When a poet comes to town, the local paper takes note and is also careful to preface it with something like this: "That news is unlikely to bring traffic to a standstill or send shock waves through the stock market." Why is this sentence there? Its like a presumption of boring the reader, like 'hold on hold on hear me out'. If there's a film being released that is anticipated to bring in alot of people, no newspaper article would say, "Well its the new Will Ferrell movie. And that news is unlikely to derail trains, or bankrupt Microsoft. But we think it might be big." Neither a reading nor a Hollywood blockbuster so drastically affect the infrastructure of society. It may affect this or that person's plans for the evening. I hate to sound like a snob, but poetry has never been a blockbuster art. I know I know. Such statements aren't meant to be taken literally. We're talking about a figure of speech, 'well its not gonna start any wars or cause any mass hallucinations among the grizzly bear population'. And a poetry reading getting a write up in a newspaper is in itself sort of rare and at least'll let plenty of people know its happening.

But the space created by a qualification that says in effect, 'hey man we don't flip out over poetry either but bare with us while we tell you about this guy John Ashbery coming to town' leaves room for people espousing dull 'populist' poetry to step in. Of course Michael Gizzi touches on this too, re: the Keiller-spin-a-little-yarn school, poetry that offers nothing except being easy to get. Maybe its a capitalist thing, as if poetry can be presented as a little industry, could be sold in trinket shops alongside apple-butter. And I think alot of poetry anthologies try consciously to fit into that niche. Is that from outside, extra-aesthetic pressures or simply from an editor's own prediliction? A little of both, I think. Its also irritating that the markebility of poetry and the popularity of poetry get conflated. And partly as a result of that conflation, writing about poetry/poetry readings that happens outside of a certain sphere tends to come with qualifiers and disclaimers.

Of course art does cause change. It affects perception. That's making an impact. A film, a reading, anything can do that. I guess it comes down to the question, why does the presumed disinterest on the part of some vague readership have to come along with write-ups of certain art/poetry events?