Burke: Where has all the poetry gone in our lives?

By Tom Burke / Herald columnist

So to continue the literary discussion I started last month writing about libraries, let’s now talk “poetry.”

Like, where did it all go?

Back in the day, poets made best sellers’ lists, got written up in the media, and were widely read. Lionized, even. Not so much today, I think.

Way back when, we’d memorize poems in school. And 60 years later I can still quote a bunch, such as most of Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 work “Gunga Din,” which ends,

Though I’ve belted you and flayed you, By the livin’ Gawd that made you, You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Now there are scores of poets who achieved something akin to rock-stardom in their day: Carl Sandburg (and his “The fog comes on little cat feet,” or his “Chicago, City of the Big Shoulders”); Robert Frost (“The Road Not Taken”); and Ogden Nash with his short “The Cow:”

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk.

And then there’s Shakespeare (sonnets, anyone?), Australia’s A.B. “Banjo” Paterson (his “The Man from Snowy River” was turned into two movies), Clement Clarke Moore (“The Night Before Christmas”), Langston Hughes (a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and his “A Negro Speaks of Rivers”), T.S. Eliot (his “Cats” collection resulted in a seven-Tony-award-wining Broadway musical and two movies), Walt Whitman (“I Hear America Singing”), John Keats (a variety of “Odes”), and the Beat poets ala Jack Kerouac for starters.

Now reading to our kids was important in our family. And the kids loved poetry – I must have read Shel Silverstein’s “The Light in the Attic,” “Falling Up,” and “Where the Sidewalk Ends”10,000 times; and, of course Dr. Seuss (“Green Eggs and Ham,” “The Cat in the Hat,” and, and, and … and we physically, literally wore out a couple of volumes of his work.)

But, as I researched my “Library” column, I realized that among the New York Times’s best sellers, poetry seemed to be missing.

So to learn more about the state of poetry today I turned to Rena Priest, Washington state’s Poet Laureate. And I asked her about, well, poetry.

And contrary to my initial observation, she explained that while poetry may be off the best seller lists it is not out of our lives by any stretch. But she said, “Everything has changed.” And indeed, it is thriving in schools, on social media, and other internet sites. In fact, she explained, poetry has become ever more accessible than it used to be and skews a lot younger than old guys like me thanks to the web.

Like there’s more than 18,000 Washington youths competing in “Poetry Out Loud,” a national dynamic recitation competition awarding honor and prizes to high schoolers across the country.

(Wondering how “Poetry Out Loud” fared versus, say, high school sports, I discovered poetry participation is competitive-plus vis-à-vis football (17,906), basketball (18,374), baseball and fast-pitch softball (14,648), and soccer (18,858). Who’da thunk?

And poetry has entered politics as well. Priest was the featured speaker at the Gov. Jay Inslee’s 2023 State of the State speech, and we all remember Amanda Gorman’s amazing turn at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

(One stanza of Priest’s State of the State work, “These Abundant and Generous Homelands,” gave me a head-snapping jolt, awakening semi-dormant synapses in my environmental neurons,

And when we look back,

Will we see that in fact

We were not recovering from natural disasters.

Rather, we were the great disaster

From which nature must recover?

You can watch her read her poem at tinyurl.com/PriestHomelands

So needing to catch up on my contemporary poetry I asked Priest to recommend a few “newer” (to me) authors.

Her suggestions ranged from the traditionally-published Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the U.S. and dubbed by some as “the most popular poet in America,” to Mary Oliver, described as an “indefatigable guide to the natural world,” to Rupi Kaur of the Instapoetry school, who pens works written specifically for being shared online, most commonly on Instagram, and who appeals greatly to the younger set.

Priest also explained that among the young, poetry is more popular in the spoken word, which she opined might reflect the influence of contemporary music, in particular rap and hip-hop.

Why and what people read probably depends on where they are in life. With young kids, kid’s books ruled my reading. When I commuted to Manhattan it was the Times (mornings) and novels (evenings). In the years my wife and I were reenacting the American Revolution, it was strictly non-fiction from the colonial era.

Today it remains mostly non-fiction. But poetry is creeping back onto my reading list. Oliver seems to have struck a chord with me. And perhaps a reread of William Butler Yeats.

Trying to fit poetry in to today’s schedules — what with work, kid’s soccer, football, baseball, play dates, dance, and drum lessons; plus keeping the house up and maybe even a hobby — seems nigh on impossible. But one might find poetry a welcome place of respite; or help deciphering the world we have created. Give it a try. The library has plenty.

I’ll end this column with Robert Frost’s take on the end of the world:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice, “I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Slava Ukraini.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.