[Max Goodman]

This thread has attracted some thoughtful and thought-provoking responses.

Suddenly, everything I read seems to touch on the idea that changes in the world are changing human nature. Suggested culprits include television

Originally Posted by David Foster Wallace, examining in 1988 the work of young writers

It may be that, through hyper- and atrophy, our mental capacities themselves are different [from those of previous generations]: the breadth of our attentions greater as attention spans themselves shorten. Raised on an activity at least partly passive, we experience a degree of manipulation as neutral, a fact of life.

and quantum mechanics

Originally Posted by a character in Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World

it was mathematics--not nuclear weapons, computers, biological warfare, or our climate Armageddon--which was changing our world to the point where, in a couple of decades at most, we would simply not be able to grasp what being human really meant.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Those are fascinating, Max, thanks. Personally, I have always loved Occam's Razor -- "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."

Newspapers are big business. Poetry is competition, yes? While you are reading poetry, you are not reading newspapers. Money you spend on poetry is money you are not spending on journalism.

Hmm...

[Jennifer Reeser]

Exhibit A:

Five years ago, from NPR. Quite to the contrary, "In half a decade, the number of U.S. adults who are reading poetry has nearly doubled."

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/61838...results-reveal

In a sane, stable economy in which people are content where they are, this is not a problem. But in a tanking economy such as ours, rampant inflation, etc., (also where New York residents are fleeing the state by six-digit numbers), the shark surfaces in these businessmen. You know that old adage, "Kill the competition." The NYT article does just that -- calling it dead.

J

Originally Posted by Jennifer Reeser

Those are fascinating, Max, thanks. Personally, I have always loved Occam's Razor -- "a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities."

Newspapers are big business. Poetry is competition, yes? While you are reading poetry, you are not reading newspapers. Money you spend on poetry is money you are not spending on journalism.

Hmm...

[Roger Slater]

I'm not sure Occam's Razor helps here, since to me the simplest possible explanation is that people just don't like poetry as much as they used to. I'm not saying I agree with this, mind you, only that it's the simplest hypothesis if you're looking to Occam.

Also, I'm not convinced that the editorial board of the NY Times meant to take a stand or even cared much about this particular column of print out of the many thousands it produces. It's just one stupid op-ed, after all, and so slight and vapid that it does not call upon anyone to do anything other than to soak up its author's pretentious claptrap. My problem with the NY Times wasn't that they let someone espouse this view, but that they let someone do it so poorly, with so little research or insight into the poetry scene, apparently based simply on the author's own uneducated gut feelings.

Still, I'm absolutely certain that not a single mind was changed by what he wrote. Not a single poetry reader has stopped reading it, and not a single poet has stopped writing it.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Roger, I appreciate your civil tone. I hope that I am wrong and you are right. I hope for better things from The New York Times in the future. And I hope you have a great weekend.

[Nick McRae]

I recall reading in George Seferis' (who won the Nobel) biography, that some of his work in the early 20th century was only read by a small number of people, mostly other poets.

Do we have any evidence that poetry was ever read widely, at any point in time? If you stretch back much further than 1900, a good amount of people couldn't read at all, let alone read or own sophisticated writing.

Back then, poetry would have been more novel, and would have had less competition - but human nature doesn't change over the course of a few centuries, let alone decades.

I've also heard the argument that in sheer numbers more poetry is being written now than ever. And given that, one of the problems in gaining a readership is that readers don't have the time to read it all. Fewer people are interested in our books, because there are now 100 to choose from instead of a handful.

Leonard Cohen was a very successful poet up until 2016, and worth millions. So the audience is out there.

[Nick McRae]

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/...iterary-world/

Nineteenth-century print culture was a product of and participant in the dramatic changes taking place throughout English society. The growth of literacy greatly increased the number of readers, especially among the middle- and working-classes, while industrialization in every sector of the book trade reduced production costs for books, pamphlets, newspapers, and periodicals and made very large print runs possible. The production of all forms of printed materials, from religious works, political tracts, and children's books to fiction and poetry grew dramatically. Estimates are that the rate of publication was approximately 500 titles a year at the beginning of the nineteenth century to about 4,000 by mid-century and around 10,000 a year by 1914.

During the nineteenth century, poets achieved a level of stature and celebrity unknown before or since, both for their works and their lives. This would not have been possible without a robust print culture that brought both to the attention of an eager reading public.

[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.

[Ann Drysdale]

Deleted. Writing it was enjoyable but it was not worth reading. Trust me; I'm a poet.

[Rick Mullin]

If God and painting came back to life, so will poetry.