“In recent months, I’ve come across various news
articles and at least one press release declaring that social media has
contributed greatly to poetry’s readership. Some of these sources even
attribute to the technology a bump in 2017 poetry book sales. While it remains
unknown how much of that reading is directly due to these still-emerging
platforms, we now can report with confidence: poetry reading in the United
States has increased since five years previously.
“Nearly 12 percent (11.7
percent) of adults read poetry in the last year, according
to new data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ 2017 Survey of Public
Participation in the Arts (SPPA). That’s 28 million adults. As a share of the
total U.S. adult population, this poetry readership is the highest on record
over a 15-year period of conducting the SPPA, a research partnership with the
U.S. Census Bureau.
“The
2017 poetry-reading rate is five percentage points up from the 2012 survey
period (when the rate was 6.7 percent) and three points up from the 2008 survey
period (when the rate was 8.3 percent). This boost puts the total rate on par
with 2002 levels, with 12.1 percent of adults estimated to have read poetry
that year.
“Growth
in poetry reading is seen across most demographic sub-groups (e.g., gender,
age, race/ethnicity, and education level), but here are highlights:
•
Young adults have increased their lead, among all age groups, as poetry
readers. Among 18-24-year-olds, the poetry-reading rate more than doubled,
to 17.5 percent in 2017, up from 8.2 percent in 2012. Among all age groups,
25-34-year-olds had the next highest rate of poetry-reading: 12.3 percent, up
from 6.7 percent in 2012.
• Women
also showed notable gains (14.5 percent in 2017, up from
8.0 percent in 2012). As in prior years, women accounted for more than 60
percent of all poetry-readers. Men’s poetry-reading rate grew from 5.2 percent
in 2012 to 8.7 percent in 2017.
• Among
racial/ethnic subgroups, African Americans (15.3 percent in
2017 up from 6.9 percent in 2012), Asian Americans (12.6 percent, up from 4.8
percent), and other non-white, non-Hispanic groups (13.5 percent, up from 4.7
percent) now read poetry at the highest rates. Furthermore, poetry-reading
increased among Hispanics (9.7 percent, up from 4.9 percent) and non-Hispanic
whites (11.4 percent, up from 7.2 percent).
• Adults
with only some college education showed sharp increases in
their poetry-reading rates. Of those who attended but did not graduate
from college, 13.0 percent read poetry in 2017, up from 6.6 percent in 2012. College
graduates (15.2 percent, up from 8.7 percent) and adults
with graduate or professional degrees (19.7 percent, up from 12.5 percent) also
saw sizeable increases.
• Urban
and rural residents read poetry at a comparable rate (11.8
percent of urban/metro and 11.2 percent of rural/non-metro residents).
“Reviewing the data about young adults who read
poetry, I couldn’t help but recall the 2006 founding of Poetry Out Loud, a program cosponsored by the National
Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, and administered in
partnership with the state arts agencies of all 50 states, the District of
Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
“More
than 300,000 students from more than 2,300 high schools around the country
participate in this poetry recitation competition. Last April, champions from
53 states and territories competed in the National Finals here in D.C. This
year’s winner was high school senior Janae Claxton from the First Baptist School of
Charleston, South Carolina. Janae and her fellow contestants should be ample
proof that the genre continues to thrive, but it’s good to see the numbers.
“I also spoke about the findings with Amy Stolls,
NEA Director of Literature. ‘These increases definitely reflect what we’ve been
witnessing over in our corner of the office,’ Amy told me. ‘I suspect social
media has had an influence, as well as other robust outreach activities and
efforts, many of which we support through our grants to publishers and
presenters, fellowships to individual poets, Poetry Out Loud, and the NEA Big Read.’
Each year, the NEA Big Read supports community reading programs in
approximately 75 communities nationwide, and includes poetry books such as Joy
Harjo’s How We Became Human and Adrian Matejka’s The
Big Smoke in the available titles.
“Complete results from the 2017 SPPA will be rolled
out over the next several months, beginning with findings about arts attendance
and reading habits. Subsequent reports will address arts creation, arts
consumption via digital media, and other arts-participation topics. The raw
data itself, along with technical documentation, will be posted to the NEA’s National Archive of Data on
Arts & Culture, so that researchers and policymakers
everywhere may dig deeper into these and other findings. Stay tuned!”
