Oh, I think Steele's right about the magnitude of the shift, but I don't think you can trace the decline the decline in the popularity of poetry to a decline in metrical poetry. To put it crudely, a far number of American adolescents are going to groove on a poem by Allen Ginsberg in a way they won't with something by Anthony Hecht--though Hecht runs closer to my tastes. When his stuff works, though, there's a hell of a lot of prosody in Ginsberg, and it definitely isn't prose.
But the debate here extends to teaching at various levels, when it seems to me that while a good literature teacher is of great use, avid readers will read regardless of their education--and if the class syllabus is the only route to poetry, then we're pretty much fucked. Of course, a curricum-centred view, though narrow and distorted, is particularly understandable in light of the concentration of intellectuals on college campuses.
I happened to notice that Doug's own webzine, Unsplendid, sees itself as a "Johns Hopkins"-related project, as opposed to a Baltimore or Maryland one. While I've been impressed with what I've seen so far, I confess to rolling my eyes a bit at this. Even if many literary groups, coteries, and mafias arise around particular institutions, surely one can see that the difference between conceiving of one's self as a "Greenwich Village poet" is rather different than conceiving of one's self as an "NYU poet." The former category could include, say, Greenwich Village resident (and CCNY grad) Terese Coe, whereas the latter rather unhelpfully roots the thing in a fairly exclusive (and expensive) university and particular life experiences and routes to the craft.
I found the comments about the popularity of readings in other countries from a series of Americans above quite amusing, really--when the United States has a large, various, and vibrant live poetry circuit. Yes, much of what gets read is garbage, but a good deal isn't. And frankly, I cannot see how an infusion of good metrical poets would hurt anything, or, from my own experience, why such would be treated with hostility.
And I raise this because with the exception of Dana Gioia and a few others, the live reading circuit is generally either not discussed or blown off as amateurish, whereas it seems to me to indicate, often in unlikely places, that there is an audience wanting to actively engage in poetry.
And there can be something between a chaotic free-for-all of poets, singer-songwriters, and crap musicians, and the often dry-as-dust readings sponsored by university programmes and poetry societies, where everyone sips vinegary wine and looks Very Reverent as the Established Poet reads from his or her Great Works.
I'll leave it there for now.
Quincy
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