‘Poetry Dies: Influential Artistic Method of Illuminating Human Truth Passed Yesterday’ by Ron L. Hodges

Poetry, arguably the most powerful form of communication ever devised by mankind, has died. It was thousands of years old.

Poetry died yesterday after a prolonged illness. Trapped in a meaningless, vegetative state for some time, feeding tubes were removed, allowing Poetry to die with dignity.

Aristotle once wrote, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” And from the time of the Ancient Greeks through the middle part of the 20^th century, Poetry, through the keen words of rich and poor, sinner and theologian, woman and man, old and young, wrestled universal Truth from the chaos of human existence.

However, after the literary theory of Deconstruction came into vogue among elites, and Postmodernism established its reign among academics in general, Poetry gradually fell out of favor among the general population.

As a consequence of this intellectual revolution, Truth was no longer seen as a goal of Poetry because meaning itself became a form of societal oppression. Truth abandoned as an aesthetic destination, writers began to write obscure, stream-of-consciousness works that defied any interpretation and, at best, merely conveyed some sort of feeling, usually confusion (in fact, the more dumbfounded the reader, the better received the poem).

Long gone were the days in which Poetry, as John Keats said, endeavored to “…strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” The reader was no longer a consideration.

Literary elites found this change in Poetry to be liberating: Appealing to readers was creatively stifling—a tool of the establishment to institute uniformity. So they began rooting out any Poetry considered “traditional,” “classical,” or “meaningful.”

However, members of the non-PhD and MFA population mostly rejected this development in Poetry. They looked back with nostalgia on such artists as John Donne, William Shakespeare, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, and Maya Angelou, the ones whom non-experts could comprehend, enjoy, and perhaps learn from, but few new writers attempted such Poetry, and if they did, they would never appear in a prestigious publication.

Thus, the non-academic of average or above-average intelligence (or even the genius, for that matter) stopped pursuing Poetry. Why, many reasoned, devote time on an activity in which no insight could be gained? And Poetry became a recluse of the Ivory Tower.

Poetry, which had once been one of the great societal influences, was only circulated among elites through select journals, mostly those attached to universities because low-subscription numbers were not an impediment to publication; and these elites protected their vision of Poetry dogmatically through creative writing programs.

For a short time, Poetry did make some headway into the general population through its “slam” or “performance” variation, but this movement was short-lived.

Ultimately, Poetry written to communicate essential ideas of human existence through vibrant, powerful language was—for all time—a relic of the past. Poetry had become a medium for cleverly-worded obfuscation and unattached feeling; it would never mean anything again.

So, Poetry’s meaningless existence was ended yesterday.

Poetry is survived by Prose, which still often means something; Poetry joins its siblings, Painting and Sculpture, in death.

Cremation is planned.

Ron L. Hodges is a long-time English teacher, having taught at Oxford Academy in Cypress, California, for the past ten years. About a year ago he started writing poetry. He lives in Orange County, California with his wife and two sons.

Featured Image: “Erato, Muse of Poetry”  by Edward John Poynter