The death of poetry

Poetry in English, like God, is dead.

It was killed in America by Whitman, though that was not his intention.

Anyone with even a minor in English knows this.

Bloody shame.

Interesting that painting, too, became gravely ill, and sculpture only in lesser degree, over the same period.

Critics, museums, patrons, schools, and producers can call anything art, poetry, music, drama, or dance, in defiance of meanings settled by centuries of practice.

That doesn't make it true.

Nor even that, though different, it's just as good, or anyway somewhat good.

Audiences don't need to play along.