I read this article with interest. Sorry, I don't connect with anything that starts with a #, but otherwise I share your starry-eyed vision that poetry might become one of the popular pleasures. I note the success of Poetry Slams and other such events that bring energy and explosive imagination and intellect to rhymed, rhythmic, and socially relevant words.
In my new collection, I caved to popular appeal with poems about wandering in the CVS ("The Aisle Not Taken") and social media ("Antisocial Network"). I'll have fun reading these, and I hope someone will keep listening when I get serious.
Remember how Auden got an uptick of readers when his poem was movingly read in that movie "Four Weddings and a Funeral"? If makers of things can get "product placement" in movies, can we encourage "poetry placement"?
When I taught a few classes in Robert Frost at a local college, I followed up on Dana Gioia's advice: Make them memorize poems. I required a mere forty lines--one poem or several. Everyone groaned. But the result was glorious and unforgettable. The students took them to heart as they got them by heart. We all, all poets, must be prepared to declaim an apt poem out of our heads upon occasion--ours or someone else's. What a show-stopper.
Carry on, please.
Last edited by Barbara Loots; 02-09-2018 at 06:11 PM.
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