6747/1238104342-critic2.jpgTwo great discussions over on The Poetry Foundation's website. Travis Nichols says

Poetry is in trouble. At least according to the NEA and Newsweek.

"In 2008, just 8.3 percent of adults had read any poetry in the preceding 12 months," Marc Bain writes in an online article this week, citing January's NEA report "Reading on the Rise."

"That figure was 12.1 percent in 2002, and in 1992, it was 17.1 percent, meaning the number of people reading poetry has decreased by approximately half over the past 16 years."

I think it's hilarious when people apply statistics to poetry. Then, elsewhere on the website, Matthew Zapruder writes a column about how poetry is in trouble because its critics are bad:

Today, in American poetry, very few critics take it upon themselves to examine the choices poets make in poems, and what effect those choices might have upon a reader. As a consequence, very few people love contemporary American poetry. Many more might, if critics attempted to truly engage with the materials of poetry—words and how they work—and to connect poetry with an audience based on an engagement with these materials.

The commenters seem to be going apeshit on poetry and Mary Oliver and popularity and whether certain television shows were better than other television shows:

Poems are pretty easy to get and understand, and most readers don't need a critic to understand them. As Robert Frost said, the best way to understand a poem is to read other poems. You can start anywhere.

I like critics who can make the case for what a poem or poet or poetics has to do with my life, or how I live it.

(I would also just like to say that Roseanne actually was a way better television show than Twin Peaks.)

It's a good discussion, and if someone finds a way to work Chuck Norris into it, this might wind up being the comment thread that consumes the whole world.