Poetry reading, at least anecdotally and according to polls, is on the decline. More seem to write it than read it. But I don’t want to add to the Chicken Little blogs and essays. Rather, I want to state that poetry will survive. Its end is not near, nor shall it be. Poetry, as I have suggested on this blog before, is central to being human. We may not often recognize the poetry around us (and for that, I think we miss out on much that is beautiful), but it still consciously works on us. Commercials for the NFL season are pretty rampant now. I do not watch football, but there is a poetry in these commercials. This poetry hearkens back to Homer. I am not saying they are of equal value, but what I am saying is that there is a recognition that language can state passions better than anything else. Sometimes this language operates in parody, but we understand the parody because we recognize the truth.

Will this happen? Well, it has already. Its success and its influence may not yet be widespread, but I think it is only a matter of time as the web becomes more accessible and easy to use. (More accessible? Well, the spread of broadband, the reach into ever more rural areas, ever more general use.) As web journal publishing becomes more widespread and profit margins continue to squeeze out poetry publishers, the use of the web as a primary publishing source will increase. I think this is further out, and the web may not be the web as we think of it today, but again, I think it inevitable that more and more poets unable to find publishers for their books and recognizing the inexpensiveness of electronic publishing will win out. Today you can publish a PDF on Amazon. The negativity of self-publishing is still widespread, but C.P. Cavafy essentially self-published his poems. Seems that turned out well for him. Oh, and that Whitman guy did too. Hmm…. As a friend of mine once told me: If he played his guitar and recorded some music and put it on a CD and then played a gig and tried to sell his CD there, no one would think anything of it. If he read his poems and then sold copies of his self-published book, many people would view that negatively. Again, I think this is fading.

Now if you asked me to provide proof of that, I can’t. I’m prognosticating more than anything else, but I think the trend towards online journal publishing will spill over to online book or electronic publishing. I not only think but I hope that the new era of electronic publishing and access breaks the gridlock of MFAs on publishing. I think breaking that gridlock means more vibrant and interesting poetry. I hope.

…finis…

While I could suggest that Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; Penguin; and other major publishers followed by a litany of non-profit minor publisher of poetry (Copper Canyon, Red Hen, etc.) are the “big studios,” I do not think that is the case. Instead, university poetry MFA programs seem be in that role in poetry. They set the criteria of success (i.e., getting an MFA, getting a job teaching in an MFA program), promote their particular interests, and control access to journals (by acting a editors) among other things. To “break through,” you have to play by their rules or face exile. The barriers are essentially controlled by them and if you don’t show the requisite credentials, they will keep the barrier up. Publishers, in this sense, act more as distributors. Here is an author with a built-in platform. Poetry book sales are pretty bad as it is, so it makes complete sense market-wise. Many publishers do offer first-book poetry contests: Pay a fee, have an established (i.e., MFA) poet judge the contest, and call it a victory for the poetry. Not surprisingly, it seems that mostly MFAs win these contests.

Obviously, I am describing an overall trend or state, for there are exceptions as there is everywhere in life. A good poet without an MFA credential and working a normal job (i.e., not in the university) can get his or her poems published in book form. But this is so rare and even then so invisible to the general culture as to be nonexistent. Also, this is very much a system that has shown its power and influence in the past couple of decades, really. MFAs existed prior to the 1990s, but the volume of graduates, their imprisonment to the system, and the reach and control over journals and other forms of distribution really only became overwhelming in the late 80s and early 90s.

Enter the Internet. More specifically, enter the World Wide Web and all the variety of technologies it engendered. Poetry slams developed independently of MFA programs. They are, in essence, anti-MFA poetry readings. Harking back to Beat expositions, harking back even to ancient Greek literary contests, poetry slams have sought to revive community participation in the final artistic expression of poetry as language and sound. Poetry slams share something in common with the web: They are cheap to host. You need a location (bars and coffee shops are ideal because they do not mind attracting people to their establishments without any investment except maybe a microphone on their part).. Some photocopied flyers or even word of mouth. Having a website is also cheap to set up and maintain and you do not have to have much programming knowledge to make it work. One can spend a lot of money, but one need not. As Internet connectivity has increased, the potential to have many readers has increased.

