Last Updated: 25.10.21 2132
Poetry is dead. Now, you may ask, was it ever alive? It is likely that you did not ask this, but I did. I once heard that slam poetry is the death of art. It certainly marks the death of poetry and its original purpose. However, was this original purpose ever a noble one? Perhaps poetry was never any good to begin with. Poetry certainly shouldn't count as literature. It hardly counts as such when compared to novels, biographies, epics, and historical texts. Even those who consider poetry to be separate from literature still consider it to be an art which involves words, similarly to music containing lyrics. I am skeptical of whether or not poetry ought to be considered an art at all to begin with. It seems to me that it is not. The idea of something such as poetry is nice. Words flowing together, not designed to follow a format or grammar, but rather which express thoughts in the style of the narrator. The question is: Did it ever achieve this goal? Perhaps poetry is more like communism. Nothing more than something people consider to be a pretty thought, never properly implemented: which probably never can be properly implemented. So-called "poets" often sacrifice their "artistic meaning" when they change words as they are writing or rewrite something to fit a rhyming scheme or to make it look pretty. In reality, poetry must be raw to be anywhere near artistic. As soon as you add rules to poetry, and start making things such as limericks and haikus, the entire point of poetry is ruined. These types of poems have existed for as along as the average person can recall. People were taught these types of poems in school forcefully, and had to write "artistically" within the confines set by a flunkie who never got past being in a high school. So it seems, so far, that I am making the point that poetry is not artistic. So what; just because it isn't artistic, doesn't mean it is dead? Yes, it does. The entire purpose of poetry was to be a form of art. If all, or the vast majority, of poetry is written by people devoid of any creativity or artistic intentions, then poetry as an art form is dead. It has been dead for so long that I question whether or not it was ever alive. Occasionally someone comes around and tries to awaken the corpse, but it never lasts long. I am not someone who hates all poetry just because it is poetry. I simply hate how lifeless of an art it is and how people such as Walt Whitman are praised when they write so indecisively so as to not offend anyone. I have long searched for good poetry to enjoy. Alas, genuine poetry is immensely scarce.
When from out of error's darkness
With a word both sure and ardent
I had drawn the fallen soul
And you, filled with the deepest torment,
Cursed the vice that had ensnared you
And so doing wrung your hands;
When, punishing with recollection
Forgetful conscience, you then told
The tale of all that went before me,
And suddenly you hid your face
In trembling hands and, filled with horror,
Fillled with shame, dissolved in tears,
Indignant as you were, and shaken...
N.A. Nekrasov
It is entirely possible to write wonderful poetry which can invoke emotion and imagery. As time goes on, this becomes more and more of a rare thing with less and less people alive capable of doing it. The only way to do it is to abandon the rules: the stone wall of poetry. Abandon the slam poetry and the box given to you; allow your heart to guide your hand, grasping onto the pen, flowing onto the page on which you write.