POETS, DIGITAL TIMES

Abstract

In this text, the author explores the relationship between poetry and technology, emphasizing how humanists seem to have been left behind by the current state of science, while wondering what is the place of poetry is in our era. Author refers to how Twitter can be used as a literary device, fitting for a generation that has terrible trouble paying attention, then he elaborates on how, since the last century, humanists and scientists have been separating between a void of mutual incomprehension. He also describes the current state of humanist higher learning in the United States, focusing on the English departments. Lehman laments how the value (both economical and social) of literary education has decreased enormously in our times, giving special attention to English departments that were once held in the highest of academic esteems, and now have dismantled their renowned programs in order to keep a stable income of undergraduates, turning them into political self-indulgence. Lastly he criticizes outdated academics that shallowly declare poetry as dead, yet he ends by stating that the act of writing poetry redeems itself.