Taking Note: Poetry Reading Is Up—Federal Survey Results by Sunil Iyengar, NEA Director of Research and Analysis, June 7,
2018
In Defense of Poetry by Lauren Schmidt
ReplyDeleteThe Haven House for Homeless
Women and Children
Come celebrate
with me that every day
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
—Lucille Clifton
To you who say
poetry is a waste of ten homeless mothers’ time—
that I should correct their grammar and spelling,
spit-shine their speech so it gleams, make them sound
more like me, that I should set a bucket of Yes, Miss,
Thank you, and Whatever you say, Miss on their heads,
fill that bucket heavy, tell them how to tip-toe
to keep steady, that I should give them something
they can truly use, like diapers, food, or boots—
I say
you’ve never seen these women lower their noses
over poetry, as if praying the rosary, as if hoping
for a lover to slip his tongue between their lips,
or sip a thin spring of water from a fountain.
The Salt Stronger by Fred Marchant
ReplyDeleteI have seen the legislators
on their way,
the jacketless men
in mid-winter who will cast
their votes like stones for this war.
Men who have to cross the street
through slush
and over gutter, their cuffs
now vaguely blued with a salt
that dries in dots where it splashes,
and mingles with the finely
woven cloth
of the chalk-stripe suits,
the soi-disant practical men,
you can see them now tiptoeing,
now leaping, balletic, windsor-knotted,
fragrant
and shaved,
they pass, they pass
the window of the Capitol Deli
wherein I am writing to my friend
in Baghdad,
he a “witness for peace,”
a poet who for years has wondered
what good poetry is or has been or does.
I compose today’s answer from here,
saying,
I think of poetry
as a salt dug from a foreign mine
that arrives like a miracle in Boston
as pellets to break underfoot
and melt
the dangerous plated ice
and cling to the acknowledged lawmakers,
to stay with them in their dreams,
to eat at the cloth and reach down
to the skin
and beyond the calf
into the shin. I think the soul
is equivalent to bone, and that conscience
must hide in the marrow,
float in the rich fluids
and wander the honeycomb at the center.
There, and not in the brain,
or even the heart is where
the words attach, where they land
and settle,
take root after the long
passage through the body’s by-ways.
Just think, I write, of how some poetry rolls
off the tongue, then try to see the tongue
in the case
that faces me, a curious,
thick extension of cow-flesh
fresh from a butcher’s block, grainy and flush.
I think that if my tongue alone could talk
it would swear
in any court that poetry
tastes like the iodine in blood,
or the copper in spit, and makes a salt stronger than tears.
The Secret by Denise Levertov
ReplyDeleteTwo girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.
I who don’t know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me
(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was,
not even
what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,
the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can’t find,
and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that
a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines,
in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for
assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.
Thank you, Glen! Some good news, for a change!
DeleteThat having been said, does that mean that less people are bothering to read newspapers &/or books? (Since poems are short, & usually more easily read {although not necessarily digested}.)
Funny, that, too, there has, of late, been talk that Barnes & Noble is losing business big-time (well, this due to Amazon),& may close, while independent bookstores (my shops of choice) are doing well: customer loyalty.
This is actually not good news in the sense that it's such a large chain &, yet again, SO many people would lose their jobs. I have had the very sad experience of shopping at Carson's (a buyout rather than closure refused; better for the COMPANY's bottom line to lay off do many people rather than sell, & have personnel keep their jobs), where customers all voiced their sympathy to the clerks, one clerk getting all choked up, stating, "Thank you. & where are we supposed to get new jobs? Toys 'R' Us closed, some Macy's are closing, Claire's has closed (& so on)..."
Which is why the government news ("fake") that unemployment is down is very, very hard to believe...
"When poems are written
ReplyDeletewith greater brevity,
they will be written by
Kenneth Previti."
At a very early age, I recited this poem of my own. Of course, my juvenile ego considered it as brilliant poetry with a tinge of humor.
Fortunately, this bent toward poetry and later encounters eventually led me to truly brilliant poetry such as that written by Glen Brown. (No joke. It is meant as a sincere compliment.)
The fact that less poetry is taught in public schools today than in previous decades leads me to believe that social media, song lyrics, and other less apparent social forces are at work and helping to increase the reading and appreciation of poetry.
Whatever causes the increases, the fact that poetry appreciation is actually increasing is a ray of hope in our rather bleak American literacy skies.