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What can one say about poetry today other than that it’s conspicuously absent and that hardly anyone even realizes the silence left in it’s wake. This is because that silence is loud indeed. The hole left behind where poetry once occupied our culture is of course filled in with the meaningless cacophony of radio, television, video games, cell phones, the internet and so on.

Our media environment makes no room for poetry. We are too busy for it. We have allowed the raging chatter of the media marketplace to drown out our ability to contemplate a thing like poetry. We make no time for it.

Before electronic media poetry was an important part of the culture. Words like “musicality” and “song” were used to describe the printed poem. People had time for it and appreciated the tremendous value that is still there today but forgotten.

Poetry is alive but not well. Like street saints and artists poetry goes hungry. Under the total domination of electronic media only the rare and the few make room for poetry.

Modern poetry is not silent. It screams and yet is drowned out. We have silenced them. We have silenced the poets with our deafness.

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