I wish people would write real poetry these days.
I keep up with quite a few blogs, and I try to find contemporary poetry to use in my classroom, but the truth is, people just don't write good poetry these days. It's all unstructured nonsense.
Where are the Wilfred Owens? Where are the Elizabeth Brownings? Where are the Emily Dickinsons, the Siegfried Sassoons and the Alfred Tennysons?
Where is all the good poetry these days? That is a real question. If you know where to find good poetry, tell me.
And I'm not talking about the stupid stream of self centered drivel that everyone is putting out. There's plenty of poetry out there, but nothing of substance. It's all:
"I walked
and saw
with
no one else
my soul
and I
sat
and cried
because it was
so
beautiful
and green, like lemons.
Take it,
baseball.
Remember?
Of course
you can't,
love.
Egypt.
"
There's nothing interesting about thoughtlessness anymore. I don't see any art in it, not when things like:
"The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed"
exist and beg to be read and thought about for years on end. I don't see any point in bothering to study that which has no substance. It gives me no pleasure and doesn't seem to enrich me whatsoever. We've finally proven that thoughtless literature can exist (thank you postmodernism, your mission is accomplished), but to what end?
I hereby declare the death of postmodernism. Bring back structure to poetry! I demand a real poem!
