Poetic injustice
To be a versifier was once a great thing. Now it is faintly ridiculous. But the people may yet rescue poetry from the pedants
WHAT ever happened to poetry? Once poets spoke for the age and strutted the cultural stage as stars. What would European romanticism have been without Byron or Schiller? French symbolism without Rimbaud or Baudelaire? Anglo-American modernism without Eliot or Pound?
This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline “Poetic injustice”
From the December 20th 1997 edition
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