The Romantic-Modern Lyric: Poetry for the Non-Poet

[para. 1]: "The romantic-modern history of poetry has grown increasingly self-referential, rarely able to extend arguments beyond a small tribe of practitioners and students. In turn, poetry becomes a formal exercise when it addresses only an audience predisposed to shared goals and causes. Coleridge, publishing The Friend (1809 — 1810), may have been the first to perceive this inadequacy, offering limited subscriptions to those whom he considered capable of disseminating ideas beyond the sphere of a limited poetic coterie. And while poetry since Coleridge has achieved a kind of popular distinction for itself in the culture (thanks partially to his example of wide-ranging concerns and exceptional energy), it has failed to form a greater connection to other audiences. The social and creative visions of modernism, for instance, most notably found in the fragmented epics of Pound’s Cantos, Williams’ Paterson, and Olson’s Maximus Poems, in many ways address those who are already in sympathy with makers of, as Pound claimed, “words charged with meaning.”"