Think: how many sets of song lyrics-- to say nothing of advertising
jingles-- does the average person know well enough to sing along
to? Hundreds? Thousands?
Unfortunately, most of them are Really Really Stupid.
Ditto the music.
Poetry hasn't lost its potency, only its place.
When I'm in the mood, I do like Long Poems. Heaney, Walcott,
James Merril, recently. Milton and Wordsworth and Blake and
Byron and Yeats of the plays, and even C. Frye and M Anderson's
plays. (06/11/02)
by 
