Hmm …

… The Narcissism of Contemporary Poetry | The Walrus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Much of contemporary poetry has become something of an assembly line, turning out verbal representations of minor occurrences in the poet’s daily life. Most formulaic are the lyric poets, who often come across like oversensitive souls wandering the world logging every detail of every impression that strikes them—the iridescent feathers of a bird they saw on the way to work, the metallic screech of the streetcar that woke them up in the middle of the night, the ugly tile pattern in the bathroom where they hid to avoid talking to anyone at a party. The lyric is, in a sense, the selfie of the poetry world: it provides a perfectly contrived snapshot of the poet at a moment in time.