modern poetry

Poetry in its traditional role of communicating ideas became obsolete with the invention of the printing press. Before the age of the printed book, poetry was used to pass along stories from one generation to the next. It's much easier to remember a story in rhyme than one in prose and then retell it to others.

Poetry may be just as popular today as it was in Homer's time. The difference is that today poetry is an art form. Its communication function has been lost. Most authors do not use poetry these days to pass along information in verbal form. They use prose because printed books allow text to be easily passed to future generations.

Hence, because poetry is now an art form, its objective value can no longer be determined based on its communicative value. Whether the reader understands what is going on in a poem doesn't matter. The only thing that matters now is the poet's self-expression, even if it doesn't make sense to the reader. The audience of a poem is no longer the reader, but the poet.

In fact, serious poets these days have made their works purposely difficult to understand. This is done in order to show that they are elevating themselves above the common bourgeoisie. Poetry is now about distinction and reflexive performance, not communication.