by Raymond M. Coulombe
Not a lot of that in wide circulation these days. In fact, poetry in general has been a niche market for some time now. Poetry is pretty much the domain of the rappers.
Most of us who read Fantasy have been exposed to quite a bit of it, but that’s thanks to J. R. R Tolkien. If it wasn’t for The Lord of the Rings, most of us would only be exposed to poetry in high school. While LOTR is popular today, it’s good to remember that it was originally published a long time ago. Tolkien fought in WWI for goodness sakes. His education was from a vastly different time, a time where poetry was more respected.
Now be honest here, how many people just skip over the poetry in LOTR and move on with the story? It was a wise decision to leave most of that stuff out of the movies.
Poetry used to be a big deal and now it isn’t. Apologies to any poets out there, and I confess that I’m a published poet myself. I do a lot of non-lucrative activities.
The point is that different types of literature come and go. For example, novels are common these days, but novels in English didn’t really take off until the 18th century. The earliest novel is traced back to 11th century Japan, apparently English writers were late to the game.
What’s the next big thing in literature? Which form of literature is waning? Beats me. What I’m pretty sure of is that there will be changes. It was once thought that reading and writing were on their way out. Video and audio were going to completely take over. Then everyone started e-mailing and text messages are a common way to communicate. Personally, I’m glad the written word is still popular.
One thing that I’m confident about is there will be changes. A creative person will come out with something unique. The form will be copied and become the next big thing. Such is life.
We still have poetry, it’s just in the form of song lyrics now.
Like I say, my favorite poets are Dylan and Springsteen.