Jeremiad …

… The Noble Art Is Not So Noble | PJ Media. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The low state of poetry in public estimation is a sure index of a general lack of cultivation, especially in a tweeting culture addicted to sparring acerbics in 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Tweets are not haikus where resonant insights can exfoliate in brief compass. Pace T.S. Eliot in The Hollow Men: This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a twitter. But the low state of current poetry itself, given over mainly to triviality, flabby sentiment, pedestrian diction, or cryptic utterance, is an infallible litmus of cultural degradation.