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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2571 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why I think the tech interview process is broken – Medium

They're not my elites either but again - poetry is uniquely challenged as a medium because the elites are unavoidable.

A picture can be propagated many ways. As can a song, as can a book. It will find an audience through typical propagation. A poem? We're not in the habit of reading poetry because on the one hand, people with culture will hold up William Fucking Blake as someone to admire and he rhymes "eye" with "symmetry" because of course he does. Meanwhile, the "poet" known most to Americans is undoubtedly Dr. Seuss who would not, could not, on a boat, would not could not with a goat but fuckin' A:

    Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,

    O, what a panic's in thy breastie!

That wasn't English even back then. Yub yub, mutherfucker.

So no. You can't point out woodworking TV shows as elites. They're saying "here's how to turn wood into furniture" or "here's how to turn fabric into decor" instead of "here's how to turn words into ART, no, not like that, yes we know that Blake put -ey on the ends of words to rhyme but you shouldn't, in fact, don't try to rhyme, it's limiting, art is good when we say so stop asking it won't be on the test."

I guess my overall point is there is NO art form so dependent on definition by tastemakers than poetry, and poetry's tastemakers are assholes. Except maybe they aren't. Maybe they're so busy exploring the realms of what poetry means that they forget that most of us haven't been human centipeding their art form for 20 years so we don't get how a 17th century asshole digested four times is somehow more "arty" than Dr. Seuss.