BillD:

To determine if you could get it published as poetry, ask any 6 year olds if it is a poem- If they say no, you have a pretty good chance of publication, if not outright awards. If they say it is, forget it- you will not find anyone who will touch it with a ten foot pole...

And yes, it has been in decline- I wonder why?...


"In the old days a poet used to sweat turning out a sonnet, say. Very difficult form. Exactly 14 lines, all of them hung together with rhyme, rhythm, meter, perfectly. It was too much work for the poet, so blank verse and then free verse came in. And then anarchy. The new poet never bothered to learn how to write a sonnet, or to measure his lines in correct meter and to follow a rhythm system. He dashed off his inspired poem in a matter of a half hour and was surprised when after a few decades of this people stopped reading poetry."

Among the Bad Baboons, by Mack Reynolds
Copyright 1968 Galaxy Publishing Corp.

8-{E