BYU ScholarsArchive

Article Title

The Demands of Poetry: A Review of Collections Published in 2018 by Latter-day Saint Authors

Authors

Susan Elizabeth Howe
Casualene Meyer

Keywords

poetry, nineteenth century, review

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, poets had the celebrity status of today’s most famous singers. Most of today’s educated readers (including educated Latter-day Saint readers), however, can’t name five poets who are highly regarded in our generation. But readers may not be completely to blame for this shift. Early in the twentieth century, poets such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, poets later grouped under the term Modernist, took poetry, which had been one of the most popular genres of literature, and made it so difficult—so full of allusions, voices, and fragments of thought not necessarily connected to each other—that poetry became a subject to be studied by university professors and students, not a popular form of literature.

Recommended Citation

Howe, Susan Elizabeth and Meyer, Casualene (2019) "The Demands of Poetry: A Review of Collections Published in 2018 by Latter-day Saint Authors," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 58: Iss. 1, Article 9.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol58/iss1/9