I worried that the culture would succumb to this stultification and I wouldn’t be immune. It will become a niche passion, enjoyed by a shrinking caste of connoisseurs trained to slow their minds and absorb long, twisting chunks of narrative. As the age of zombie swiping runs its course, the novel will follow the fate of verse. This decline, according to some publishers and bookstore owners, is a harbinger. It turned out that the poem required sharper focus than a television audience could sustain and more patience than modernity would permit. I have a fear stoked by a doomsaying prophecy about the future of reading: A century ago or so, poetry was a fixture of everyday life, enjoyed by everyday people. I was warding off the possibility of mental deterioration. What I didn’t say is that I was also positioning myself like a senior citizen hunched over the crossword. My purpose, when I explained it to my wife and kids a few hours before midnight, was to ritualistically remind myself of emotions other than those triggered by the front page. My self-improvement project for the year was to read a fresh poem every morning, before glimpsing the accumulation of unresponded email and lifting the lid off Twitter. I can say definitively now that I faltered in pursuit of my New Year’s resolution.
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