Young Writers Society

A classmate and I were talking about his English homework the other day and he asked me a question that kind of made me really wonder: "Why do people even write poetry any more?"

I mean, obviously they do as this forum has made quite evident but how often any more do you hear about famous poets in the news or see poetry books topping the best seller lists.
So I felt compelled to ask the question here. Do you think that, in this day and age, poetry is dead?

No, how many towns hold poetry contests? How many countries still have Poet Laureates? How many countries hold national contests? Was music close to death at one time? Is art perpetually close to death because only a few people can make money?

Some things are simply fashionable to say. Everything must adapt or suffer.

Define dead.

Poetry is alive in a different sense, gone are the days of troubadours and poets and it's popularity. But poetry continues to thrive through every generation as a form of pleasure, catharsis, and self-expression. What makes rap any different from poetry? Nothing. It's poetry spoken to the beat of music. Poetry exists in a different form, and thriving, despite a lack in popularity in classic poetry.

Poetry exists in a different form, and thriving, despite a lack in popularity in classic poetry.

This.

Unfortunately poetry is less popular than it used to be. But I know I like to write poetry because it is rather ageless. In poetry, I can use the words that I only wish I could be using in everyday language. You can share some feelings with poetry, depending on the kind you write.
I think poetry seems to be dying because people don't read enough anymore. They can be constantly entertained by the media, video games, cell phones, etc... People wrote poetry like crazy because they needed entertainment, just like we do now. Unfortunately, poety can also be hard work and the increasing lassitude of modern society would explain a decrease in how often write poetry.
If you find yourself wishing you could write poetry or just don't write very often, withdraw from society for about a week. If you're at home, no phone, no TV, no gaming, etc. If you can, get out in nature to write because some of the smallest things in nature are the things that will inspire you. Another thing you can do to be inspired is to delve deep into yourself and discover what you think. Or just let the pen write and discover something about yourself, which is another thing I believe people rarely will let themselves do anymore.
In summary, poetry is not dead because some people won't let go of it (like myself). It is just hard to find because fewer people care about it.

Just the other day in English, We had to watch this documentary called " Louder than a bomb." It's about this poetry slam competition-like thing in Chicago. Teams from different schools go up to the Mic and read poems that they wrote, solo and in groups. It was really sad.

But anyway, this has been going on for almost a decade. I just thought it was cool that there were actually opportunities like that out there. I was actually asking myself the same question for awhile, but the answer honestly is no.

Poetry doesn't sell like it used to, but thats not exactly the point. Everybody writes poetry from time to time. Everybody knows what it is. Everybody reads it, whether they'll admit it or not. It is most defiantly alive.

Poetry, in a way, is quite a bit like art. Seeing as nowadays the artists we know and or speak about have been dead for hundreds of years (unless you want to quote onto pop culturalism and what not), but how much do we actually see artists becoming painstakingly famous these days? Not very much. Then again, a lot of artists get their popularity after they are dead.

So I suppose that raises my question. Do you think poetry is under this same catagorey? At least, classical poetry?

And anyways, more modernized poetry, as Kamas stated prior, can be seen in rap and what not. Even song lyrics are a version of something poetic.

Or that book series! What was it called... Crank, Burn, something, something... ugh, the writer was Hopkins. That book serious was super popular and written in poetic form, whether good poetry or not!

~Walker

I think the question is, was poetry ever a big part of most people's lives? We look back on the past and see the art of the times (including poetry, paintings, sculpture, prose literature), but what percentage of their contemporaries would have read that?

I think poetry is still enjoyed by people who like poetry, be they poets and/or readers. I don't think there's any evidence that this group is shrinking, in fact, in modern society where more people get a chance to become literate, it's probably growing!

I think most of the people in this thread already agree that poetry isn't dead, but is a changing medium which adapts in different ways to modernity. I'm going to limb it and disagree with the suggestion that we should consider rap modern poetry (these things pain me).

