An elegy — and an ode

Blank verse, free verse, limericks ... What role did newspapers play in the decline of poetry?

You may not have noticed, but April is National Poetry Month, now celebrating its 20th year in Canada.

Poetry month, which is also celebrated in the U.S. each April, is aimed at reviving what some say is a dying art. There are indeed statistics that confirm this, but I wonder how much responsibility lies with newspapers?

After all, once upon a time, newspapers and magazines were where most poetry was read. Some estimate that four million poems were published in British newspapers during the 19th century alone.

John Keats’s first published poem appeared in the Examiner, a British magazine, in 1816. Emily Dickinson’s first published poem appeared in the Springfield Republican newspaper in 1858. One of Robert Frost’s first poems was published in 1894 in the Independent, a U.S. weekly literary journal, which paid him $15. Sylvia Plath’s first poem was published in the Boston Herald in 1941 when she was only eight.

That is not to say some newspapers and magazines don’t still publish poetry for poetry’s sake, but the golden days are long, long gone.

And it’s almost inconceivable that an unknown kid such as Frost, without reputation or reference, could receive $400, which is roughly what that $15 would be worth now, for one poem today.

The Hamilton Spectator once published poetry like that. But unfortunately not for at least a half a century, with some exceptions.

We publish poems by students on our weekly Pulse page. We print poetry if we are writing about the poet. Perhaps a poem — or an excerpt — would be printed as part of a larger article and happened to fit the theme. And of course we annually publish “In Flanders Fields,” the famous First World War poem by the Canadian John McCrae.

But that’s about it.

What happened? Why do you not find poetry as a common feature in newspapers today?

It may be that there is simply no space amid all the news.

It may be that people are more interested in news about more modern art. Indeed, poetry, like prose, is being squeezed out by the growing list of other artistic endeavours — food, gardening, music, movies ...

They say only opera is less popular among the general artsgoing public than poetry.

The decline is not for lack of trying by many brave artistic souls. Poetry slams are very popular. Many Canadian cities have poet laureates (but not Hamilton). Poetry is more accessible via the internet than ever before. There are awards and contests. And there is a Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

But still the public turns toward other diversions. That fact — or assumption — is what may be infecting newspaper editors. We may be reluctant to publish stuff people won’t read.

Or we may be editors such as myself, who cannot judge a good poem from a bad one, blank verse from free verse, tasteless limericks from profound haiku, sonnets from ballads.

Perhaps we are simply too afraid to make a decision — it’s not as if we don’t get submissions — or terrified of the deluge that might follow.