Poetry and the Masses

[milo]

I saw this discussion touched on in a thread, and thought it might make a good discussion here.

In my own words:

The idea was that poetry is too focused on grammar, structure, and highbrow words to appeal to the 6-7 billion people on this world. What we should do is move to something that appeals to the masses, and is more of a populous approach. This way would say: people like cliches for a reason, people aren't fond of grammar, or using a thesaurus.

If poetry is to be widespread it must come down from its self imposed perch.

I'm not trying to give a straw man argument just represent how I took the message.

My view, poetry has never been popular. If the answer is to lower the bar to gain popularity, I'd rather all poetry burn. I'd rather we all turned on reality TV, and forgot about it. I think this approach makes poetry nothing worth saving.

Art should move you. This insipid dumbing down of poetry wouldn't accomplish that purpose. It would make it no different than Muzak.

Maybe I'm preaching to the choir (cliche for the masses) or maybe I'm not.

Thoughts?

Bad poetry is easy.
Good poetry is hard.
Great poetry is really, really, really fucking hard.
I always see this discussion come up when a new writer comes to the realization that it might be easier to convince the whole world to embrace bad poetry than to write great poetry.
Too fucking bad. We don't want cheap and easy. We want to be dumbstruck with awe at something rare enough we couldn't do it ourselves even if we have to slough through a thousand lines of shit to get it.
Tough breaks. Sharpen your pencils. Roll up your sleeves. Buy a lot of notebooks. Empty the trash bin a lot.