Emancipation

The way I see it, most of contemporary poetry’s problems result from the fact that the vast majority of people—at least in America—never see a poem anywhere besides school. For the vast majority of that vast majority, “school” means high school. And the designers of high school curricula are notoriously—and, I must say, puzzlingly—bad at presenting the students with poems they might actually like. Honestly, the goal is ostensibly to make kids like this stuff, so you give them “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud?” Not, say, “Kubla Khan” or “Howl” or A Season in Hell or any of the thousands of poems that would make high school kids instantly realize that poetry is the most badass art form and love it forever, but instead the straight-up fruitiest fucking poem you could possibly find?