Poetry Is Dead Poem by Laurence Overmire

Capital D.
Go to the bookstore if you don’t
Believe me
See if you can find the poetry
Way back in the back where
Most people seldom go
If you do find it, what
Do you see?

Frost and Dickinson and
Susan Polis Schutz
Oh, yes, Poetry is Dead.

Who killed it? And why?
We need to find the corpse
Get a sample of DNA
Re-construct a new being
A Poetry people can relate to
A Poetry people want to hear
A Poetry not only striking
But with something vividly important
To say.


(Previously published in CER*BER*US, XLIII, July 2001)