Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Poetry in the early 21st century

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete--Ymblanter (talk) 07:24, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Poetry in the early 21st century

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I don't like nominating poetry articles for deletion, but this has to go. It has history--in short, it was created as a copy-paste job from a ton of Wikipedia articles, deleted, then resurrected after proper attribution (I assume it was proper, I haven't checked) of the sections.

But this is not a good or even acceptable article. "Poetry in the early 21st century" isn't a happening subject to begin with, and this particular article is really just an essentially POV essay. The creator appears heavily influenced by one particular critic (Harold Bloom), and clearly has their favorite poets.

Its POV-essay quality is clear already from the title and the first sentence. The title should really say "English-language poetry", since the rest need not apply, with the odd exception of Paz. Someone should have stuck a "globalize" tag on it already. Its opening sentence, "The end of the twentieth century was marked by the death of three leading poets when James Dickey (1923-1997), Octavio Paz (1914-1998) and Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) died within four years of each other", presents us with a rather arbitrary list of three dead poets who have little in common but their job and their date of death. That an admittedly subjective list follows is not a surprise, but what I think puts the nail in the coffin is the claim that "this list...presents a representative sample". At the very least an article like this should base itself on some impeccable sources that actually do this sort of selective and comparative work (since in a way we're anthologizing), but the sources are, well, newspaper work, certainly not up to par for an article like that, and never general enough for the breadth of this topic which, in the end, is just a selection of copies from various Wikipedia articles, thrown together based on someone's likes and dislikes. I mean, I'm happy to see someone include the perennially underrated Geoffrey Hill, whose Mercian Hymns y'all should really read, but this list is just arbitrary. Drmies (talk) 00:53, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Poetry-related deletion discussions. Everymorning (talk) 01:06, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Drmies. Indeed it lacks a worldly view, but as I said in the AN thread, this is if anything better off as a WP:BOOK; that's all it appears to be: a collection of other articles, word for word. — MusikAnimal ^talk 01:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 02:30, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Drmies. The attribution problems seem to be the least of this article's many problems. Every sentence is contentious. For me the problem is not simply the appalling bias but also the tone: it reads like old textbooks that presented poetry not as poetry but as a club of unsmiling people, all of whom knew each other and published each other and created "schools." The article is not about "poetry" but about poets and not representative poets either. I see no value in it....Poetic1920 (talk) 03:11, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Keep. I agree that this article needs a lot of work, but surely there is something salvageable in here. For example, the portion about "Literary poetic advancement in the 21st century" is substantiated by inline citations to a reliable source (albeit from a single source). There are already articles for events in poetry for specific years (see list of years in poetry) and there are some extant "this century in poetry" articles (see, e.g., 4th century in poetry). Furthermore, "[i]f editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page" (see WP:ATD). Renaming may be warranted here, and certainly the article needs to present a worldly view, but I'm just saying that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the WP:BATHWATER. -- Notecardforfree (talk) 06:59, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment With the existence of 2012 in poetry, 2013 in poetry, 2014 in poetry, etc. it makes sense to have an overview article for the entire century. This probably isn't it, but neither is 21st century in poetry, which is currently just a list of years. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 09:07, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I endorsed deleting the poetry in the early 20th century page and other pages that show a deliberate disregard for Black poets, female poets that were out of the mainstream, and radical poets. This page seems to have the same prejudices. The comment above is interesting: but the poetry pages like 2012 in poetry (which I did not know) are about poetry. This page is about who is a poet and who gets to decide (except it's not about that either). This conversation here is smarter than the page itself. *JRW03 (talk) 11:10, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What I'd like to see is the article reduced to this section - Poetry_in_the_early_21st_century#Chronology_of_the_21st_century_in_poetry - and expanded from there. I'd also suggest that it be merged with 21st century in poetry, and probably moved there, as that is the better title. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 07:14, 14 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I've been bold and moved the chronology over to 21st century in poetry - now I'd agree that Poetry_in_the_early_21st_century should be deleted. 阝工巳几千凹父工氐 (talk) 03:53, 20 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.