Quote:
Originally Posted by N. Matheson
Do I really need to explain the fact that nobody outside of poetry scholars and the like knows a single poet besides Shakespeare?
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Where do you even get that idea? Most people learn some poetry in high school, usually more in college (for those who go). There are dozens of poets people hear about through cultural osmosis, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. I really think at this point you're just making stuff up to support a wholly baseless claim.
Honestly, I don't know you, but I'd really love to have you as a student. I mean that. Last week I spent two classes teaching some poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson to non-English-majors who barely had any experience with poetry. By the end of the second class, discussion was lively, debating the finer points of why Aaron Stark laughs at the sound of pity, or what makes Cliff Klingenhagen so "happy." Even if those students never take a true poetry class (this is an American Lit / advanced writing course), they've had a memorable experience with an underrated poet. I daresay if someone were to ask them in a few years who their favorite poet is, one or more might well say "Robinson" because of an extended (and unpretentious) deep dive into his poems. If you were my student, and experienced poetry as a joyous genre to analyze and discuss, rather than a foolish game that none can win because one poet looms above all, you might actually abandon that idea.
As it stands, I'm starting to think that you don't really know the works of Shakespeare (or not many), but are simultaneously bedazzled and crestfallen by his literary stature. One of the many interesting things I've noticed about this thread is that "greatest poet" is thrown around willy-nilly, but we've barely talked about the distinction between "greatest" and "favorite." It's come up in passing a few times, but isn't having a "favorite" poet more valuable than decrying that there is only one "greatest?" If you want to talk about legacy, thousands of poets have been beloved by thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of readers. Movies are routinely made about many poets not named William Shakespeare. Rudyard Kipling's "If" is a mainstay of high school graduation. Frost's "The Road Not Taken" and Poe's "The Raven" are so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that any random fork in the road or corvid immediately brings the respective poem to mind. The world of poetry is large. It contains multitudes. (Hey, look, another allusion most people would get!). It's silly and pointless to claim otherwise.