To feel Poetry has died a death in modern society?

[Marmitemother]

Out of curiosity I searched MN expecting to find a topic page on poetry and literature....have I missed it somewhere?

Semi retired, children flown the nest, hubbie and I always busy with projects yet still find time to read poetry most days.

I'm wondering if others, particularly younger folk (we're in our 60's) didn't learn to appreciate poetry at school or just don't have time or the inclination to read, share and discuss compared to all else available these days (TV, phones, cinema, social media etc)

I read The Journey by Mary Oliver this morning and thought about how it spoke to many posting on the Relationship page.

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

And if anyone hasn't heard this beautiful poem by Amanda Gorman, they're missing out:

amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/20/amanda-gorman-poem-biden-inauguration-transcript

The Hill We Climb

Exactly. Give me a novel, can easily be several hundred pages and I am happy reading. I love the way characters develop and the story unfolds.

A short story or a poem doesn't bring this to me. Reading a poem gives me a "So, what now" feeling.

To the ones saying schools murder English Lit: We just had one 6th Form open evening and DD was until then torn between English Lit and Sociology. After the English Lit talk she turned to me and said "really, that's what I am supposed to enjoy?" All proposed topics were dry and lots of fairly classical literature instead of looking at modern texts and how literature is evolving.

No wonder teens are not wild on poetry.

Or, to put it another way - you enjoy poetry, in the form of limericks and comic poems (as PP, check out Brian Bilston if you haven't already!), but you're not fussed about the more serious stuff.

I love poetry, but that doesn't mean I enjoy all poems or poets equally. There are plenty of (otherwise well-loved) poets who leave me cold. And there are plenty of keen poetry fanatics who would roll their eyes at me trotting out endless quotations from TS Eliot, Lovelace or whoever.

Thank you for opening my eyes. I will look at some of the recommendations on here.

Choosing a random example is disingenuous. Are W McGonagall or Julia A Moore representative of all 'proper' poets? Just because you don't like or, more likely, understand something, it doesn't make it less worthy.

I quite enjoyed poetry as a child of the 90s. I feel like we did a lot of poetry at school, and had it read to us quite a lot.
Nowadays, I'm not interested in poetry. Occasionally I stumble across one I quite like, but I certainly don't go searching it out.

There’s a lot of it about, you do need to search it out a bit, though.

Cerys Matthews has produced a kids’ version of Under Milk Wood. She (brilliantly) read an extract on Loose Ends yesterday, looks great, beautifully illustrated too.

'Poetry' is an enormous collection of words spanning a vast number of sub genres. And genre is one area in which people tend to get very territorial. There was an 'I Love 80s Goth' group online once, which I left once it started to get heated about what did belong in the genre and what didn't. People just love policing generic boundaries - that's a fun enough topic for a literature class on its own!

Homer, Dante, Milton and Ovid wrote some of the greatest epics in literature whose effects and influences can still be felt everywhere. A world without Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy would be a sad world. I'm hooked on the modernist poets, Djuna Barnes and Mina Loy in particular. But I'm with the 'some rap is poetry' PPs. Eminem's lyrics are superb. For me, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison fall firmly into the camp of poetry too.

The beat poets, Ginsberg in particular, go down well with today's generation of undergraduates and represent some amazing writing. Poe's 'The Raven' is another one that often goes down well with students.

You could make up a brilliant course comprising several sub genres: old classics, maybe Plath's and Duffy's rewritings of Ovid, for example to link the influences, popular as well as classical culture. As for poetry being up its own backside, just check out Khadijah Ibrahim's 'Leeds Young Poets' and her own excellent writing.

Whoever devised the latest school literature curriculum should be sentenced to five years of studying it, IMO. That is what I'd call poetic justice. As for the teacher who discouraged her students's interest in Plath, I'm betting she hadn't read beyond the curriculum and was afraid she'd be found out!

I grew up in the Dutch school system where there are no set books - not in Dutch andEnglish (compulsory at any level) nor in any MFL. Schools can set a list for people to choose from, but the list is literally hundreds of books long. And it's always possible to approach a teacher with a book that isn't on it and ask if you can include it. It's then up to the teacher to ensure they have sufficient familiarity with the book to examine you on it (the exam is spoken for MFL and English, written for Dutch and moderated by another school whose staff do not know the students). It's so much better and you can read so much more widely. For French I had to read a total of 15 books for my A level, of which three had to be plays, one had to be a volume of poetry, at least three had to date from before 1800 and a further two from before 1900. Parameters for the other languages were very similar, except for Dutch which was more complex. It really encourages you to think about your choices and you're more likely to actually enjoy what you're reading.

Ds did French A level - he loved the language but detested the books that were chosen by the teacher/exam board - such a personal thing - it’s a shame it can be so off putting

I love poetry.

Good poems make me feel flayed. Stripped bare. In the same way that some music does.

There are certain lines and certain chords that make me feel naked.

Clear night, thumb-top of a moon, a back-lit sky.
Moon-fingers lay down their same routine
On the side deck and the threshold, the white keys and the black keys.
Bird hush and bird song. A cassia flower falls.

I want to be bruised by God.
I want to be strung up in a strong light and singled out.
I want to be stretched, like music wrung from a dropped seed.

I want to be entered and picked clean.

And the wind says “What?” to me.
And the castor beans, with their little earrings of death, say “What?” to me.
And the stars start out on their cold slide through the dark.

And the gears notch and the engines wheel.

That makes me feel raw.

I almost did a masters in poetry before I decided it didn't pay! I love it! George the poet is one example of poetry.

But I also think some of the older poems are shear magic.

My favourites are:

The Darkling thrush by Thomas Hardy
Introspection by Christina,Rossetti
Mid term break by Seamus Heaney and Wild Swans of Coole by WB Yeats.

I mean some lines are pure brilliance. In the second coming this sends shivers of horror down my spine:

" What rough beast, it's hour come at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born."

I love all kinds of poetry but there’s a particular kind of poetry reading that I can’t stand, when the speaker is all dreary and solemn and reads in a “special” poetry-reading voice.

@malificent7

I fucking love The Darkling Thrush.

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

Eastcoker...it's the best! I once got a job as an English teacher based on the lesson i did on the darkling thrush.

@malificent7

The windeing gyre.

The Second Coming by Yeats.

I fucking love it.

I am 52 and I didn’t “learn to appreciate poetry at school”. I am not sure an appreciation of something like that can be learned, surely you either enjoy poetry or you don’t. I hate poetry myself. 🫣

@Aprilx

Fine.

It's ok to hate poetry and literature.

I will obviously think less of you.

But it's your choice.

I actually think the opposite, and that poetry has had a resurgence over the last 10 or so years, definitely helped by social media. There is actually a term for this , “instapoetry”.
Spoken word is hugely popular, and there are events pretty much every night, in every city.
I read an article not long ago that stated while the percentage of people reading fiction had dropped, that of those reading poetry had jumped massively, mainly driven by GenZ.

@CockSpadget

I don't think poetry is driven by GenZ.

Genz are absolutely not driving literature.

That is an hilarious supposition @CockSpadget.

You do you though.

Where did I say Poetry was driven by GenZ? I said the massive resurgence in the uptake of poetry reading in the last few years was mainly driven by GenZ. Big difference. But hey, if you want to incorrectly read comments, go for it. You do you.

You didn@CockSpadget.

I apologise.

I did spunk the meaning of your comment up the wall.

Sorry
.

@EastCoker 👍

Love that Mary Oliver poem OP, thanks for it