The Outerview Series: Part XIX - Sung to Death

     We are told that a language disappears every fortnight.  With it, an entire literature, if not an entire culture, dies.  A poesy dies.

     In the history of humankind English is the only language predeceased by its poetry.

     All of us understand the facts:  No iconic poems since that limerick in 1961, English PhDs who can't do simple scansion, and a population that cannot recite a single stanza of contemporary verse that isn't part of a song.  We understand how it was supplanted by song, against which it could not compete.

     Show this video to an old and a young friend:

     Ask the old one if they've heard this [as a] song before.  If they say "No" ask them to sing along.  If they can, watch your younger buddy freak out.

    "How can you sing along to a song you've never heard?"

     Spoken verse didn't die because of academia or inept verse.

     It died because the newest generations cannot imagine, let alone create or appreciate, it.