End of the line?
Poetry is dead. Well at least dying. The modern obsession with celebrity has finally knocked it from its perch and one of the great areas of literature is no longer loved or appreciated.
Such assumptions are all too easy to make, alongside the easily-adopted position that poetry was once a great and loved art. The idea that 'lots' of people enjoyed it seems to form on its own and yet when you have to think about that heyday which is strangely hard to pin down, the image that comes to mind is of a person surprisingly upper-class, not the popular masses. When you really look into it, poetry is not really dying.
Poetry never really was that alive, even in its most traditional form. Roll through a few of the great names - Donne, Shakespeare, Byron, Keats...none of them were famous for their poetry in their own lifetime. Except possibly Shakespeare, and even that's debatable. Byron, for example, was far more famous for committing incest with his cousin and then fleeing the country a couple of years later after he was warned he was to be tried for sodomy.
It could be bemoaned that the closest most people who don't now claim to enjoy poetry have ever come to it was being forced to read it in English lessons. In which the chance to appreciate it is, shall we say, strangled at birth in many cases. The fact that most people who can name a poet today name Sylvia Plath and Benjamin Zephaniah, the former famous for the current film about her and the latter for having turned down an OBE in the New Years Honours list, could be seen as depressing. Except that, compared to the past, the fact that one of those two is still alive and kicking and writing good poetry is a marked improvement. Keats had to die in a foreign country before anyone thought he was any good.
Ask someone who actually enjoys poetry and, when not moping around in that classically poetic manner, they can reel off at least three well-known poets writing today and happily still ticking.
The three I can think of are Paul Muldoon, Simon Armitage and Seamus Heaney. I concede that they're not exactly sprightly, Simon Armitage being the youngest at 40. Incidentally, he is also one of the young men of poetry. Then again, if you don't die young in poetry the chances are pretty slim that your best stuff will be written at an early age.
The question of whether poetry is under-appreciated is an easy one to answer. The more important question, though, is has it ever really been appreciated? Poetry can span the whole breadth of emotion from love to loathing. Yet possibly that's why it's treated with kid gloves on most occasions. Poetry has to make a harder push for acceptability because it's so damn difficult to understand half the time and because everyone fails to realise that actually not all poetry is good. In fact a fair proportion of it is awful and yet the "it's a great literary art" approach means that nobody dares to criticise it because they're not allowed to claim they understand it. Not that the great British institution of the literature class in most cases does much for poetry's health. It being regarded in the same vein as French: I don't understand and I don't want to and I'm happy it's over. Except it needn't be.
Slowly, I am now told, poetry is growing in popularity. New and, alarmingly, living poets are doing reading tours and pursuing other avenues, slowly pushing poetry from the very far recesses of the shadows closer to the light. Although, as I now admit through gritted teeth, the reason that poetry is such a marginal area of literature - apart from the way it is put on an untouchable pedestal - is that the most dynamic parts of poetry have moved on. As illustrated by one of my friends telling me he knew very little poetry and wasn't interested in it, while at the same time turning on a De La Soul record. Which being rap, you have to admit, is ultimately a form of poetry - and crass as that sounds, it is also an incredibly popular form. In fact it's never been more popular and is even slowly making political statements like some of our poetic heroes.
Poetry should still be better appreciated, especially as an appreciation of it is seen as akin to being a train-spotting anorak. You're generally regarded as harmless and a bit weird, so people tend to put you to one side in their mind. Ironically, probably whilst listening to whichever radio station plays the most R&B these days. This is a pity, because as I checked the Amazon bestseller list the highest poet is placed 293rd while 232 places above it languishes Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit - a book that I found so awful having started it I took it as a personal challenge to finish it.
Poetry is great, and it deserves better recognition in its classical form, but it has never been a popular art.
12th Feb 2004