Poetry and the Masses

[pochinuk]

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?

Beauty is the intense expression of the heart; and poetry is beautiful; and the less we think "grammar", structure, the less life blood going into the work. I composed a poem the other day, and if the two words I chose for the title did not take a step down to the last line of the poem, and if the last line of the poem did not take a step up to the title: my poem was ruined, it would not have been an intense expression of my heart: beautiful! Going down, or going up, we must still dot our eyes and cross our teas. (spelling errors intended).