Why is poetry declining in popularity?

[Anonymous No.18594572]

People attribute the decline of interest in /lit/erature to shorter attention spans, the internet, instant gratification etc, so why does poetry seem harder hit than novels or even non-fiction books? Maybe I read poetry wrong but generally I read the poem a few times and think about it over the course of day to day life, re-read it and do the same. This seems perfect for people with a lower attention span - you only read it paying attention to all of it a couple of times, after that you are reading it scanning for what you have been thinking of.

[Anonymous No.18594583]

It is the opposite, anon. Poetry requires careful examination. If anything you need to pay a lot of attention to it.

[Anonymous No.18594634]

>>18594583
But would you agree that you don't have to sit there reading a poem for ages as a part of that careful examination - maybe if you really like the poem you will, but initially you read it remember the parts you like and think about it regularly. Getting into the poem should not require a good attention span, fully understanding it should. However, this should mean that people who have shit attention spans should not struggle with poetry.

[Anonymous No.18594812]

>>18594634
Poetry is booming on instagram. Poetry written by these attention-span deprived youth that are "breaking the boundaries". It's complete and utter shit.
Understanding real poetry requires linguistic and abstract-thinking abilities. Yet people flinch every time you use any non-monosyllabic word.

[Anonymous No.18594823]

The real answer is that poetry and /lit/ in general was never really "popular".

[Anonymous No.18594837]

>>18594572
Tyler the creator just drop a song with Baudelaire’s name on it, maybe that could make him more popular

[Anonymous No.18594985]

>not many ppl read poetry
False
>not many ppl read good poetry
Facts.
Read hart crane, poetryniggas, he'll open you right up and pleasure you good

[Anonymous No.18594993]

>>18594572
https://twitter.com/Imperium_Cast/status/1369630231695290374

"Why did poetry die?
Because it went from a vehicle for storytelling to a form of interior self-expression. From something communal to something individual. There's something weird about reading Dickinson aloud to an audience."

[Anonymous No.18595025]

>>18594993
bullshit subjective take that means nothing
are you seriously posting opinions by twitter faggots here? fuck off subhuman

[Anonymous No.18595049]

>>18594993
>POETRY ISN'T SOMETHING INDIVIDUAL
the 20th century gave rise to many amazing poets whose work was assuredly individual self-expression (although attached to certain cultural movements, individual at the core). 19th century french poetry, which is seen as a golden era in poetry by many, is also very individual. stupid

[Anonymous No.18595064]

>>18595025
>subjective take that means nothing
https://scholars-stage.org/longfellow-and-the-decline-of-american-poetry/

"We think of poetry as the art of poignantly capturing interior experience on the page. The natural focus of the poet, we believe, is emotions, perceptions, and other subjective experiences. But this was not always the case. "
"Poets like Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, who reigned supreme as the exemplary poets of their respective centuries, made their fame not through short lyric poems, but through plays, masques, epics, dramatic dialogues, poetic narratives, and poetic essays. "
"This century long shift away from rhetorical or narrative poems towards intimate, interiorized lyrics is one of the central engines of poetry’s declining popularity as an artform."

[Anonymous No.18595068]

>>18594993
also

>There's something weird about reading Dickinson aloud to an audience.

if you knew a bit of history you'd know they always read poetry out loud to one another in salons. since forever. the poets themselves took part in readings, but i can't expect a dumb faggot like you to be aware of these very basic facts

[Anonymous No.18595079]

>>18595064
>american poetry
bullshit subjective ANGLO take that means nothing. check out french and russian poetry and then tell me whether it is individual or communal. fag

[Anonymous No.18595099]

>>18594572
Because like Danilo Kiš remarked in France when he was teaching, what poetry was for him and his peers music is to us.

[Anonymous No.18595978]

>>18594837
it's a reference to the netflix series idiot

[Anonymous No.18596104]

>>18594572

Becuase poetry is faggot tier, and modern shit is pretentious as fuck writing about literally NOTHING. It is entirely devoid of complex themes and literary elements that make novels objectively superior. Change my mind.

[Anonymous No.18596127]

>>18594572
Because poetry is best when it's savored, and savoring and enjoying a small poem contradicts the CONSOOOOOMerism that runs rampant in how most people function and engage with media. That is, poetry is a small bite that you're supposed to enjoy, but contemporary culture is gluttonous and cares more about getting more bites than actually tasting the food.

[Anonymous No.18596212]

Because most people cram song lyrics into their head, the brain has a need to remember information but we give it bad information. Just reading Arabian nights seeing how since Muslims don't listen to music they quote poetry to increase the quality of conversation, this is also seen in dreams of red mansions. When music wasn't a readily accessible source of information, people remembered catechism or anything specific for themselves. Any time we have an urge to memorize we listen to songs and since people have different music taste we get nothing after hours of listening other then derision at bad lyrics.

