Poetry's demise?

"If poetry is dead, who killed it? In the 19th century it was a vital part of Western culture. Writers like Byron and Tennyson were practically rock stars. "Every newspaper in the U.S. printed poems," says Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. 'At the end of Longfellow's life, his birthday was like a national holiday.'

"But the 20th century saw the rise of Modernism and brilliant but difficult and allusive writers like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. (Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was first published in Poetry magazine.) Poems became less like high-end pop songs and more like math problems to be solved. They turned into the property of snobs and professors. They started to feel like homework. "It's thought of as a subject to be taught instead of simply an art to be enjoyed," says Christian Wiman, Poetry's editor."

- Lev Grossman, "Poems for the People," Time, 1/16/07

I read this quote today and thought about my students and how I drag them by the noses through Ginsberg or Whitman. We beat the poems to death, wringing meaning out of them. Yet some of my students have no problem enjoying the alliterative, onomatopoeic, rhyming, metered hip hop. Those songs play with language, beat, imagery and words in ways that would make Whitman squeal. But instead of building off the interest in language my students demonstrate with every flick of an ipod, I try to rouse their attention towards Billy Collins or Emily Dickenson.

I wonder if I'm looking or listening enough in the right direction. Maybe I should be looking again for high end pop songs.