The Place of Poetry: Two Centuries of an Art in CrisisSince the end of the eighteenth century, Christopher Clausen asserts, poetry has steadily declined in cultural status in the English speaking world, yielding its former place as a bearer of truth to the advancing sciences. As the position of poetry was more and more threatened, its defenders made ever higher claims for its importance, even maintaining for a time that it would take the place of religion. But, though the Romantics brought about a