[Anonymous No.18596737]

>>18594572
We lost conscience of the beauty of the spoken words and its link to music, but it's still there. As a general rule poetry must be recited, and learnt by heart to be really understood.
Free verse and "poetry for reading" did a lot of harm to it.

[Anonymous No.18596928]

>>18595079
>check out french and russian poetry and then tell me whether it is individual or communal. fag

>It was the tendency of [french] Symbolism--that second swing of the pendulum away from a mechanistic view of nature and from a social conception of man--to make poetry even more a matter of the sensations and emotions of the individual than had been the case with Romanticism: Symbolism, indeed, sometimes had the result of making poetry so much a private concern of the poet's that it turned out to be incommunicable to the reader.
>Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle
fag

[Anonymous No.18596961]

>>18594572
because the average pleb can't understand poetry, and I don't mean the undelrying message or subtext or whatever, but the literal meaning of it, unless it's something written by rupi kaur or Bukowski tier instagram poetry.

[Anonymous No.18597440]

>>18594823 is right.
Also, I haven't gotten 'round to reading Bushman's Refinement of America, but I'm pretty sure the ideals which drove earlier low and middle classes no longer carry much weight today. Even the upper classes today act like the lower classes of the past, openly engaging in promiscuity, drunkenness, general irreverence, etc.

[Anonymous No.18597481]

I gave an answer to the same question in another thread a couple of weeks ago. I think it's decently insightful, so I'll repost it here.

There are probably several factors to the decline of poetry in the English language. Among them are the following:
>poetry circles have become fairly incestuous and closed off, with almost all poets who regularly get published in major magazines being at universities
>popular music replaced poetry as a major form of mass entertainment (to the extent it ever was)
>poetry is extremely hard to write (Faulkner said something about all novelists being failed poets) and it's easier for people with a modicum of literary talent to just write prose (granted, this factor isn't new, but it's exacerbated by the other ones)
>the decline of traditional meter and the rise of free verse blurred the lines between verse and prose and probably pushed some would-be poets to not bother with line breaks at all
>many of the poetic forms which were once standard are now not appreciated at all (maybe you could publish a novel in blank verse today, but good luck publishing one in heroic couplets)
>there's no longer any expectation that any fiction will be in verse (quite the opposite, actually), so writers are freer now to choose prose than they were in the past (for example, even if Shakespeare had wanted to write his plays all in prose, he probably wouldn't have been able to get away with defying the conventions of his time like that)
>elite tastemakers have less sway over the opinions of the masses than they did in ages past, which is why Rupi Kaur is probably the most popular poet writing in English today despite having no critical esteem
>the material taught in schools has changed substantially; most American schoolchildren do read Shakespeare in high school and a few other poets like Frost as well, but poetry (especially classical poetry) used to play a much greater role in education than it does today; remember that prepubescents used to read the Iliad in the original Greek
It's worth mentioning that this isn't the first time English poetry has been in a nadir; most of the 18th century produced next to no enduring poetry (basically everything after Pope and before the Romantics is considered minor at best). Furthermore, even in eras when English poetry "flourished," most of it was still pretty much worthless; most poets who were prominent in their time have been forgotten, and even among those who are remembered we mostly only read a small fraction of their work (e.g. Coleridge's reputation basically rests entirely on three poems). If you want to see why, go get an unabridged collection of a major poet's works; I guarantee you that at least 90% of it will be boring at best. It's also probably worth pointing out that other once-popular art forms have seriously declined as well (the most obvious example being opera); to some extent, tastes are going to change no matter what.

[Anonymous No.18599312]

>>18594572
I'm not sure as to why it is declining in popularity. Personally all the kids I knew who openly talked about how they wrote poetry were pretentious and annoying and that had a lasting effect. I'm now starting to come around to reading some poetry and liking some of it. Any poet recommendations for someone who feels as I do to further break my own stigma?

[Anonymous No.18599326]

>>18595049
you are kidding yourself if you don't think poetry was already dying by that point

[Anonymous No.18600391]

>>18594837
Why do you think that's a good thing?

[Anonymous No.18601888]

>>18595049
There's a great difference in transforming personal experience as a topic and a poetic object, and making individual and sentimental expression the driving force of a poem. If real, authentic feelings that come from the inside are necessary for the poem to be relatable (or if they blatantly depend on the author's idividuality), it is meant for trash. Shakespeare managed to CREATE something that is just as authentic as the deepest, most human feelings, without the necessity of being there; the poem creates thos feeling, it doesn't need just to evoke them by mentioning.

[Anonymous No.18601986]

>>18594572
you don't have sex with poetry now

[Anonymous No.18602000]

Bo'dlair is big succ, his verse is big yucc
I grab yo bich and feed her my dicc, she get down and mucc
I give her a bucc