What is Poetry telling us about us today?

[tun]

So looking at internet poetry on forums, social media, Reddit, wherever you want to look at it, or even contemporary poetry journals, I think all of it reveals something very, very concerning, or strange, or unexpected, or pathological. Because I thought poetry was supposed to be about life, and I think that poetry has utterly ceased to be about life. 

What I mean is, let's say I'm an alien remote viewing Earth, and I only have access to this kind of poetry forums, social media, poetry, Reddit, etc., or contemporary poetry journals, okay? And that's all the information I'm going to get about life on Earth. Now, you know, something that would happen would be - that I would not get any sense that human beings reproduce sexually, or that sex is really a significant thing in human life and affairs. 

I might see the odd poem that goes; Ooh, ooh, ah, ah, touch me there, yes, I'm going to explode, wow! Right? Rubbish. But I'm not going to see something that says, you know, which starts with the opening line, you know;

'My libido has always been a burden to me, and here's why'.

Or

'I haven't ever in my life experienced the loving affectionate touch of a romantic partner, and now I'm dying'.

Or anything. Or, you know, or just something bawdy. You know;

'I think about my neighbor's body, and I bet it's like this, and I bet it's like that', 

or whatever, right? Nothing. Right? 

And then, regarding, you know, major historical events, you know, which you'd expect to be registered in poetry, they aren't. 

There's nothing about the pandemic response. There's nobody saying anything about it. There's nobody saying, you know,

'The pandemic response was the most egregious episode of state-sponsored psychological terror in human history. Right? Let's discuss it.' No one's saying that. 

Or, you know, or no one's saying the opposite, that the pandemic response was 100% necessary, or nothing. 

Nobody's saying, 'I liked the pandemic because....', or nobody's saying, 'I hated the pandemic because....' nothing. 

The aliens wouldn't know there'd been a pandemic, right? And that doesn't feel normal or reasonable or sensible to me. 

There's nothing normal about that, right? It feels like there's a degree of self-censorship happening, right, that is more extreme than any censorship that happened in, you know, totalitarian communist regimes, right? The result is a stricter kind of censorship than anything we've ever had in human history, because it is self imposed and created, and it's happening now, right? And that's what I see, you know, in the poetry. 

Let us say that the aliens could time travel and they looked at the poetry from today and then they could also go off in their ships or remote viewing consoles, come back 50 years ago and look at poetry in the 1970s that people were writing, right? Imagine if social media and poetry forums existed in the 70s. Are you going to tell me that of the 1970s people were not going to speak about a pandemic, not going to speak about, you know, the fact that they wanted to have sex with their next-door neighbor? Not going to speak about the pain of, you know, never being touched by a romantic partner, just the same as today? Or would it be different, right? Would it be different? Because what's happened I find utterly extraordinary and bizarre, okay? And everybody's pretending that it isn't happening. 

It's as if everybody's been playing a game of God knows what? 'You've got to copy me and then I'm going to copy you and let us all keep copying each other until our expression is utterly void of meaning'. How has this happened? 

What is this? It hardly seems real - because the effect is total in my experience. Everybody seems, as far as I can see, to be pretending that the real world does not exist - and if Poetry is a sort of barometer for the mental, moral and emotional states and health of humanity; What is it now telling us?

[CRNDLSM]

Kurt vonnegut has a famous speech where he told college kids to write a poem every day and then throw it away. Its not for anyone but you here in this moment, but its a moment that is so important to have regardless.

Have you read my poetry? Probably not, I got tired of pushing and promoting and now I read your stuff and other newbies stuff and regular posters stuff and you know.

The algorithm is all generalizations and paid for botpages so at least here im more confident what I read is real.
I get political stuff everywhere from every side and its always about how bad the other side is so, you know? Keep writing, just do it, its good for the world

[patrickoday]

Everyone is afraid of what others will think of their naked self. More than that, I don't think they are afraid of the individuals themselves, but rather what the mob will have to say when their name is tossed into the middle of the Ring of Judgment. They fear the wrath of humanity gone astray. It is a fearsome beast indeed, but we live in the part of the cycle where weak men give rise to hard times and courage among them is rare. There are and will be more brave souls to confront the beast, but the Ring of Judgement still holds immense power. 

I think social media is a parasite that leaches the civility out of humanity. At least in the way that it's allowed to function today. Something needs to be done about the 'For You' 'Recommended' and just the optimization for attention in general.

[dukealien]

Speaking for myself, I do write (poetry) on contemporary topics, but I'm a bit on the old/conservative side and it's seldom appreciated here unless I really spill my guts in it.  (This is the fallacy of authenticity where only feelz substantiate truth.)

There's a certain "market" for nonsense and near-nonsense - it's diverting, and everyone needs that.

Back to contemporary issues (and history, of which they are, of course, a part, we just don't know it yet) - my issue is not with social media but with The Frame, as I've called it, the band of ads that surrounds for-profit (or not-for-profit-but-here-are-our-beloved-sponsors-and-their-wares) content.  Notice how your flat-screen keeps getting bigger but the content in the middle doesn't?  The other form of The Frame is what's also called the Overton Window - what's allowed to be said and shown versus filtered as beyond the pale.  For example, it was formerly as forbidden to question "trans" formulas as it is (still) to question doctrinaire feminism or, shall we say, gayety.  To be prickly and touchy all at once:  grumpy, aggressive hedgehogs, and not even cute.

This site, it will be noted, is without the advertising frame.  And - for the most part - the Overton frame as well.  It does have rules, but they're minimal and mostly just good sense.  Labors of love can be like that.

Envy aside, we also evade the publish-or-perish problem which increasingly bedevils science.  Where citations=truth, Gresham's Law reigns; AI and LLMs maximize the worst.  A subject that deserves a (good) hand-crafted poem.

[busker]

I don't think what you are saying is true at all. There is a plenty of contemporary poetry that reflects contemporary events, or at least the writer's responses to it. It just so happens that there is that much more poetry being published today, and 90% of art at any time has been about the artist's ego, an utterly boring affair.

That said, reading Keats you'd have no idea that there was such a thing as a French Revolution. I didn't say it, a famous critic did.