More of this Feature • “Two Swan Songs & A Second Coming,” poems by klipschutz

Join the Discussion • Re: Poetry Is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care? “...first-hand history of poetry for the last 30 years (for us young’ens!)”    --Wynne Mercado “Poetry hasn’t been popular with the masses since antiquity... [but] poetry is waxing in 2003, not waning.”    --BARDONE1

Related Articles • The Center Cannot Hold: Slam, Academia & the Battle for America’s Bourgeoisie, by Victor Infante • Mediaization, Democratization, Popularization: Poetry Makes Its Move Move, by Bob Holman

Elsewhere on the Web • “Poetry Is Dead,” the Newsweek article by Bruce Wexler which sparked this essay

Bruce Wexler has declared poetry dead, leaving only the question, “Who the hell is Bruce Wexler, and why the hell should we care?” Writing in the pages of Newsweek, he says “I find it disturbing that no one I know has cracked open a book of poetry in decades and that I, who once spent countless hours reading contemporary poets like Lowell and Berryman, can no longer even name a living poet.”

I’m not sure which is more disturbing: the fact that a virtually anonymous middle-aged white guy has lost touch with American poetry is evidently grounds for coverage by a national news magazine, or that Wexler never seems to consider that his disinterest in poetry may well be a failing in himself, rather than in the art form.

“My interest waned,” writes Wexler. “On the surface, I suppose it was because I had other interests that demanded my time and attention: I got married, had children, pursued my career, bought a house. With apologies to Frost, I began to find more relevance in articles about interest rates than essays on the sprung rhythm of Hopkins.”

This is the same logical fallacy as saying, as a friend put it to me, “I don’t like ice cream, therefore no one does.” Moreover, as in the vast majority of articles critical of the state of contemporary poetry, the author doesn’t even make a cursory effort to investigate whether he’s been missing something. Only at the end of the essay does Wexler reveal that he celebrated National Poetry Month by discovering that the current Poet Laureate is Billy Collins. Hey, Bruce! There are single-celled organisms 10,000 leagues beneath the sea that could have told you that one! Perhaps we could name a handful of others whose names are generally recognizable even to those of you cloistered in an Arctic research station or wherever you’ve been? Lawrence Ferlinghetti, perhaps? Maya Angelou? We ain’t talking obscure here.

Still, perhaps it’s not fair to be flip.... except that I get tired of writers like Wexler declaring poetry dead by demonstrating their own ignorance. “I am part of a world that apotheosizes the trendy,” writes Wexler, “and poetry is just about as untrendy as it gets. I want to read books with buzz -- in part because I make my living as a ghostwriter of and collaborator on books -- and I can’t remember the last book of poetry that created even a dying mosquito’s worth of hum. I am also lazy, and poetry takes work.”

So does journalism. If Wexler had made one iota of effort, he’d have noticed a few things: like thousands upon thousands of people attending recent poetry festivals in locales as diverse as Orange County, California, and Austin, Texas... Or the 10,000 people who attend the National Poetry Slam Finals annually...

Or the fact that poetry sales have been rising for years now, even through the bad economy, and Sam Hamill’s Poets Against the War (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2003) and Todd Swift’s 100 Poets Against the War (Salt Publishing, February 2003) are not only garnering that superficial pop buzz Wexler so craves, but have also attracted hundreds of thousands of readers. Most ironic of all, the man lives in Chicago (!), birthplace of the poetry slam and home to the Green Mill, where poetry of all forms can be found being read to large crowds on any night of the week. If Wexler is that oblivious to his own surroundings, it’s no surprise that he’s unaware of the regular standing-room-only crowds at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café and the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, the Poetry Lounge in Los Angeles, the Puro Slam in San Antonio, the Java Hut in Worcester, and on, and on, and on.

Poetry has actually transformed over the years, and it’s quite possible that Wexler has missed the boat. So, Bruce, here’s the crash course: Poetry is no longer insular -- it’s a living, growing, vibrant art form. Poetry is no longer the province of the white middle class -- it’s been embraced by youths and minorities. Poetry is not uncool -- why else would teenage black kids in inner cities so proudly proclaim themselves poets?

Poetry is alive, and well. Bruce Wexler, on the other hand is… well… who cares?

Victor Infante

Next page > “Two Swan Songs & A Second Coming,” a triptych of poems by klipschutz, inspired by this article > page 1, 2

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Victor Infante was our Orange County Museletter correspondent until 2001, when he moved back to Worcester, Massachusetts and then became our New England correspondent. His collection of poems, Learning To Speak, was released by FarStarFire Press in 1999. His previous feature articles for About Poetry are:

• “Raising Their Voices: Poets speak out against the war with Iraq.”
  
  
• “Remembering Marta Mitrovich,” memoir of a poet who lit the poetry fires in Orange County, California and died in the spring of 2002.
  
  
• “Poetry in Times Like These,” a meditation on poetry’s place and the debt of our art in the post-9.11.01 time of war & crisis.
  
  
• “The Center Cannot Hold: Slam, Academia & the Battle for America’s Bourgeoisie,” an essay on the generational cycles of poets & poetic institutions, class & politics in American poetry, slam poetry’s evolution into a new establishment.
  
  
• “The Beat Goes On: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still a Rebel,” an interview with Ferlinghetti on the Poet as Outsider.
  
  
• “Stranded: Poet Mark Strand Preaches Political Indifference at UCI,” a response to the effort to divorce poetry from politics.
  
  
• “But What If These Are Poetic Times?,” a commentary on the furor following LA Weekly’s fall 1999 review of local poetry.

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