Keith I was referring to the time and thought it requires to read the text.
Attending a poetry reading is a different matter. As I said in an earlier
posting, poetry is a minority taste. Very few people read poetry, it
accounts for around three percent of books published. Of course exposure to
poetry is a different matter. The majority of people are exposed to poetry
through education --but very few continue to read poetry or attend poetry
readings after they have completed full-time education. My point was that
many people lack the cultural competence to read or appreciate poetry, and
many more do not make the time to read poetry. Those who are busily working
in a factory or office are tired --especially those who have to commute, and
given the choice of reading poetry or a magazine, they would plump for the
latter, and why? I think because they derive greater pleasure from the
magazine than poetry, it is easier to purchase, easier to read, requires
little thinking, and is essentially a passive form of entertainment like
television --poetry often requires more imagination, and though it can be
rewarding, it does require more time. You are on a railway platform waiting
for your train. Try and find poetry there. Go to a W.H. Smiths or whatever.
Think of the time involved just to track down even well-known poetry like
Shakespeare's sonnets --if they have copies -- you usually have to trawl
through rows and rows of books, until you find a little section. That in
itself is taxing. Of course you could have gone to a bookshop during
lunch-time or borrowed the book from the local library -but to do so takes
time and effort. Moreover people generally want to relax and they view
poetry as ergonomically speaking -- demanding. Too much work. The
constituency of readers that make up the readers of modern poetry is
generally very small and comprises mainly of a class of fairly well
educated people --they are culturally competent. Indeed many of the readers
are writers of modern poetry! Modern poetry is very marginal --and as I
pointed out, this marginalism has often been used by writers and cultural
critics like Adorno to give the impression that it is somewhat above the
market --a protected sliver of elite culture.
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