Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius

"Critics being critics - there has been, is, and will be attempts to impose rules on free verse that (in theory) assist in making judgments about them."--gabriel

Most other art forms get a daily dose of public opinion to keep them honest. A snob might bemoan some purer form falling by the wayside, and I might even be that snob on occasion. The rules that critics have applied to free verse are better seen as genres--it's easier to compare a mystery to another mystery than to a cookbook--and while I don't particularly want to read horror, we wouldn't even know that there is a market for it if it we refused to publish it in the first place. Why is poetry different? We can point and laugh at the Dan Browns of the world, safe in knowing we can't even be compared. We have no expectations of poetry being popular, so we can feel validated by the lack of popularity and our own misunderstood genius.


"Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country and Western."--Blues Brothers

There are huge chunks of the population that don't want Country or Western, but poetry critics don't seem to want them to have the choice. Yes, it's a chicken and egg question: Is the market for poetry so small that we have to limit publication, or is the market so small because we already have?

I can't answer that question. Come on, you knew I couldn't. Don't look at me that way. But I think the internet, the world of blogs, online publications, and similar outlets can find out. Right now, we're still operating under the principle that there isn't enough space for all of it, Country, Western, Swing, Hip-Hop, Rock. We have to squash one genre to allow our chosen one room to grow. But there is a near-infinite number of pixels available and we've got more elbow room than sense.