>
>This is a fair point, but there are different contexts at work.
>The formalists, in observing these particular modernist
>developments, could argue that poetry was in severe danger of
>becoming the sole property of academics. While modern art
>has always had a public space in which to declare itself, and
>thus encourage debate, poetry has increasingly withdrawn into
>universities -- with an average of 5% of the population attending,
>and therefore only a minute fraction of these engaged in the
>study of Enlish Lit (0.01 % ??) In other words, an arcane art
>for the initiated only.
>
>
>
>The formalists would perhaps argue that modernist poetry is to
>blame, in at least some degree, for the wholesale abandonment
>of the art-form by the reading public. >
>
>
>Just a couple of points which I don't have have the energy to develop -
First, the comparison of visual art> and poetry - I was lamenting the way
experimental art is so well accepted whereas experimental poetry isn't, to a
fellow teacher (I don't know about schools in the US, UK or Canada, but in
NSW the Visual Art syllabus includes a fair slab of experimental art but the
most adventurous writer any student is likely to encounter is Eliot or Joyce
and that's only if you do 3 unit - which is top level English - in a school
of approx. 1400, about 5 students take this course which, btw, is, along
with other 3 level subjects, about to disappear from the curriculum). My
companion, an art teacher, made the point that art is tied up with money in
a way that poetry sure isn't, the market in works of art practically ensures
that innovation will be at least attended to, if not actively welcomed.
On the subject of the shrinking audience for poetry - I can't do justice to
the reasons for this but can at least get the ball rolling - one hears poets
talk about this phenomenon sometimes and frequently attribute this decline
to the nature of the poetry on offer. Complaints are made about so-called
intellectual poetry, poetry which makes demands on the reader, but I would
question how many readers/ non-readers are even exposed to this sort of
verse. I guess I have a particular perspective because of teaching in high
school where, as I've already indicated, almost all the poetry a kid will
encounter is mainstream. This experience is for many people the only time
they will read much poetry and I don't doubt that it's what puts so many
people off (including the teachers). Obviously the way( or ways) it's taught
is part of the problem - having to write essays about what the poet is
trying to say probably helps engender the sort of attitude recently apparent
in some posts - disappointment/ anger at those poets who won't write poems
that can be translated into prose.
But I suspect this is only part of the problem - the decline of poetry -
when did it start? when society moved beyond the organisation of a tribe?
Those were definitely the good old days, when the poet/poetry really
mattered - and, if you think about the role of the poet then/ the functions
of poetry - (I won't spell them out because I want to keep this relatively
short plus I hope others will join in on what I think's a pretty interesting
topic) - you can see that most of the functions have been taken over. In
other words, I see the decline of poetry is due not to the failure of poets
to write something perceived as worth reading, but to a complex of social/
cultural/ political/ economic factors and I would love to read the book that
traced this.
Scratching the surface
all the best
Geraldine
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