A few days ago in class, we discussed the importance of poetry in Puritan culture, and how poetry was considered an "essential" art. Even ordinary men and women daily engaged in it, recording their personal meditative thoughts. More recently, poets such as Tennyson were famous and revered. And yet today, where is poetry?
I'm guessing that you don't read too much poetry. Could we name any of the latest bestselling books of verse? If in the Puritan times, poetry was essential and prose nonexistent, today we read much more prose than poetry. So what happened? Poetry still is a beautiful art form, but why aren't more people reading it? When did it cross the line from from vital to sidelined? If poetry died, can we bring it back to life?
I once read that poetry has declined because as a society, we've become faster-moving and impatient, and that we want instant gratification, whether from a narrative or a Twitter post. Is that why?
Interestingly enough, Elizabeth Alexander of Yale University will unveil her presidential inauguration poem soon. It will be only the fourth in history, but it is a reminder that poetry hasn't disappeared yet. But why exactly did prose overtake it in the first place?
(Eric Wei, whose favorite poem is "The Raven" by Poe.)
11 comments:
I think if you ask Mr. Jennings or Ms. Morgan they would be astounded that you thought poetry is dead. There are many poets still creating works that are enjoyed by many, but poetry is like art. It's hardly ever appreciated until the creator is dead. So poetry that is being made now will not be famous until our kids are in school. It is true that I don't read too much poetry but I know that it is around.
The general public has ceased to read poetry on a regular basis because a) it requires too much thinking for people who work long days or have less schooling and b) There is just so much, how do you know what is the good stuff? It's not like music where it constantly surounds you, and your friends, familiy, and peers are always giving their input. Poetry is much more of an underground movement. Not that it is secretive, just that it is not main-stream. And I don't think the poets want it to be. Why is there always a new top ten on iTunes ever two weeks? Because people hear it too much and get sick of it so they move on. Poetry wants to be lasting. So it can't be overpowering.
(Kelley Volosin)
Even if poetry always only gained noterity after the death of the author, this would not account for the decline of it's popularity. I think the reason for poetry's decline is related to television. Poetry was considerably more mainstream before television and movies became so large a part in our culture. Though I'm sure there are other factors at work I don't think this element can be disregarded.
Technology is largely to created to make things easier. Easier to prepare food, easier to communicate, and easier to obtain information. I think television makes not only reports, but also fictional information much easier to comprehend for the viewer than print. Many consider news programs the simpler counterpart to print news. Television makes it so that the viewer has to do very little. It is less interactive than reading print, and certainly less than most poetry. This is often shown when books are translated to the screen. I'll take the example of the children's novel Holes, simply because I think virtually everyone has read, or at least seen it. In the book it is alluded to that Zero is the Madame Zamboni's grandson, but it does not become clear until the very end of the novel. The movie, contrastly, throws the fact in your face. It would be obvious to even a small child. Movies and television often lack subtlety as compared to novels. Also, as I previously stated, it is all given to you. You no longer need to imagine the setting or how the characters look because you can see them. When television and movies became more popular, a new standard was set. Previously, prose had been considered easy to understand. Now, in comes stories in a way where no work in needed on the audience's end.
Since television was so simple to understand, poetry seemed like comparitivly, a lot of work. And though work ethic has always been valued, I think it's undeniable that many, when given two options, would chose the easier of the two. Television provided the easier option. There was no need to be interactive, in many cases there was little need to think. Prose took poetry's place to provoke your thoughts.
Sorry if this entire comment is jumbled (and maybe a bit of a stretch) but I was having difficulty phrasing my point.
Molly Dunbar
Just a quick clarification: I don't necessarily consider poetry "dead", I'm just wondering why it's not as widespread as it used to be.
Why would you take that back, Eric? I happen to agree that poetry is sort of dead. I know that there are still many poets, but honestly, do we usually read poetry outside of school?
I think its decrease in popularity has a lot to do with how complicated it can be. These days, it seems that people just want to something that they can understand. Think about movies. I think that we base how 'good' a movie is on how understandable its plot is (well at least I did when I said that Burn After Reading was a bad movie)
To answer one of Eric's questions, I think we can keep poetry from being completely dead, but with all these advances in technology, I think that it's impossible to bring poetry to the position it once held. If anything, I think we're going to have to start worrying about the future of literature in general with all this new technology.
Perhaps, depending on how you view poetry and its definition, poetry is as much dead as it is evolved. Obviously we don't have poetry similar to Ovid's Metamorphoses etc. anymore, but wouldn't songs be considered a form of poetry?
Earlier in the year, we discussed the possibility of a language becoming a "dead" language. I believe I claimed that Latin was not a dead language since it lives on in other languages (Romance languages) and in some random language spoken by natives of the Alps. I guess you could say that poetry has had a similar fate.
Even though modern day songs (A Whole New World doesn't quite seem as epic or poetic as the Inferno or even one of Catullus' random poems) do not fit one's preconceived notions of poetry, can it be considered as such?
Since the beginning of time, Poetry has been a portal for emotional expression. Let's face it: it's the one kind of literary composition that doesn't always have to make sense. It's composed of encoded messages, unknown feelings, and "seemingly" arbitrary words. (We all know that no single word is ever arbitrarily chosen.)
