Epic poetry is probably one of the most ancient genres in existence if not the single most ancient genre, but nobody really composes epics any more. It would be tough to write an epic poem in the modern world without a sense of irony (which would almost certainly ruin the epic) because we've become very skeptical toward heroes. This in itself is kind of odd, because we also expect a lot more of our heroes than our ancient ancestors did. They only expected their heroes to be fantastically competent and fantastically brave. We expect ours to also be perfectly moral, which is beyond their reach. If we find out one of our heroes has a moral failing, we rip him to pieces for it.

I am only passingly familiar with the poetry of Adrienne Rich, as most of the poetry I read these days is either old or translated from some other language or both. I am, to put it mildly, not in sympathy with most modern English-language poetry.

However, what I have read of her work did seem to have something, and she occupied a very rare place in American culture- that of the influential poet. Not influential to the average American, of course, that would be asking too much under current circumstances. But among the minority of people in this country who care about things such as poetry at all, Adrienne Rich was an important figure. Her words carried weight.

New formalism or neoformalism was a movement that tried to bring back traditional poetic forms in English-language poetry. This was a very controversial thing to to try to do because the free verse poetry that now dominates the poetry scene was closely associated with left-wing politics in academia, so new formalism was seen as not only a literary stance but a (right-wing) political one as well.

I read a blog recently featuring a “sonnet” about the presidential race. It was a funny little bit of satire, but there was just one problem: it wasn't fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. (Maybe that's actually two problems?)

I can't remember where I read this, but I do remember reading somewhere that Rumi is currently the most widely-read poet among Americans. This is a remarkable thing, when you consider the fact that Rumi was a Sufi Muslim mystic and that is not exactly a worldview most Americans are either familiar or comfortable with.