Surviving the Death of Poetry

     If poetry is alive we should be undertaking to reach the public through it.

     If poetry is dead we should be undertaking.

---

     Poetry, that thing that thrived on the audience's love of it, is dead.  A mode of communication that once rivaled the novel now fights for the same public attention afforded lacrosse--markedly less than curling.  In the last half century it has contributed not a single phrase, let alone an iconic poem, to the public discourse.

     Only two tiny minorities fail to understand this.  Stereotypical hipster muggles will roll their eyes in  exasperation at being told this for the umpteenth time.  Lacking empathy, they cannot imagine how frustrating it is for those who've had to tell them this obvious fact for the umpteenth time.
    

     Far more significant are those who have invested years in the art form and cannot bring themselves to acknowledge how far the stock has fallen.  Editors and teachers, especially, do not appreciate anyone spelling out the obvious because it undermines their prodigious efforts to revive a corpse.  Some reach for the flimsiest argument:  there is more poetry being produced by more people than ever before.  This dodge is beyond lame;  it is from where lame crawls off to die.  Leave aside the technicality that, despite there being more people than ever, there is no audience for any of this stuff.  Deal with the undeniable:  overproduction is, by definition, a problem, not a solution.

     These people are committed and, depending on how many other plain truths they deny, perhaps they should be.

     The question becomes:  How can we reconcile our love of poetry with our realization that it is a dead art form?

     Poetry has been gone for less than a century.  Granted, that lull is unprecedented in any culture, but it is barely an eye-blink compared to the silene stenophylla, a plant considered extinct but resurrected after 31,700 years under the permafrost. 
    
     Perhaps, if we can find enough of poetry's DNA, we can recreate a strain that can thrive in today's ecosystem.

     The paradox is that, in dealing with the death of poetry, we need to allow the death of poetries.  Whatever crackpot strains fail to find fertile ground need to be abandoned, not coddled in artificial environs or needlessly autopsied.  The last half century has taught us what doesn't work.  Let failure be its own post mortem.  Time to concentrate on what succeeds.  Whether tomorrow's breakthrough verses are retro or hypermodern is for audiences to decide on a piece-by-piece basis.  The only safe bet is that they will involve exemplary writing, performance and production.

    Put bluntly, those in denial regarding poetry's passing do the art form no favor. Like Elvis sighters, they trivialize the demise itself.  It was a sharp, painful decline that took place decades before most of us were born.  We are told that "thirteen is colder in the fall."  This was the bleakest of Autumns, made all the more so by not knowing that Winter would be longer than anything seen on "Game of Thrones".

     All of that said, the reincarnation of poetry could occur in the next few months or years.  Without reservation or hyperbole, it promises to be one of the most glorious events in human history.

---

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull".  Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook.  Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please use the box below, marking your post as "Private" and including your email address;  the moderator will bring your post to our attention and prevent it from appearing publicly.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

---

Who Killed Poetry?

This mystery survived for almost a century after the crime. Forensics determined that the fatal blow was struck in the 1920s, the patient lingering for a while afterwards. Suspects and speculations were legion. My favorite crackpot theory is that bridge was to blame. You know, the card game. It's not quite as outlandish as you may think. The timing is right: bridge was invented in the late 1920s. The demographics are right: bridge supplanted poetry as a social medium for young sophisticates before the 1970s and is still the favored diversion of retirees. Perhaps most importantly, bridge became the venue for celebrities including, among many others, John Wayne and Omar Sharif 30-40 years ago, Bill Gates and Alan Alda today. By contrast, poets didn't tend to be as photogenic or refined. In the 1980s I suppose you could, with some effort, dress up Charles Bukowski and Alan Ginsberg but you certainly couldn't take them anywhere.

The prime suspect had always been Modernism in general, non-metrical poetry in particular. This theory fails for a simple reason: the suspect wasn't within a continent of the crime scene. Indeed, the two are not even in the same dimension. Before giving up entirely, trade magazines and newspapers published almost exclusively popular verse. Free verse and prose poetry are and were largely limited to literary magazines. Poetry's death scene was far more public than that. Thus, when we say "poetry is dead" we really mean "commercial poetry is dead" or, if you prefer, "'popular poetry' is an oxymoron". Academic poetry is doing just fine, thanks to the largesse of taxpayers and, occasionally, patrons.

Question: If John Q. Jones pumps a dozen bullets into someone and, much later, an attending doctor removes life support, who killed the victim?

Today, we will finally unmask the gunman, whose identity will surprise many. We will reveal his motive as being, essentially, what we now call "identity theft". We begin, though, by unveiling the physician who put the patient out of its misery by removing the lifeline.

Ah, the lifeline. That was the clue. There are so few people who were alive when poetry mattered that our CSI team was forced to rely on historical accounts. Our investigation indicates that poetry's lifeline--its lifeblood--was the free and open exchange of verse among those who loved it. This knowledge led to us to the physician.

The doctor was born in Berne, Switzerland, in 1886, and graduated on July 1, 1909. Starting on January 1st, 1923, as a precaution against possible pandemics, this physician initiated a worldwide quarantine, preventing the free proliferation of poetry. This isolation, which was intended to protect poetry, cut it off from its life source. Worse yet, because poetry could not breed in captivity, it perished without issue.

Discovering the role of Copyright Law didn't bring us much closer to the shooter, though. Who and where was the mysterious Mr. John Q. Jones?

"Follow the money."

Who profited from this unspeakable crime?

Our historical research proved that before WWI people could recite dozens of recent poems but could sing along to only a few contemporary songs. Why? Convenience. Poems appearing in magazines and newspapers might be heard in bars or parlors later that same day. Songs required either a touring band or the purchase of sheet music and considerable practice. One rarely heard the same song more than once a week.

Radio reversed this, starting in the early 1920s. With the drop of a needle listeners from L.A. to New York could hear the same song. If a hit, they'd hear it again and again. Immediately, the poetry/songs ratio reversed. Today, the average individual can recite the words to thousands of contemporary songs but nary a single contemporary poem.

Indeed, the complete disappearance of poetry has given rise to conspiracy theories, speculating that poetry staged its own death, had a makeover and is living on in lyrics.

Songwriters who have profited from poetry's demise or metamorphosis don't deny this.

Do you, Mr. Jones?

---

Coming Soon: Time for some good news

---