I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction and I would not have predicted that.
Some people swear by writing courses but whether it really helps American poetry I have doubts.
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I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era completely throw the poem into a different time scale.
