Certainly, the growth of digital technology—and the ability for individuals to “craft” ostensibly artistic forms (through social networking software, videos, digital photography, web page design—even television commercials and music videos) has manifested itself as a kind of creativity embraced by many societies.

In other words, perhaps individuals are quite willing to accept digital creations [the many types] of their own making and reshuffling [and others’] as substitutes for poetic forms.

The gradual global absorption of democratic and capitalistic values may serve to further dampen or level artistic creation (Remember De Tocqueville’ observations about the effects of democracy on culture in America.) as it has existed in print form {prior to digital revolution].

 Having said that, we would all do well to read or reread Shelley’s 1819 A Defence of Poetry: An Essay. His work rings with irrefutable truth:

Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time.

 I have often wondered-- if Shakespeare had owned a Blackberry-- would he have been as focused on writing? I would be remiss not to add, also, that poetry is not completely extinct among writers—experienced and beginning.  Still, certainly, some very good efforts at poetry are posted on sites such as Open Salon. Keep writing.