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5 The Discursive Situation of Poetry Robert Archambeau “Why do poets continue to write? Why keep playing if it’s such a mug’s game? Some, no doubt, simply fail to understand the situation.” —sven birkerts The important point to notice, though, is this: Each poet knew for whom he had to write, Because their life was still the same as his. As long as art remains a parasite On any class of persons it’s alright; The only thing it must be is attendant, The only thing it mustn’t, independent. —w. h. auden statistics confirm what many have long suspected: poetry is being read by an ever-smaller slice of the American reading public. Poets and critics who have intuited this have blamed many things, CVUGPSUIFNPTUQBSUUIFZIBWFCMBNFEUIFSJTFPG.'"QSPHSBNTJO creative writing. While they have made various recommendations on how to remedy the situation, these remedies are destined for failure or, BUCFTU GPSWFSZMJNJUFETVDDFTT CFDBVTFUIFSJTFPG.'"QSPHSBNTJT merely a symptom of much larger and farther-reaching trends. These trends are unlikely to be reversed by the intervention of a few poets, critics, and arts-administrators. I’m not sure this is a bad thing. Or, in any event, I’m not sure it is worse than what a reversal of the decline in readership would entail. Let me explain. 6 The Discursive Situation of Poetry / Robert Archambeau The Monkey and the Wrench Decades of Complaint While we don’t have many instruments for measuring the place of poetry in American life, all our instruments agree: poetry has been dropping precipitously in popularity for some time. In 1992, the National Endowment for the Arts conducted a survey that concluded only 17.1% of those who read books had read any poetry in the previous year. A similar N.E.A. survey published in 2002 found that the figure had declined to 12.1%. The N.E.A. numbers for 2008 were grimmer still: only 8.3% of book readers had read any poetry in the survey period (Bain). The portion of readers who read any poetry at all has, it seems, been cut in half over sixteen years. Poetry boosters can’t help but be distressed by the trend. Poets and poetry lovers have somewhat less faith in statistics and rather more faith in intuition and personal observation than the population at large. They’ve intuited this state of affairs for more than two decades, beginning long before the statistical trend became clear in all its stark, numerical reality. As far back as 1983, Donald Hall sounded a warning note in his essay “Poetry and Ambition.” Although he did not blame the rise of the graduate creative writing programs for the loss of DPOOFDUJPOXJUIBOBVEJFODF IFEJEGFFMUIBU.'"QSPHSBNTDSFBUFE certain formal similarity among poems. The programs produced “McPoets,” writing “McPoems” that were brief, interchangeable, and unambitious. His solution, delivered with tongue firmly in cheek, was UPBCPMJTI.'"QSPHSBNTFOUJSFMZi8IBUBSJOHJOHTMPHBOGPSBOFX Cato,” wrote Hall, “Iowadelendaest!w )BMM 'JWFZFBSTMBUFS+PTFQI&QTUFJO picked up Hall’s standard, and carried it further. In the incendiary essay “Who Killed Poetry?” Epstein argued that the rise of writing poems led not only to diminishments of ambition and quality—it furthered the decline of poetry’s audience. The popular audience for poetry may have shrunk by the 1950s, argued Epstein, but at least the poets of midcentury were revered, and engaged with the larger intellectual world. By the late 1980s, though, poetry existed in “a vacuum.” And what was the nature of this vacuum? “I should say that it consists of this,” wrote Epstein, “it is scarcely read.” Indeed, he continues, The Discursive Situation of Poetry / Robert Archambeau 7 Essays into Contemporary Poetics Contemporary poetry is no longer a part of the regular intellectual diet. People of general intellectual interests who feel that they ought to read or at least know about works on modern society or recent history or novels that attempt to convey something about the way we live now, no longer feel the same compunction about contemporary poetry....It begins to seem, in fact, a sideline activity, a little as chiropractic or acupuncture is to mainstream medicine—odd, strange, but with a small cult of followers who swear by it. (Epstein) The principle culprit in the sidelining of poetry was, for Epstein, the credentialing and employment...

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