Poetics Today?

Taking as example a popular song of 1923, "Yes! We Have No Bananas," and invoking Paul de Man's distinction between poetics and hermeneutics, "Poetics Today?" argues that poetry or the poetic use of language has these days to a large degree migrated, at least as far as any widespread social effectiveness goes, from printed or manuscript "poetry" to popular songs and other digitized media forms such as video games, films, board games, and the like. Were Shakespeare alive today he might well be writing film scripts, popular songs, video games, or musicals. That is where the action is these days. That is where you can be influential if you have talent, not by publishing slender volumes of printed poetry in some small press, nor by writing stage plays. This means that "poetics" these days should be to a large degree focused on the new digital media.