Not having read the April 3 article regarding “Maine’s ‘persistent’ legacy of poetry,” I was teased by Tom Fallon’s April 17 letter to the editor. In it, he charged that “poetry does not represent the intellectual … directions of modern civilization,” unlike the different visual art forms that have been created and aptly – we are to believe – named.

This is not to argue his point; only a fool would argue that the 21st century is not undergoing “continuous and quickly moving change.” His contention, that the term “poetry” no longer accommodates diverse contemporary literary forms, might be well-taken, but it cries out for supporting examples.

What forms fall into these unnamed categories? What might he name them? And, why – as he suggests – is literature behind the times because it has failed to come up with 21st-century labels? Is reasonable categorization possible?

Marianne Moore, whom he cites from a 1961 interview with Donald Hall, disliked “poetry” as a catch-all literary category, herself seemed to define the term, differentiating it from prose, in her poem “Poetry.”

“Business documents and schoolbooks,” she said, borrowing a line from Tolstoy’s diary, “when dragged into prominence by half poets, is not poetry”; rather, when writers “can present for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them, shall we have it (poetry).”

She tells us what is and is not poetry, but still, she was unable to come up with innovative labels for the works of today’s word artists – including her own innovations – and she appears to have resigned herself to the limitations of literary nomenclature.

But this reader would welcome Mr. Fallon’s counsel.

Might the status quo not be encompassing enough?

Ted Hargrove

Sanford