dead or alive

The articles that claim poetry is dead or in decline are counterbalanced by those touting that it’s thriving in our culture or reminding us how important poetry is to our lives.

strike out a path

They say that poetry dies; poetry cannot die. Had she only one human brain for her asylum she would yet endure for ages, for she would burst forth like the lava of Vesuvius and strike out a path through the most prosaic realities.

—George Sand, Thoughts and Aphorisms from Her Works (Morrison & Gibb Ltd., second edition 1912), arranged by Alfred H. Hyatt

burying the undertaker

A poem was read at the memorial for the critic who’d declared that poetry was dead.

it's alive

For a dead thing, poetry sure is a bulging, brimming, humming, oozing, teeming, squiggling and generally astir thing.

more than nine

Poetry has been killed so many times it has passed cats for number of lives.