I Think Tocqueville Would Approve

Clever, clever man. I approve, too. I give you bits from P.G. Wodehouse's "The Alarming Spread of Poetry" (do read the whole thing):

"To the thinking man there are few things more disturbing than the realization that we are becoming a nation of minor poets.
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On a sunny afternoon down in Washington Square one's progress is positively impeded by the swarms of young poets brought out by the warm weather.
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And, as if matters were not bad enough already, along comes Mr. Edgar Lee Masters and invents _vers libre_.
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All those decent restrictions which used to check poets have vanished, and who shall say what will be the outcome?
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Who can say where this thing will end? _Vers libre_ is within the reach of all. A sleeping nation has wakened to the realization that there is money to be made out of chopping its prose into bits.
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Probably the only hope lies in the fact that poets never buy other poets' stuff. When once we have all become poets, the sale of verse will cease or be limited to the few copies which individual poets will buy to give to their friends."

Don't miss the part of the essay where he translates some Longfellow into free verse.

Here Wodehouse is really getting at the same thing that Dana Gioia is getting at in his essay, "Can Poetry Matter?," which laments the increasing way in which poetry turns in on itself, rather than engaging with society more broadly. And, need I point out, all of this meshes quite neatly with what Tocqueville has to say on the subject (which I think may be pure genius).