This generation just doesn't like to think very much; we expect too much to fall upon our silver platters. I mean, we're from Moorestown after all, aren't we? I can't deny that I have been guilty of this mentality on more than one occasion.
Poetry calls for interpretation, for brain power which, frankly, I doubt most of the youth want to expend. Lots of things are available to us. Oppositely, the Puritans were a modest group of people who yearned for simple things that we take for granted today. One of these things happened to be works of fiction. They absolutely adored accounts of exploration and poetry. These were the closest things they had to entertainment. It was a plus, too, that Puritan poetry was used as an educational tool. It supplied religious instruction, longer didactic verse, historical verse, funeral elogy, and personal meditation. It was a diverse tool.
My basic point is this: We take so much for granted today that we avoid the best forms of art if they appear to be a "waste of time". A little bit of self-application goes a long way, and since the Puritans were such big advocates of hard work, they lived by this principle. In turn, they valued poetry. I hope this conclusion isn't too fuzzy.
(Sam Maliha)
I believe poetry no longer has a central place in society because it is a superfluous way of getting one's point across. I think the notion that we area faster-moving society is a correct one, however I would take it one step farther and suggest that poetry is just impractical in modern day society. Does anyone really write poems anymore? (Other than writers, or perhaps personal poems which are not meant to be read by others, or only read by a select audience)
I think the truth is that poetry is just not practical. Although it may be considered "beautiful" or "majestic", I think that in the very material society we live in poetry no longer has its place. (Or at least not a place on the center stage of society)
I think the biggest reason in our shift away from the poetic arts deals with our shift in values. During the puritan era God was the centerpiece in most everyone’s life. For this reason, spending the time to write poems to immortalize his greatness seemed well worth the effort. However, in today’s modern society God has for the most part fallen into the backdrop, and has been replaced by money. Money is what makes the world go round, and it is money that drives all of us at least to one degree or another. So then the question arises, why spend the time to write poetry? Isn’t that time when I could be making money or getting done something practical in my life? In modern society everyone seems to be constantly working and there is little time in one’s life to write poetry, and even if there is time, it seems completely and entirely impractical, unnecessary, and a waste of valuable time.
(Kevin Trainer)
"We take so much for granted today that we avoid the best forms of art if they appear to be a "waste of time"...Puritans were such big advocates of hard work, they lived by this principle. In turn, they valued poetry"
First of all, I don't think that people don't avoid all of the 'best forms of art' just because they don't want to bother with hard work.
Secondly, I don't think that one can establish a correlation between hard work and poetry. Perhaps a person disregard poetry because he or she thinks that it's a waste of time. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't hard workers. Maybe they just think that their hard work and time are better spent on something else.
I agree with Molly's explanation of the replacement of poetry with simple prose or even television. In this day and age, society has indeed begun to rely much more on television than on traditional poetry. It seems as if, over the years, many people have gradually grown more impatient and expect to grasp understanding of things they encounter immediately. In general, people are no longer as willing to take the time to read through poetry, which as Sam stated, often requires much "brain power" to interpret. Instead, society has come to embrace more "straight-forward" novels or prose, and even more so, has come to favor electronic media over print media. I cannot help but be reminded of the book I read last marking period, Amusing Ourselves to Death (by Neil Postman), which outlines this shift in media and discusses its implications.
Personally, I understand and agree with Sam's comment about people taking things for granted and overlooking the "best forms of art" that appear to be a "waste of time." If I may, I will try to clarify the comment for Mary. I do not think that Sam is stating that "people avoid all of the 'best forms of art' just because they don't want to bother with hard work" (Mary). I think she is simply trying to point out that a correlation exists between how much people value such forms of art and how much they value "hard work," which may mean something along the lines of, "the use of the extra brain power necessary to understand a certain form of art." I do not think that Sam is in any way, shape, or form stating that people who disregard poetry are NOT "hard workers." My point here is that it is important to remember that correlation is not the same thing as causality, as Mr. Lazarow emphasized during our study of the Toulmin Model of Argument.
By all means, Sam, let me know how my interpretation of your statement differs from what you actually meant to say. I just couldn't resist trying to help clarify for Mary, although I'm not sure that I did!
(Janet Lee)
Thanks, Janet! You understood exactly what I wanted to say, even though it was a bit jumbled. I appreciate it.
You can't possibly write poetry without having the will to use energy/thought. Even haikus (which we have used as easy ways to gain extra credit in the past), take time to conjure up. Mary, don't you think that writing, in any of its forms, requires hard work? Last time I checked, composing language was not something done absentmindedly. "Easy" work and poetry just don't seem as if they'd form a correlation. "Moderate" or "hard" work seem more fitting to the job. Am I making sense?
I didn't mean to say that people who dislike/don't engage themselves with poetry are not hard workers. I don't think I ever said that, actually. But isn't it rather ironic that the Puritans, a group of people so fond of hard work, cherished poetry? Just food for thought.
(Sam Maliha)
I think it's interesting that Eric implies that poetry is less prominent as it once was. I disagree. I think poetry is in a different form: music. Poetry is what makes the words of many songs. Poetry is still used to evoke emotions, but it works with music to do so. It's true that we don't read as much poetry nowadays, but we certainly hear it and recite it often. (At least I do!)
Emily T.
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