14.5.08

Is poetry dead? No. Yes. No...

Not a really in-depth piece from my hometown newspaper but it's heart is in the right place.

From the Montreal Gazette:

Some, of course, claim our hypertrophic times have killed poetry. "Popular poetry is dead, dead, dead," critic John Derbyshire. says Poet Alexander Rubio echoed this sentiment: "The sad fact is that poetry, as anything other than a private concern, or a parlour game between a closed circle of devotees, is a thing long gone."

Novelist Martin Amis was even more blunt: "You may have noticed that poetry is dead. The obituary has already been written."

The death of poetry has been announced before. Some have argued poetry has little relevance outside a cozy coterie of self-replicating academics, editors, publishers and prize-funding bureaucrats. But others point to slams, literary cafés and hundreds of Internet sites devoted to poetry as evidence of its resurgence.


More here.

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