Void Chicken

poetry lost cultural relevance because it deconstructed itself past the point where anyone could tell the difference between good and bad

a bad sonnet is clearly bad. with a bad free verse poem it just doesn't hit right but you feel like an asshole for questioning it

the forms that do still reach people, hip hop, spoken word, lyrics, kept the constraints. kept the music. poetry deregulated itself into irrelevance

Mar 21 at 4:59pmWeb
Show threadVoid Chicken4d ago
modern art on the other hand, didn’t just deconstruct itself. it got colonized by rich people who wanted to play artist without submitting to the humiliating old requirement of being good at making things
Show threadVoid Chicken4d ago

rich people couldn't colonize poetry the way they colonized visual art because poetry can't be kept in restrictive galleries or sold exclusively to private collections

there's no scarcity to manufacture, no object to speculate on. A rich person can't buy the ONLY copy of a poem

so the colonization vector didn't work. you can't gatekeep language the way you can gatekeep a canvas in a climate controlled room. which means poetry could only rot from the inside. the MFA programs, the journals nobody reads, the poets talking to other poets in an increasingly small room

but physical art? a painting? a sculpture? a physical object in a physical space? that's perfect for wealth capture. you can restrict access. you can create artificial scarcity. the gallery system is a containment model. keep art scarce, keep prices high, keep the definition of "good" under the control of people with money

Show threadAnnie4d ago

@Taweret

Luke-warm take: All art is colonized by status seekers. Some art forms are more easily monetized than others, which makes the caste system more visible, but it’s there whether you see it or not, whether you understand the art or not or can perceive its constraints.

Show threadJosh 4d ago
@Taweret physical art also happens to be great for laundering money. Which also drives up the value beyond any actual merits to the art itself, creating a market demand for more and more art that is merely good enough to not get a second look when someone drops a couple million dollars on it.
Show threadJosh 4d ago
@Taweret in that way, NFTs are as much art as a lot of the ‘real’ art in the market.
Show thread[empty]4d ago

@Taweret util somebody finds your poems in the margin of a book or something

https://www.science.org/content/article/galileo-s-handwritten-notes-found-ancient-astronomy-text

Show threadPetrichor Squirrel4d ago
@Taweret absolutely. Creativity can only flourish if focused by limitations.
Show threadVoid Chicken4d ago
@PetrichorSquirrel
Japanese poetic forms have restraints for a reason
Show threadIron Pencil Statue  4d ago

@Taweret I think free verse is exactly why I have problems knowing a good or bad poem (though I will say, hearing a poem read by someone who at least thinks it's a good poem helps me)

Like I felt mean when I'd say "I don't understand
this free
verse
book it feels like
they just hit enter
ran
domly"

Show threadDave Pitt4d ago
@lapis @Taweret Poetry is good line breaks
.
Show threadNull4d ago
@Taweret I kinda have complex views of this.

I generally feel that like literature, poetry fell into a trap of academic and class isolation. Like literature, it became too over analyzed and sanitized, and through the vehicle of public education, was reduced from a vehicle of expression to things on a test with a correct answer. Poetry's gift has always been that it's something that one can turn out and consume quicker than a book or a play; a tiktok of expression. But its teaching caused it to fall from common favor, then drop from curriculum("Why are we teaching this?"), leading to a state where very few on the street can tell a 'good poem'.

I think the rise of free-form is a symptom of popular collapse rather than a cause. Disorganization and ambiguity follow a collapse. Those who are 'professional poets' operate in near voids compared to their past peers, and people coming to it now are far less versed in the particulars of structured poetry. You're far less able to bend the rules when every oink on the street knows the rulebook. Without that feedback, It's essentially anarchy.

I'd argue this is why Hip hop remains. It did not collapse in the same way, and so, it retained a 'society' that governs it. It remains popular in the public eye, and thus enough people know the rules when an artist goes off script.
Show threadVirginicus4d ago
@NullNowhere @Taweret Another piece of the blame goes to printing. Now that we have all the old poems ready to hand, a poet who doesn’t want to compete with (e.g.) Shakespeare can’t write a sonnet, so has to find a new form in which to write.
Show threadstarkraving6664d ago
@Taweret do u mean like how we all know the plums poem and nothing else
Show threadIron Pencil Statue  4d ago

@starkraving666 @Taweret not fair we also know a bit of the introduction to romeo and juliet and that's in IIRC Iambic Pentameter

(But yes)

Show threadstarkraving6664d ago
@lapis @Taweret the whole amerikkka school standards thing is so creepy
Show threadDave bauer4d ago
@Taweret All art has had gatekeeping and profit obscuring the art, but even in poetry you can find stuff that moves you and is true for you. Based on my personal experience and the Poetry Corner on the Wonderful podcast, there's a world within a world. I am not great at articulating complex feelings about art and the art industry but I hope I made some sense.