Yeah, I have no clue how to properly write in 1337.
Before I get into my rant for the day, I want clear something up. I made a comment the other day that rather strongly implied that I'd given up on poetry writing. I'll own to being a bit discouraged, but I don't think I've actually QUIT. After the setbacks I've had, I feel like I just need a bit of time to recuperate* Also, remember that, in the past, I have threatened to quit the dating scene, my job, all video games ever, my crippling cocaine addiction, and using the word "shizzle," and I haven't actually given up on any of these things.
Well, except dating.
Anyway, so I belong to a poetry group made up mostly of middle-aged women (and one gay man) (that's not me). The group leadership has decided that they need to attract younger members - presumably so this herd of poetic wildebeasts will survive after the next lion attack (metaphorically - that wasn't meant to be an agist joke). To that end, they've decided to create a poetry contest, and they're currently debating what type of contest they can have that'll attract the young 'uns. Here's what they've come up with:
Write a poem on the subject of science and technology (eg, space shuttles, cosmology, use of computers such as finding information on the Internet and connecting with others via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter)
Now, I'm all for expanding the circle of poetry writers in the community, seeing as how I'm a three-legged poetic wildebeast with skin cancer and asthma myself, but I'm not sure how effective this contest will be at attracting young people. It seems too much like an attempt to capitalize on what's "hip" rather than what's relevant and comes from the very generational disconnect their trying to work around.
"Them whippersnappers got no respect for the art of their elders! They'ze too busy with their Facebooks and cellular tellyphones to pay us any attention! We gots ta get them ta appreciate poetry soon, or they'll all be lost when the Rapture comes!"
"Maybe we could invite them to participate in a poetry contest?"
"Naw, only if they write about that darnfangled Internet thing. They don't know nothin' bout nothin' else."**
That said, I don't know what they could do that would work any better. I don't think I'm being overly pessimistic when I say poetry is a dying art form. To me, it's significant that even big bookstores like Barnes and Noble are constantly putting their poetry sections on smaller and smaller bookshelves more difficult to locate than the section on midget pornography.
(Although I have to say that this idea for a contest reminded me of an idea my cousin JC told me about: text poetry. I like the idea of writing micro-poetry that can be sent via text, but I'm afraid too many rhymes would be made with the word "lulz")
My biggest fear is that people just don't see poetry as relevant anymore - and it may not be, at least in any form currently existing. Traditional poetry's a bit too esoteric for the general public - if not by design, then by history. Now, if you could get Angelina Jolie to make a movie based on the life of Sylvia Plath, maybe we could reverse that.
You know you'd watch that. I would.
* i.e. curl up in a ball behind my bed with my thumb in my mouth.
** Celebrity voices impersonated
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