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Why Poetry is a Dying art Form
Poetry is a form of literature that employs rhyme and meter, and uses aesthetics and words that evoke human emotions. The words used are often full of imagery that an individual can relate to. Poetry has evolved over the years. This evolution has come as a result of a change in generations. There was a time that sonnets were very popular, and now, the lyric poems are much popular. Being a mirror in which people can reflect upon their lives, it is slowly slipping away from us. Poetry is nowadays a dying art from; this is due to the changing times and the inclusion of technology in literature.
It being a form of art, it began back, when it still existed in verbal form. In this form, it was recited or sung, and its purpose was to help people remember their laws and history. It was a way for them to store information. Some of the earliest forms of poetry were in the form of hymns and chants (Bernes 773). In order to help in memorization, most of the poems had repetition and this made it easier for them to be transmitted orally. Poetry has undergone various classifications over the years, to suit the users. From Aristotle’s classification of the genres of poetry as the tragic, epic, and comic poetry, to the aestheticians who came up with their own genres such as the epic, lyric and dramatic poetry as we know today. As literature evolved due to the eras, so did poetry, every age had its own issues addressed by poetry. For example, Shakespeare’s sonnets largely spoke about love, while Sylvia Plath’s poetry majored on her life’s experiences, which were somewhat unpleasant.
Initially, poetry was based on set rules in terms of lines and stanzas. Nowadays poetry is more free style, identified by a group of words long enough to provoke some emotional response to the reader. Poems are written to suit the poet, that is, they are written according to how the poet feels like (Cliff 377). The freedom that the poet has is a lot more, in that , he or she is able to create their own form of poetry, as long as it looks and sounds like one. This therefore shows how slowly the traditional sense of poetry is being sucked into the new form.
Poetry was often performed by reading or by recitation. Usually, to identify and separate a poem from other literary works, one just needs to listen to it being recited. This tradition has been overcome by the new age poetry. Poetry nowadays is performed in a way that one can mistake it with rap. This is because rap also focuses on the rhyme, musicality and rhythm of a given piece, while poetry only focuses on rhyme. The emergence of open mic and poetry slams is what has led to rhyme. When performing in a poetry slam, the performer says the lines in his or her own way, while portraying their own emotions according to how they interpreted the poem. In doing this, the recitation of poetry is losing its grip in the modern world, as people tend to be drawn towards the poetry slams.
The other reason why poetry is a dying art form is because it is slowly disappearing in print form (Oliveira n.d). The technological forms of literature are more common now. Most people prefer to read books on other subjects, listen to music and watch television for entertainment. This makes poetry less accessible to most people. With all the competition, poetry almost stands no chance in today’s world. This also adds to the list, on the various things that make poetry diminish.
The introduction of poetry in music genres such as hip-hop has had a lot of impact on it. Just because hip-hop lyrics are quite poetic, it does not make it poetry. The artist creates a poem to be his or her story. This has led to a new wave of poetry known as the hip-hop poetry. Poetry as it is known, in the real sense, is quite provoking, both thoughtfully and emotionally (Lehmann and Svend 424). Hip-hop does not necessarily do that. The beats that are accompany hip-hop music is what most people seem interested in. It therefore cannot educate a person, but a traditional poem can. The way that this music genre has been embraced by lots of people is what makes it difficult for the traditional poetry to thrive.
In conclusion, it is becoming clear that poetry as a genre is on the verge of dying. People have taken to ther interests, making it difficult for poetry to fit in the picture. In as much as it is incorporated in various forms of art nowadays, its relevance is becoming negligent. Poetry as a form of art should be revived and appreciated as it did before. It gives us humans something to reflect upon. The vivid imagery that it employs is thought provoking and poetry itself puts us in check. It is through poetry that we are able to look deep within us. Even though the world is changing, poetry is still an important aspect in the lives of people, and therefore it must be made existent, just like the other genres.
Works Cited
Bernes, Jasper. “Art, Work, Endlessness: Flarf and Conceptual Poetry among the Trolls.” Critical Inquiry 42.4 (2016): 760-782.
Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle. “Becoming poetry teachers: Studying poems through choral reading.” Changing English 23.4 (2016): 375-386.
Lehmann, Olga V., and Svend Brinkmann. “Revisiting “the art of being fragile”: Why cultural psychology needs literature and poetry.” Culture & Psychology 26.3 (2020): 417-433.
Oliveira, Hugo Gonçalo. “A survey on intelligent poetry generation: Languages, features, techniques, reutilisation and evaluation.” Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Natural Language Generation. 2017.