One reason is that poetry had to jostle with all sorts of mass culture. From 1890 to 1920, the sound culture underwent major shifts that affected poetry. In the 1890s, the popular music industry exploded, with mechanically reproduced sounds such as the player piano and in the 1920s, the radio. John Cole, director for the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, speaks with Kenneth Cmiel of the Department of History at the University of Iowa, one of the presenters at the poetry symposium. Photo by Yuself El-Amin.
Poetry is a mix of cadence and words, and music is a mix of cadence, words, melody and harmony.
Music is not the same as poetry. A second thing that changes in those years is the rise of plain-style prose, as espoused in Strunk and White's Elements of Style . Oratory, according to Mr. Cmiel, was a sister art to poetry. It, too, was about words, rhythm and cadence. Although poetry is diminished, it continues to be one of the fine arts and holds a strong place in our culture, said Mr. Cmiel.