Is Poetry a dying art or is it really one of the greatest and most underapprecia

Question:

Is Poetry a dying art or is it really one of the greatest and most underappreciated?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I do think poetry is underappreciated, partially because it is compared often to visual arts. The problem with placing poetry in the same context as visual arts(such as an art website like deviantart.com) is that visual art has a much more instant impact on the audience. You see what it is right away(or see it right away, and figure it out later), and many visual artists strive for a strong first impact.

Poetry, on the other hand, takes time to read (however short, it is still longer than it takes to see a painting or somesuch). Also, though poets also strive for the initial reaction in the audience, often the effect is made much more subtly. Also, styles of work in visual arts are often much more obvious than in the written word. You may know you do not like cubism, because you've seen a Picasso and thought it was weird. But you might not know if a poet is writing in a style you don't like or if they are just not a good poet.

One reason poetry is frowned upon by people who have little experience with it is because it is something we are used to (language) applied in an unusual way. An earlier answerer said it was "just a backwards way of saying things that could be said a lot clearer." That is almost what it is, but not quite. For example, Sylvia Plath has a poem called "Cut." She writes " What a thrill -/My thumb instead of an onion./The top quite gone/Except for a sort of hinge/Of skin,/A flap like a hat,/Dead white./Then that red plush," when she could have just written, "I was cutting onions, and I accidentally cut my thumb." Why is that not poetry? Because it's totally objective, it has no emotion conveyed in the action. Poetry is not just about what you say, it's about how your say it. Poetry can make any little event or feeling epic, and any big catastrophe or triumph tiny.

Another reason good poetry is less appreciated than good visual art is that it is harder to tell if a poem is bad at a glance. Sure, you can tell that if a person is too lazy to type "you" instead of "u" and proofread for simple errors, the poetry is probably terrible. But beyond that, one has to both read and digest a poem before one can judge. That means the reader must spend time thinking on every poem, good or bad, before you decide its worth. This adds up to much more time than it takes for the audience to realize a person does not know how to draw a face.

Sorry this ended up being so long. In conclusion, I would have to say poetry is underappreciated, but I think any good poetry (beyond the "classics") is going to be buried in terrible poetry which does not deserve a reader's time. Poetry is a dying art because there is too much of it!