Peter's Survey

Earlier this week, Peter put a survey up, asking folks what mode they typically wrote in. A few days later, Peter looked at the results and concluded that there was no clear distinction. That wasn't the way it looked to me, so I took the numbers, fed them to Excel, and did a chart. You can click on the chart to see a larger version.

Personal lyric is way ahead of all the others. And, if you add in those modes that share the notion of writing as self-expression (say, "Confessional" and "Post-confessional," and in all likelihood "Formal"), well, it's not even a contest.

There's a reason folks talk about a mainstream in poetry.