This is republished from December 30, 2022
Every few years, some wiseacre proclaims in an article that “Poetry is Dead.” The most recent proclamation of poetry’s death, “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago This Month,” was published this week by a conservative critic, Matthew Walther, who thinks T.S. Eliot is still somehow controversial.
Added to which, Eliot was a notorious misogynist and antisemite, two things Walther skips over with his devotion to nonsense. Walther said: “We stopped writing good poetry because we are now incapable of doing so. The culprit is not bad pedagogy or formal experimentation but rather the very conditions of modern life, which have demystified and alienated us from the natural world.”
This is a case of someone talking about poetry who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Someone who thinks vanilla is too spicy. Someone who has to wait in his mom’s Oldsmobile while she goes to get scratch-off tickets because he brought ninja stars to school. Someone who thinks the Beatles got worse after Revolver. Someone who downloads the Dave Matthews Band onto his Zune. Someone who feels comfortable taking a first date to Applebee’s and then talking at length about his high school growth spurt. Someone who thinks the Randy Quaid, Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, and Robert Downey, Jr. era of Saturday Night Live was the peak. Someone who sits with three other old guys in a McDonald’s complaining about “Orientals.” Someone who thinks Elon Musk is “owning the libs.” Someone who misses Paula Deen.
Consider how often poetry has died then reappeared and then died and reappeared. A quick search shows that poetry has died numerous times before, beginning in 1991:
May 1991, The Atlantic, “Can Poetry Matter?”
Spring 1995, VQR, “How Dead is Poetry?”
August 1998, Commentary, “Who Killed Poetry?”
May 2003, Newsweek, “Poetry is Dead. Does Anybody Really Care?”
January 2013, The Washington Post, “Is Poetry Dead?”
February 2013, The Independent, “Poetry slams do nothing to help the art form survive”
July 2014, The New York Times, “Does Poetry Matter?”
April 2015, The Washington Post, “Poetry is Going Extinct”
June 2015, CNN, “Does Poetry Matter?”
Poetry is not dying and being resuscitated. Each poem is entering a stream of conversation with all the poems that came before, and all those that hopefully will come in the future. Poetry doesn’t rise from the dead like a zombie. To anyone who finds something insightful about these resurrections, consider that poetry is not a noun or the finished product. Poetry is a verb—active process of compassionate imagination.
Zombie T.S. Eliot is not going to wake up and chase Rick Grimes, or anyone else, around town. Eliot is in the past, and he remains in the past. Many of his most striking innovations were actually suggested by Ezra Pound. He got even more conservative as he aged, and, in the greatest of his crimes, is responsible for the musical CATS. All things that are avant-garde eventually become garde—they become the center rather than the periphery. And all poetry comes from the periphery.
Poetry continues because the periphery will still continue and poets speaking from that periphery will always continue to have value. Poetry is not connected to subject matter. It has nothing to do with our supposed alienation from the natural world.
Poetry is about finding the poem. Poems are not meant to confirm what you already know or think … the opposite. They're meant to give insight and clarity into something withheld from us. To paraphrase Adrienne Rich, Poetry is a polyglot city … you can listen to poems there without feeling like you're obligated to live there.
Poetry isn’t dead, dying, or death-defying. Poetry is about dealing with radioactive material and about paying attention to near-death experiences. The situation we’re actually in requires new and better tools; poems are like protective suits that let us deal directly with cosmic rays.
Yes, poetry can withstand cosmic rays, radioactive material, sad memories, Zombie Eliot, Zombie Pound, and subjects other than “the natural world.”
Here’s an idea: let’s limit poetry and ourselves by writing about daffodils “fluttering and dancing in the breeze” at the expense of all the other things. It’s a known fact that The New York Times is 6-8 years behind on all cultural things. Lamenting that there isn’t a parade for the 100th anniversary of “The Waste Land” shows about as much awareness as reporting that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Other gems from supposedly our finest newspaper: that George Santos isn’t that bad, that there are rich people taking “White Lotus” vacations, that Ukraine is taking a “hardline position” equivalent to Russia’s, that babies shouldn’t be allowed in first class, and that Sam Bankman-Fried’s crimes are small potatoes compared to gang violence in the Bahamas.
From this perspective, the “Poetry died with Eliot” idea seems to fit with their normalized ignorance and indifference, or its presentation of right-wing talking points as fact.
Articles such as “Poetry Died 100 Years Ago This Month” are so unaware, so poorly thought-through, so slothful. They don’t seem to recognize the obvious: if you think poetry died or is dead, then maybe it has more to do with you than with poetry.
About Sean Singer
Have you considered a career in comedy? "Someone who downloads the Dave Matthews Band onto his Zune." OMG I can't stop laughing. Great post, Sean!
A hilarious and persuasive takedown, Sean. I guess Walther has read Keats and agrees that Newton's to blame. Poetry can't coexist with understanding how rainbows work. Sad!