Freedom of expression in Poetry.

[Carousal]

Poets are elitist, just not profitable or important ones. If you want to be profitable open a porn site. What poets need to come to terms with is that poetry is unimportant today. In the world before electronics poetry could have some importance because it had little competitions and readers were willing to put time into it (well at least until the modernist killed it). Poets write because they have to, that doesn't mean there has to be an audience. Sure there are many people on poetry sites, but those are about vanity, which is not unlike the Kardashian effect, in that sycophants abound to support those of no talent, simply to be apart of something, so that they too can feel important (I know it's completely baffling as it defies the second law of thermodynamics, but there you go).

Ah poetry, you have my love, but not my affection.

I agree mostly with what you say and I take it that the sites you are referring to are the type where everything anyone writes is ‘absolutely awesome’ Yeah I started on some of those sites. Maybe there’s an element of vanity there but also a degree of personally therapy writing. The love and bleeding hearts threads for example are they really what can be described as poetry? And as you have pointed out the changes in lifestyle, but you nailed it when you mentioned the Modernist and even more the move to Post Modernistic writing.

If all you can offer is the stuff that requires the reader to dissect the poem line by line to figure out the meaning, if it has one, the public aint going to bother, end of story.



Dale

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I love you
Like a warm summer's day
I love you
I hope you never go away
I love you
Like green leaves on the trees
I love you
When you get down on your knees

Will that get me an audience?

Yep, try the gift card makers.