Poems About Poetry, #5 "The Trouble with Poetry," by Billy Collins. Read by DJB

Last time I read you something of mine in this theme. I really do wonder if we poets are in danger of becoming a dwindling group of artists who create art chiefly for ourselves and a very small audience of fellow poets.

I hope this is not the case. I hope that the recent activities of groups like the American Academy of poets, with their National Poetry Writing Month (April) are an indication that while we are very self-aware and self-reflective, we haven't lost sight of the importance of the human heart and the need for readers to feel it in the gut when they read our work. In other words, I hope all this self-reflection is an indication that we are on the verge of springing out into the main stream again.

I hope that our little groups in coffee shops, and our poems so centered on ourselves and our own artistic doings are not signs that ours is a dying art, more and more irrelevant to the every day life of humans. God, I hope we are not heading that way.

In the meantime, another poem by Billy Collins, "The Trouble with Poetry."

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