So...
I'm taking this class about poetry and media. One of the questions for tomorrow is to come to class ready to discuss "poetry" and "media" and what those two words "mean" and whether or not poetry can exist without media.
So trying to answer that I was thinking about poetry on the Internet, and how anyone with a computer and a poem can publish it online. There's a snobby, academic part of me that thinks that's not "real" publishing, but there's an ever-growing, blogger part of me that thinks that's wonderful, like literally wonder-full, that everyone can be a published web poet.
In college a person (who tortured my soul, but that's parenthetical here) wrote a poem called "Everybody wants to be a poet and they can't." But maybe now they can.
So, some questions:
a. Does anyone out there READ poetry at all?
b. If no, why not?
b. If yes, from where? Books? Or mostly the Internet?
c. Online publishing-- "real" or not? (I guess this kind of relates to whether self-publishing is real, in the end...)
6 comments:
a. Yes
b. Books, magazines, the Internet in about equal measure
c. The longer I'm online, the more I think that online publishing, self publishing, is the only real publishing. Not all of it is good, but not all of what's published in books is good -- some of what I read on the Internet is much better than what I see in books and magazines, some much worse. At least when I blog, I don't have to waste my time marketing myself to a publisher. I can write -- and people like me, or not.
Oh, I remember that 'Everybody wants to be a poet but they can't' poem. That was my favorite thing the soul-torturer ever did.
I haven't really thought about this, I guess because I am not a blogger or a poet anymore, but I think it's an interesting and important question. I guess it depends on what you mean by "real". If the question is is it really a poem, and does it have the potential to be good, then sure, publish it online, hand out flyers on the street, whatever. A good poem can come from anywhere. If the question is "is it recognized as real by the powers that be enough that it will help me achieve something in the system" (Or something like that, then no.)
I guess I am reacting to this mostly the way that I do when people tell me that they want to get PhDs because they are interested in a topic and want to learn all about it. Maybe it's wrong, but I don't think that's the real point of a PhD. Maybe it used to be, and maybe it should, but it's not, and I think it is important to know what the rules and realities are, even if you decide to break them.
Let's see...I really don't read much poetry anymore...or I read a lot, but only the poetry I already know and love. It's kind of sad, but also kind of save and familiar. All that soul-torture stuff has become my lullaby. If I'm having a terrible day and need some good self-soothing, nothing does it better than listening to Sylvia Plath read "Ariel" or reading the first 100 lines of "Four Quartets," and sometimes Rilke reminds me why I'm married...
So I only re-read poetry nowadays, it seems. I also find myself at least faintly reluctant to read poems, like even from friends. I like it when I do it, but it takes me a while to get up the spunk. I guess I don't want to find new ways to feel.
I think self-publishing online is real...but different...and like MPJ said, there is a definite qualitative difference between stuff you find out here in blog-land. And...really...to be snotty and proud of my little website success...if the writing is good, it gets noticed.
The best thing, which you take advantage of smashingly, about publishing online is that you get instant feedback. People talk back to you! That's neat!
And, your talking audience will demand you to write, which is also neat. In ways, it pisses me off because it keeps me from writing poems, kind of, in that all my writing time is spent blogging...but, I'm writing, daily, and people are reading it and responding.
That's a fucking miracle...
i read new poetry all the time. it is a part of my job. to whit: read lemon hound by sina queyras...its all feminist and responding to virginia woolf.
its weird. i thought of the soul-tourturer the other day. him and a.t. my own personal soul torturer who is likely the father to many babies and soulmate to mcfee...
know what i miss about those days? the hazy beauty of our collective insanity that, in its desperation, actually sustained me and made life feel like poetry.
oh, and p.s. she writes a blog that links to new writing and art, google lemonhound and there it is. her deal is that one needs to publish on web and on paper.
Yep.
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