So here’s a thought.
Many of our modern poetic traditions can be traced back to the Skaldic poetry of the Norse. No really; quit laughing.
One key concept behind Norse poetry was the kenning or the word-pairs used to represent something in the story in a way more elegant than the usual prosaic words. Of course these kennings were meaningless out of context; you needed to know, for example, that “blood worm” really meant sword, by general poetic convention. As the years passed, these kennings got more and more involved and esoteric.
Today, we still have these very elaborate literary allusions and metaphors, based on the current collective knowledge of our poetic history. This creates a barrier to entry for those casual readers of poetry which, by the way, make up 99.95% of the audience. It leaves us with these poems that are so cryptic and unapproachable that many people are turned off by poetry entirely; increasingly, good poets will even eschew them in the hopes of making their poetry more accessible by the general public.
Enter the internet and hypertext.
Why not write poetry in the true “high poetry” tradition, with all the Greek gods and literary references, even psychobabble if we want, and put in hyper links to the Wikipedia entry that explains that particular phrase. This would make the poetry accessible through the click of a button, yet still be readable in its pure presentation. It’s like having the author write the cliff notes and publish them with the work…
