The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks. Starve the lavish grants. Strangle them all in a barrel of water. Cast them out. The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist.Ted Genoways: The Death of Fiction?:
[T]he less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.Most fledgling writers and poets require another source of income. And teaching is clearly a legitimate route. However, the insular world of the academy provides university-affiliated writers and poets with long term income and publication, with or without readership. The academic-publishing-complex produces an almost infinite supply which is totally indifferent to demand. To make this possible, this excess supply is funded by someone else, i.e. the tax and tuition payers. I can think of no other field where we see so great an imbalance in supply and demand. This situation is finally receiving the attention it deserves.
To writers I would ask, which is preferable: Publication in an obscure literary journal (readership, maybe, a few thousand) or on a Google-searchable website? I suppose it's a question of prestige versus availability. Make that incestuous prestige versus the risk that no one will want to read your easily-available work.
To readers: If you want to be intellectually stimulated, or God forbid, entertained, look for poetry and fiction produced by writers who are not part of the academy's infrastructure.