I think one important reason for the small following for contemporary poetry is that it’s not directed to a broad audience, not even a broad, educated one, but rather to the priests and acolytes of a small cult the literature of which is arcane and solipsistic. Educated readers who liked poetry in college but haven’t become devotees of the cryptic sort of poetry that’s fashionable today are turned off by most of the poems they encounter in the New Yorker, for example, of which I hear many complaints, or the New York Times book reviews. They’re also turned off by reviews that are full of praise for poetry they find baffling, bloodless, dull and of little if any relevance to their main concerns.

If journals and publishers are interested in increasing the audience for poetry they would do well to try to find out what the educated general reader who isn’t impressed by the products of post-modernism likes, instead of relying on reviewers and editors who are in thrall to the cult.

*******

My poetry, I modestly believe, could withstand the test of time. Readers 50 years from now could say “So that’s what it was like then,” while recognizing our common humanity. You couldn’t say that of 90% of the poems being written today. They’re convoluted, arcane and solipsistic, and there are so many of them, hundreds of thousands, millions probably, and so many winning prizes and receiving extravagant praise. People a century from now will shake their heads in disbelief as they read them, if at all, the way they did at the salon painters and Arthur Wing Pinero, or les precieuses ridicules. But they probably won’t look at my poetry at all for I haven’t paid my dues by publishing in journals. All that’s left are my files and a self-published book. I wonder how much good poetry is lost this way. What causes poetry to rise to the top these days is self-promotion. We’re in the Andy Warhol age.