my initial focus is going to be on work that has some level of accreditation. To date I've read a number of Nobel winners, and people with an obvious reputation. Not because I'm not interested in contemporary work, but because so far the accredited have just taken the lion's share of my time.
And a lot of the contemporary work that's local to my area comes from recent, young English majors. I'm absolutely certain that they're great writers, but between their work and a 75 year old, world-class poet with a breadth of life experience, it's obvious who I want to read first.
As a writer of poetry this decision has been a good one. People who won a Nobel usually did so for a reason.