then, i guess you'd judge 'the bard of avon' as being short on it, huh? ;-) fyi, i learned to cuss [creatively, for our century] at an early age [around 9], by reading his 'complete works'...
Well, a lot of his so-called profanity is nothing more than "blasphemous" statements against Christianity. But besides these examples, he had more creative ways of showing profanity than outright saying it (for example, the whole conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia about laying his head in her lap).
I guess we are just on different wavelengths. I see profanity as a poetic device, you see differently. I mean, I'm obviously in the right here but oh well.
Well, it's a matter of personal choice. Myself, I wouldn't like it, since I expect poetry to be beautiful; profanity isn't beautiful.
It is not something that is happening 'more and more of late'. It has been happening for centuries. In the 1970s Larkin famously included the f-word in one of his poems and he was (not as a result of course) incredibly well educated and offered the position of Poet Laureate. Swear words are just words or phrases that reference things that are culturally taboo, they tell us about the obsessions/history of that culture and the things that are considered 'taboo', risque, etc. These vary greatly from culture to culture. If you are writing poetry that is to do with culture then it seems strange to exclude certain words because some people find them unacceptable, they are just words after all. Provided it has a purpose in the poem then what's the problem? I hope that people wouldn't get offended by just reading a word, particularly people who call themselves writers. Maybe they should read The Vagina Monologues!
Poetry is an art form therefore it surely covers the full spectrum of human emotions, reactions, events, etc. If you cut yourself off from anything you don't consider to be beautiful you are missing out on so many incredible works of art, including poems. I recently went to see an art exhibition based on a massacre that took place in the 1960s. Of course it wasn't beautiful, it was horrifying, powerful, moving, disturbing, tragic, etc. Based on real events, a massacre carried out by the army. If it was a poem I was reading about it then I wouldn't expect that to be beautiful either. I wouldn't be offended or dislike it if there was a 'swear' word in there. It's reality.
