[Michael Cantor]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

Another possible factor, is that because the entertainment industry is so crowded now it's much tougher to become a skilled poet.

Someone can write a mediocre novel and make some money doing it, but how hard is it to do the same with poetry? If the financial incentive is missing, so is the incentive to practice writing poetry as a skill, and to improve our work to a point of mastery.

You might get a number of people who show interest for a year or two, but have no incentive to go further. How many of us have written poetry for over a decade? I'd guess that almost all of those who have are self-motivated, do it because they like it, and don't have much of a following.

Sure thing, Nick - it was always the money that drove me to be a poet. Not just the big bucks, of course, but the perks and accoutrements - the fast cars, the apartment cantilevered over Manhattan, the constant parties and the unconstant women. Now that the poetry market has fizzled I'm focusing on fantasy.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

Sure thing, Nick - it was always the money that drove me to be a poet. Not just the big bucks, of course, but the perks and accoutrements - the fast cars, the apartment cantilevered over Manhattan, the constant parties and the unconstant women. Now that the poetry market has fizzled I'm focusing on fantasy.

Geez, I don't know how explicit I have to make my points to be understood.

Of course we do it because we like it, but how many of us have time to write truly masterful work? Or can get to the point where we're able to?

In the title I released a few years ago, a lot of it sucked, but it would have taken years to finish and nothing would have come from it. Which I think speaks to why it's hard to find a robust audience, and why it's hard to find people doing quality work.

A lot of people want to write poetry, but not many of them have time for it.

[Jim Moonan]

.
I am relieved to see that the consensus here is that poetry is not dead nor is it dying. Far from it. It is in a state of flux, yes. It is being buffeted by the winds of change that are swirling everywhere. But poetry is the very air we breathe. It is the wind. So until that is taken away poetry will stay. My (inflated) two cents.
.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Nick, you speak of poetry as if it were a suit of clothes one can put on or take off at will. That is not my experience as a poet at all. Of course, time can seem to be an element because, unfortunately, in modern society, all time is considered money. Yet, poetry, for me, has never been a matter of choice, of job choice—it is more a state of being; and I am in that state whether I am working or playing or putting pen to paper or not. The question of poetry’s death, as you discuss it, seems more a matter of whether poetry reading has died. But the writing of poetry, of true poetry, has always been an inescapable force of nature, a stern directive from the unconscious, and treating it like a faucet that can be turned on or off at one’s convenience, according to the contingencies of life, seems to me to be what might contribute to its real death by cheapening it to the point where everyone can and should do it periodically. Oh, I know, people should do whatever they please, and call themselves by whatever title they like—but I think it’s undeniable that there is a glut of poetry being produced now, and I think that is mostly due to this attitude that it is something cursory, something you can pick up or drop as your schedule dictates, rather than as a imperative that comes from somewhere deeper than any program taught in schools, any fantasies of huge paychecks or prizes or accolades—all of which are justifications which lie outside rather than inside poetry. Poetry is not a means to an end, it is the end and the means in itself. And if more so-called poets realized that its rewards were all in the process and not in the product, then many of them would quit and poetry might be the healthier for it—hidden or not.

Nemo

[Rick Mullin]

I don't find time to write poetry. Time finds me.

[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?

[W T Clark]

Julie, I think all that you say is not incorrect. But let me now riff a little on a minor part of your post. I think in some cases, a kind of strawman argument can be created where "white", traditional, male poetry is assoeciated with a kind of atypical idea of "page" poetry, while other ethnicities can be weirdly tied to a different, but equally singular definition. So, we get the strange idea that instead of finding a good range of black poets, for example, you just teach kids hip-hop so they can learn about the "black experience", like there's any one black experience. I think at times, a kind of white, liberal establishment can kind of fetishise showing kids other ethnic experiences by tying those experiences to a singular form of art atypical of "other" groups. So, for one thing, difficult and conceptually demanding poetry can be often attached to a kind of poetry that is generally seen as the domain of white academics, while other ethnicities are expected to produce poetry that speaks in easily-understandable language about racism and opression, and any more complicated, linguistically demanding, or confusing work by poets of colour (what a strange and abetting phrase, that, "poets of colour", like whiteness wasn't itself a racial identity ripe for unpicking) goes quietly passed over. My proof for all this speculation is: how many of you have heard of Jay Wright, one of the greatest poets working in English right now?

[Julie Steiner]

Well, yes, there's always a danger of tokenism/monolithism, and its flipside (i.e., that no work by a straight White guy deserves any attention today, because surely by now we've already heard everything that The Heterosexual White Male Perspective might have to say— there being only one, of course).

I am guilty as charged of not being familiar with Jay Wright's work, but I'll try to remedy that. Thanks for the recommendation.

Still mulling over your good point about stereotypes about practitioners of page poetry vs. practitioners of performance genres like rap.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by R. Nemo Hill

Nick, you speak of poetry as if it were a suit of clothes one can put on or take off at will. That is not my experience as a poet at all. Of course, time can seem to be an element because, unfortunately, in modern society, all time is considered money. Yet, poetry, for me, has never been a matter of choice, of job choice—it is more a state of being; and I am in that state whether I am working or playing or putting pen to paper or not. The question of poetry’s death, as you discuss it, seems more a matter of whether poetry reading has died. But the writing of poetry, of true poetry, has always been an inescapable force of nature, a stern directive from the unconscious, and treating it like a faucet that can be turned on or off at one’s convenience, according to the contingencies of life, seems to me to be what might contribute to its real death by cheapening it to the point where everyone can and should do it periodically. Oh, I know, people should do whatever they please, and call themselves by whatever title they like—but I think it’s undeniable that there is a glut of poetry being produced now, and I think that is mostly due to this attitude that it is something cursory, something you can pick up or drop as your schedule dictates, rather than as a imperative that comes from somewhere deeper than any program taught in schools, any fantasies of huge paychecks or prizes or accolades—all of which are justifications which lie outside rather than inside poetry. Poetry is not a means to an end, it is the end and the means in itself. And if more so-called poets realized that its rewards were all in the process and not in the product, then many of them would quit and poetry might be the healthier for it—hidden or not.

Nemo

The bolded is true for me as well, likely true for most serious poets. I guess all I'm trying to convey is how hard it is to write good, original poetry. If one imagined that there is a lot of inexperienced stuff being written these days, this might be the reason: time.

For myself, it's always been about the process and love of language, but any time I've been stifled it's been by real material concerns. A few years back it was renovations to our house, parenthood, work, and so on. There's absolutely nothing I would love more than to dedicate a chunk of my time to writing, I just literally can't do it right now. Probably true of many people, in many periods of their lives.

On poetry being hard, I think it's also one of the genres that to be good at you really need to be in the upper echelon of writing skill. Nobody wants to read mediocre poetry, but good poetry is exceptionally hard to produce. It took me about seven or eight years before I was writing poems that I was happy with, and to when I'd call myself a decent poet (granted, a few of those years were quiescent).

That sad part is, I got to where I wanted to be exactly when I ran out of time.

ETA: And to help clarify my point, when I speak of 'financial incentives' I'm definitely not thinking that people have awards and accolades in mind when they write poetry. What I mean is that we usually have a handful of other, more important things to do that actually matter to our bottom line. Which means it's hard to make writing a primary focus. In real terms, people can only really write when everything else is going well.

[Nick McRae]

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?

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.