Jorge, I understand the point you are trying to make, but I'm not sure I agree. For one thing, I don't think ever before have there been so many journals solely devoted to poetry. So, no, I don't think in the UK in 1819 or any other time for that matter was there so much shitty poetry, even in proportion to the amount of it being published.

But all of that aside, if as you say, there are only a couple of poems worth reading per issue, who is buying these magazines? Are their suscribers entirely made up of dissatisfied but this-is-the-best-we-can-expect readers. A depressing thought, but it is perhaps slightly less depressing than the idea of enthusiastic fans.

It is certainly possible that we are being too hard on poetry but not very much so. I would think that the more irrelevant poetry becomes to society at large, the more it is obligated to at least attain to some high aesthetic standards, otherwise there is nothing at all holding it together. The only options seem to be to either put poetry back on the public radar (an unlikely prospect) or to have some pretty high expectations of it. And probably even to acheive the former you would need the latter.