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Article: After the Death of Poetry: Poet and Audience in Contemporary America.
- Article from:
- Criticism
- Article date:
- June 22, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 Wayne State University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Why has literary theory replaced poetry as the center of debate in English Departments? Why was Robert Lowell the last poet to have been mandatory reading for the wider intellectual culture? Why do Creative Writing and English departments politely suffer each other's presence?
Vernon Shetley answers these questions in After the Death of Poetry: Poet and Audience in Contemporary America. The questions he fails to ask or dismisses, and the poets he either ignores or lambastes are as interesting as his well-constructed, definitive argument. Why, for example, in a book about the demise of poetry, does he not at least in passing discuss the work of popular poets, or ...