The Sad State of Poetry in 2025

Writing poetry in 2025 is not what it used to be. The distinctions between vague self-expression, emotional outpouring, social media post, and poem, have all become blurred. With the advent of digital technology and social media, many iterations of what we call "poetry" are being shared and posted every single second. On Instagram alone, the hashtags have the following counts:

#poetry (89.1M) #poetrycommunity (28.2M) #poetryislove (1M) #instapoetry (5.6M)

We must remember that a great portion of these are poems that have been posted (that is, published) for the very first time. It includes original content and copyrighted material, destroyed by the sheer outburst of poems that have flooded the internet.

People are, for better or for worse, self-publishing their poetry without any regard for the history of poetry, the importance of meter nor rhyme, nor the form and substance of poetic modes. What has happened is a sheer disavowal of what poetry is, disrespecting its very nature. Poets used to train for years, studying many modes, genres, forms, styles, and languages, if not entire prosodies, in order to fashion a single poem.

John Milton spent years studying languages before he picked up the pen, dedicating a sonnet to Shakespeare's tomb as his debut.

Many poets before me would gasp at the sheer lack of rhyme, meter, assonance, diction, brevity, irony, literary technique... Poetry now is a vista of selfish self-expression, masked as "poetry" merely for its use of enjambment (if we are lucky enough to see that), or putting prose down an imaginary "page"!

The way that I dealt with this new chasm and dark hole in poetry is to write poetry in the horror genre, particularly weird verse. My poetry can be read at a price, because I believe traditional poetry is the best way to stave off the flood of poorly wrought vers libre.

Emily Dickinson made her mark on American poetry despite her solitude, living on her father's farmstead; Dickinson broke out of the strictures of patriarchy through a study of poetry and an expansion of meter into vers libre.

This does not mean that I detest free verse outright. Many of the greatest poets wrote in free verse; take Emily Dickinson or Ezra Pound or Walt Whitman. But I do believe that poetry should come from years of experience and study and wisdom. Just like any other artform. If you do not agree that art takes time and patience, self-reflection and meditation, then what do you think art is for?

Do not just take my word for it. Read my poetry and critique it as inferior if it is inferior. You can read my poetry in many outlets, but my main one is Spectral Realms. Find a list here. It is behind a paywall (the publisher's paywall), but that is because poetry should be treated like any other art.

 Walt Whitman: Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)