I would hazard to agree with Kibble. The amount of people who enjoy, read and create poetry probably sustains itself throughout the changing centuries. I think people like to tote that things are dying (God is Dead, Death of the Author, is Poetry Dead?) without any real regard to whether these things are happening. Not to say they aren't, or could be, but it's such an odd leap to make. Particularly, I think, for someone of highschool age. You're so sheltered and enclosed, I knew almost no one who read poetry in high school. Now I know a whole slew of people, because my horizons altered and I even started picking it up. Do I think the poetry readers and writers are teenagers? No. I'm sure they're there, as poetry is an excellent medium for it, but I think the poetry readers start in young adulthood and onward.

And, because people from that age tend to be insular in a different manner, rather than hanging out with their non-poetry reading friends and rambling about it, they (like everyone else in the world) compartmentalise and avoid the subject.

We just don't hear about the poetry readers, they're too busy reading poetry.

Poetry is dead in the sense that those of us who plan to be poets also need day jobs and shouldn't plan to be famous. How many people can name the reigning Poet Laureate of the US? Of the UK? A few poets and college professors. That's it.

That said, I'm going to wax cliche and say that poetry will never truly be dead as long as it remains a fire in even a single human heart. At least it sounds like a nice, poetic thing to say. For a more realistic assessment of the state of modern poetry, try naming five great poets who wrote after, let's say Larkin. Then ask a non-poet friend to do the same.

I wouldn't say so. No. Everyday people come accross meter and rhyme all throughout their days, just not in conventional ways, which is what I think you are referring to. And it's not as if someone who aspired to become a poet all their life hundreds of years ago could do so with success, unless they were very lucky. I mean, before Irving Berlin became famous, I'm pretty sure he worked at many blue-collar jobs (yes, I know. Songwriter. And rather recent, too. Still, same thing, in light of the topic) and did not acheive fame and immortality as a songwriter right away. So the answer is most definately no. Although it may seem through the media and such that people today have no interest for poetry, that is definately not the case.
-Alex

Poetry dies every five and a half years.

And don't talk about the lamentable ignorance of the current Poet Laureate's name. Most official titles and their factory literature today can't hold a wicker flame to the poetry I've seen from unknowns.

There are crackheads out there who compose work better - and do on a regular basis - than we can on YWS. There are a lot of people on this website and I mean A LOT who can trump dear W.S. Merwin on a rainy day.

But of course, the dirty hobos can only write their masterpieces on bathroom walls and these are washed away by the cleaning crew every so often, and the coked up kids either fade into even more obscurity or wander after different pursuits and so we end up back on square one that is this little chessboard of your attempt to muse about why the mainstream media doesn't lift us up like bishops and knights.

tl;dr - If I were approached by the so-called experts in charge of the Nobel Prize on Literature (not saying that'll ever happen), I would burn all public copies of my work and go into hiding. And if that immediately means that my poetry is dead and not just unwilling to be a goose for the world's fat appetite then, well, I'll be!

Galerius wrote:Poetry dies every five and a half years.

And don't talk about the lamentable ignorance of the current Poet Laureate's name. Most official titles and their factory literature today can't hold a wicker flame to the poetry I've seen from unknowns.

There are crackheads out there who compose work better - and do on a regular basis - than we can on YWS. There are a lot of people on this website and I mean A LOT who can trump dear W.S. Merwin on a rainy day.

But of course, the dirty hobos can only write their masterpieces on bathroom walls and these are washed away by the cleaning crew every so often, and the coked up kids either fade into even more obscurity or wander after different pursuits and so we end up back on square one that is this little chessboard of your attempt to muse about why the mainstream media doesn't lift us up like bishops and knights.

tl;dr - If I were approached by the so-called experts in charge of the Nobel Prize on Literature (not saying that'll ever happen), I would burn all public copies of my work and go into hiding. And if that immediately means that my poetry is dead and not just unwilling to be a goose for the world's fat appetite then, well, I'll be!

Like a baws.

Agree with this 12 year olds words by the way.

I do not believe poetry is dead. In fact, it is very much alive today. We just don't recognize poets like they used to back when.