> “The main stumbling block can be summed up in a few words: fear of the classical,” the baron wrote. He believed this fear permeated every category. Take liter

> “The main stumbling block can be summed up in a few words: fear of the classical,” the baron wrote. He believed this fear permeated every category. Take literature: Writers were “wholly unfamiliar with the joys of violent muscular effort” and therefore “incapable of describing them for a public that was not very familiar with them either,” he bemoaned. “In painting, sports scenes required more line than color, that is to say the opposite of the reigning trends.” Whether this describes the original reason for removing art events from the Olympics, I don't think it's why we won't bring them back. I also don't believe it's because poetry is wildly unpopular these days. After all, how closely does anybody follow most Olympic events outside of the Olympics themselves? That's kind of the cool thing about the Olympics: they make you white hot interested in diving, curling, etc., for a little while. Personally, I think the reason a traditional poetry category wouldn't work is because the idea that you can objectively judge poetry is anathema these days. People would hate it, call the judges sorts of disparaging things. It would only be controversial, not satisfying. Also, poets themselves generally want their work to be appreciated in a different way other than by live, public snap judgments. Our whole orientation toward art is so different these days that this would all be an alien concept. That said, a battle rap event seems plausible, and would be pretty interesting. But that's distinct from the type of poetry the article is concerned with, both in form, process, and tradition. Low odds that it'll happen in the short term, but it would be pretty neat if it did.