News at Eleven: "The crowds in London once stood

on their toes to see Tennyson pass," Joseph Epstein wrote. Today, however, a figure like Tennyson probably would not write poetry and might not even read it. Poetry has been shifted—has shifted itself?—off center stage. Literarily, poetry no longer seems in any way where the action is. But might there not be some good and serious poets out there, amidst the careerists? Poetry's appeal to its creators and to its audience is potentially so strong that there will always be those who will try to achieve something great in verse, difficult though it is. Some are surely trying now, and one or two may even be succeeding. But how would we know?

from The American Spectator: Poets Galore and Subsidized Poets

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