'The poet is the priest of the invisible', wrote Wallace Stevens. Today however poetry is often required to be down to earth. Praised for being unpretentious and accessible. Critics of this trend say it is banal. Characteristics that we would not apply to Shakespeare's sonnets, Plath's confessional poems, or Eliot's Quartets. They argue that as a result poetry is in decline, and evidence an extensive US survey that showed reading poetry has fallen by 45 percent in the last twenty years.
Has poetry lost its way and does it need to reengage with a grander vision or is it a simply an old medium for a past time? Are Instagram poets like Rupi Kaur the true voice of the 21st century poetry? Or can we use poetry as a way to overcome the fashion for being down-to-earth, unpretentious and perhaps ultimately empty?