I made this…

I wonder what rhymes with pedantic
Without being excessively frantic?
I thought of crazed wasps
Whose teeth I would floss
Yet that is  not really romantic

Pedantic seems related  to feet
In poetry that might be neat
Pedes obscuro
Might made a detouro
In search of a very fine beat

h

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/24/poetry-is-going-extinct-government-data-show/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2bac34a719fd

 

“The survey finds that the decline in poetry readership is unique among the arts — particularly the literary arts. “Since 2002, the share of poetry-readers has contracted by 45 percent—resulting in the steepest decline in participation in any literary genre,” the study concludes. Over the past 20 years, the downward trend is nearly perfectly linear — and doesn’t show signs of abating.

According to the latest numbers, poetry is less popular than jazz. It’s less popular than dance, and only about half as popular as knitting. The only major arts category with a narrower audience than poetry is opera — not exactly surprising, given the contemporary state of that art.

Of course the arts aren’t a zero-sum game, and they’re not a popularity contest either. But in general the arts community gets uncomfortable when you talk about declining numbers. I asked Bonnie Nichols, a researcher with the National Endowment for the Arts, who co-authored the latest SPPA, what she made of the poetry readership rate. She was less interested in talking numbers, and more interested in the things arts organizations are doing to counteract them.”