The End of Poetry

Poetry went from being a vital part of social life in the 19th century, to being a peripheral interest in the 21st.

Poetry meant something different to the nineteenth century mind and played a much more important social role. Poetry was popular. The major Romantic poets were the ‘Rockstars’ of that era. Families and friends would gather together and read poetry aloud. Poetry also had a humanizing influence in the face of the large scale mechanization brought by the Industrial Revolution.

William Wordsworth, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, wrote a book of poetry called Lyrical Ballads (1798) at the height of the industrial revolution. In the ‘Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads’ (1800) , Wordsworth describes the immense changes taking place in the society of his day as the industrial revolution progressed, in the following terms:

It’s fascinating to read that quote in the 21st century, when the use of machines in industry is the norm and we are going through our own revolution brought on by computers and the internet. I wonder what Wordsworth would think of the twenty-first century. If the media available to people in the early nineteenth century reduced them to ‘a state of almost savage torpor’, what effect must our media be having on us, given the deluge of information to which we are exposed and the access we have, not just to national events, but to international events.

But of course, the issue is more about how we engage with media and information than it is about the media and information itself. Wordsworth offers poetry (specifically the type of…

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