Poetry I'd say is about three decades away from being a completely forgotten art. Granted BORDERS isn't a "Writing As Art" mecca, but I remember in the late 90s, after it was built, there was debate amongst us "poets" about whether it was scrupulous to buy books from there seeing it was this large capitalist entity, which in Writer's Circle World, is just about as evil as Hitler. The problem was, the local Indie store, Inkwood Books, just didn't have the selection that BORDERS had, but we still managed to find our Donald Justice versus there, or they'd order it for us if they didn't, so BORDERS was rarely travelled.
A little known secret about the aforementioned BORDERS was that when they first opened, they were bringing in some acoustical musicians to perform, and delighted I was, when I saw Kip Winger's name in the Creative Loafing (which then became the Weekly Planet, but now is again the Creative Loafing). Me being a serious senior with a dim sense of irony, HAD to go see Kip, mainly to see him play Seventeen. There may have been 4 of us, or it may have been merely me and Jacob Nickerson, whom I have many stories about, but I'll spare them here. I don't think he went for Mr. Winger, but he went anyway. (Kip never did play Seventeen, claiming that he was in his 30s (maybe even 40s) now, and that could get him in trouble. I didn't understand that then, but I do now. Good for Kip. You know Kip is always going to take the classy way out.
Back to the death of Poetry. I went to buy "Best American Poetry 2007" and not only could I not find it, I couldn't even find the poetry section. In fact, they barely even have a poetry section anymore. It was literally about one shelf of books, and "Best American Poetry" was not among them. I wonder how large the section at Inkwood is now? Inkwood is like Tate Brothers to me, too many ghosts. I'll probably never go back there.
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