Is Poetry Relevant?

     No, because Nobody Reads [Contemporary] Poetry.

     There, that was easy.

     It is one thing to state that contemporary poetry isn't relevant and doesn't matter to today's audiences (tana¹).  It is quite another to assert that the verse of the past has had no impact on readers or listeners, past and present.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #140

     In "The Writing Class - On privilege, the AWP-industrial complex, and why poetry doesn’t seem to matter" by Jaswinder Bolina we encounter a variation on Convenient Poetics Tenet #10:  "People never really liked poetry." 

Mr. Bolina writes:    "Can poetry ever regain its relevancy?" Even if I ignore their frame of reference--I’m not sure when poetry ever was "relevant" or ever did "matter"...

     Really?  You're asking if one of only two modes of speech "was relevant or ever did matter"?  How about the Bible, Koran, and Bhagavad Gita?  All are poetry by any definition, written in verses, memorized, maintained and quoted (or chanted, in the case of the Guru Granth Sahib) verbatim throughout history.

     This is before we get to every song ever written.  

     Seriously, dude.  Relevant?

---

Footnotes:

¹ - (tana) = there is no audience.

      This is an old Usenet tradition:  "tin-" ("there is no") and "tan-" ("there are no"), followed by the first letter of the previous word, reminds readers that we aren't talking about something that actually exists.

---