What is wrong with Americaln attitudes to Modern Poetry. Nobody buys Modern Poetry? Why?? What is wrong?

Good question. As for myself, I would rather read LATIN poetry than American poetry. One of my favorite poets is Pedro Calderon de la Barca, who has a very interesting biography, by the way.

It may be because so much of what passes for poetry these days is so bad. Actually, I'm not sure I even know what poetry is any more. There are so many different ideas of what constitutes any kind of poetry, let alone good poetry. Poe said that a (good) long poem is impossible, because no one could keep the level of poetic inspiration consistently high throughout the entire work. This would immediately rule out all the classical epic poetry such as the Odyssey, of course. The average person seems to think that if you simply write in short lines and capitalize the first word in each line you have written a poem. Much of what is published as poetry currently strikes me as of this type. This may qualify as verse, but not poetry. Actually much of it isn't even verse, as it has neither rhyme nor meter. If it were written in sentence and paragraph form it would be prose, which is what Poe said about Longfellow's Evangeline. Allusion, imagery, compression of meanings and such things are sometimes considered the essence of poetry,but they can be carried too far, to the point of being incomprehensible to the great majority of readers, cf. T.S.Eliot. If one wants to write only for the few other erudite types who can understand this sort of thing that's okay, but such writing should not be held up as the greatest writing and a model for everyone else. Here's an example of a verse (not poem) I wrote myself. This was intended for use in a role-playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons, as a spell for summoning lightning. Would you call it poetry or not? Good or bad? Let cords of water, threads of air About each other whirl, While ropes of earth and thongs of fire Among them whip and curl. Twist them strongly, bind them tight, Draw them to my hand, Then shall the lash of living light Crash down upon the land.

I believe it started with beat poetry... although i myself am i great fan of Ginsberg and Burroughs, I think that may be where it all started. The fact that up until the 1950s poetry was not a wide spread occupation or hobby, If you were a poet, you were loved and adored, because there were few who ventured into the spoken or written word. When Beat poetry because popular all of this changed. everywhere you went you could find some Joe smo doing is poetry at the local coffee house. Now please don't get me wrong, i still love and adore poetry in all of its forms, even spoken word. However i feel that the availability of it has cheapened the quality. This is just my opinion. I still read my Pablo Neruda every night before bed, and i still go to as many poetry readings as possible, however it is difficult to stay and listen to those artists who have a mastery of the language when there are so many young adults and teens who just get up in front of the microphone and curse. I am all of expression but in my opinion there should be effort put into each poem one writes. For example: If someone is going to argue religion with me, I am perfectly respectful of their beliefs and ready to have a rousing conversation with them, however if they are not prepared with facts and information than its just mud slinging. I feel that way about Modern spoken word. People who will just talk about what ever is irritating them instead of trying to shed insight on the human condition. The human condition is what poetry is about. anyway enough of my rant... i enjoyed what you had to say... Bekah

you have asked this identical question in five different forums already. are you trying to sell us something?