Poetry, Dead or Alive

By Morris Freedman

A bookstore in a suburb of Washington not long ago held a "Poetry Slam," at which persons read, chanted, and howled their creations. The Washington Post reported the incident as an effort to keep poetry alive, one of many such events that have become popular throughout the country.

Is poetry dead? Will "slams" and similar devices revive the corpse or just belabor it? Can "poetry" ever really die?

Unfortunately, answers to such questions can never be plain and direct. Poetry belongs among the many things we say we "know when we see" but can't readily define. The last thing we want to do is linger over a definition when we are finding our sentiments in verse on intimate personal occasions, like births and anniversaries, or vast public ones, like Princess Diana's death, or when we are simply deriving pleasure from the...