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
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
Void Chicken
Annie