Is Poetry Dead?
Is poetry dead? The quickest answer to this question: walk into Poets House, turn right, enter the Showcase room, and apologize for even asking the question. A better answer, though, would acknowledge the fact that poetry might not seem as much of a focus in our world now as it did in past centuries. The issue is not that poetry is slowly dying; to me, poetry has been a continuous exploration of ourselves throughout history, and I doubt that we’ve become uninterested in ourselves. Here’s both a comforting and depressing fact for writers: Emily Dickinson published only seven poems in her lifetime. Given Dickinson’s current reputation as one of poetry’s most recognized voices, that fact might seem surprising, but it’s important to recognize that poetry takes hold slowly over years. As it ages, it is reassessed, responded to, and transformed. As forms of literature go, poetry doesn’t make the headlines too often; I can’t even remember the last time I saw a paparazzi shot of W.S. Merwin. In pop culture, poetry is not so loud spoken. The average person has a basic knowledge of poetry as taught in school: Shakespeare wrote sonnets, Whitman did not; Yeats loved a woman, and Robert Frost loved a good stroll. After school, however, many can simply avoid poetry if they don’t sniff it out. Instead of several hugely famous poets with whom to situate themselves in the world of poetry, there are thousands of poets, poems, words, making small but important dents in the canon of poetry. To me, poetry has always seemed like the most direct way that we deal with ourselves in writing; writing prose for me is a different process, with its own joys and frustrations. With poetry I can isolate a certain moment or mindset and capture it as a single frame in time. I’m not sure people understand what they mean when they say that poetry is dead. Many books of poetry are published each year, so are they referring to the quality of that poetry? Reading poetry is a personal and subjective process, so it would be hard to make such a broad statement about its quality. Poets House itself is the best evidence of my claim, an establishment that continues to answer the question “is poetry dead?” with a quick “no.”
-Greg Nissan
