Gopal Lahiri Is poetry dying? Poetry and Prose Poetry is not dying. It is merely changing. It’s a way to attain life without boundaries. Poetry has never been a booming industry. Poetry is all around us and is still a way of life. “Do people still read poetry?” This question revolves around for a while and this also alarmingly suggests: “Poets are only talking to each other.” In doing so, somewhere along the way, the overreaching impulse behind the writing poems has been dwindling over the years. It is also true that very few people read contemporary poetry but still poetry survives ages and highlights some key moments and trajectories of life. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time. (Macbeth by Shakespeare) It is the means of expression that exist from time immemorial. Rhyming poetry was with us since ancient time. It’s an oral art and ear poetry was the order of the day. End rhyming is more popular than any other form. But with passage of time, poetry has undergone changes and readership shows declining trend. Rhyming poems are almost passe now. Free verse is more accepted now. “The heightened consciousness” in poetry still reminds us that the ideas are not necessarily doomed in “utopia and dreamscape.”
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