…to be continued…

Of course, wanting readers and having them is one thing. Also, wanting readers but writing to the truth of your art (or fealty to your vision for a work of art) is another. Neither is contradictory, neither assumes the fealty to your art and the number of your readers are on opposite sides of the scales. There may be a link between the two, but they are not necessarily zero-sum. I’ve seen Pound’s Cantos being read on a plane. I’m sure Pound was faithful to his vision and his poem is most assuredly not an easy read, yet he had a reader. Still, Pound’s vision probably did turn readers away. That is not the same as saying he did not want readers. But the level of difficulty is not directly correlated to a lower number of readers. All this is to say, that an artist can both be true to his or her vision and desire a large number of readers without any necessary contradiction.

So now I need to track back, a bit, I think. As a poet, I desire the greatest number of readers as I can get reading my poems. It seems logical and desirable that having my poems appear in online journals makes more sense. Additionally, publishing online is viewed less negatively now, though it is still not without bias. Some will, perhaps, never ascribe that the online publishing business can ever publish as high quality of poetry as print journals. But journals are only as good as their editors, and there is no monopoly of editorial talent in the universities. This, in fact, may drive the most significant changes in poetry.

…to be continued…

Most journals do not reach very far in terms of readers. Those that do often carry few poems and the competition to get in them is fierce…and if Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, or other “top-flight” poets that (some of whom I like, many of whom I think their work is, well, not good) submit and you’re out. As an editor, how could you not publish them…. At least that’s what I envision editors of such journals thinking to themselves. Online journals, though, are now numerous, cheap to produce, and visible to more people for much longer. I could get a poem published by the Southern Hills Indiana Literary Review, but how many will get to see that poem? Very few, because most people will not be able to obtain a copy and many would not want to pay for it. You cannot find it at your newsstand. You may be able to find it at the local library, but probably only in southern Indiana and only then if the publisher/editor has sent the library a copy. So probably not even in the library. But if the Southern Hills Indiana Literary Review were published online, then any one with an Internet connection, browser, and rudimentary ability to surf the web can find my poem and read it. And because the review will keep archives available for at least a couple of years, the browser does not even need to see it at publication time. As a poet who wants readers, this latter story is far more exciting to me. The fact is, I want readers.

…to be continued…

When I think of how my music purchases have changed since I bought my 2nd generation iPod, I immediately notice that I am nearly 100% digital. I only buy CDs anymore when the title is unavailable on iTunes or Amazon (after their introduction of downloadable music). Similarly, I’m making a slow change to digital only movie and TV show rentals, though this is slower than my music switch. I think, however, when I finally purchase an Apple TV and can watch on my full screen, my rentals will veer more to digital.

Apple’s Media Tablet may provide competition to Amazon’s Kindle and could remake the iTunes store into not only a place for music, movies, and TV shows, but also a place for ebooks. We shall see. Additionally, the Kindle does not yet deal with poetry very well. If you increase the size of the font too much, you destroy the line breaks, which death to reading the poem how the poet has constructed it. However, I view this as a temporary issue that will be resolved sooner rather than later.

…to be continue…

In the introduction, Taylor describes these moments as “the alignment in us of desire or the drive to form.” This enigmatic experience, this “fullness” he says, “We struggle to articulate what we’ve been through. If we succeed in formulating it, however partially, we feel a release, as though the power of the experience was increased by having been focussed [sic], articulated, and hence let fully be.”

I find this definition spot on, especially the enigmatic, difficult to articulate nature of these moments. And poetry and art are, I think, often efforts to articulate and illuminate these. Taylor perhaps finds them more common that I do, for he also discusses how they can be terrifying, confusing, and destabilizing. He mentions at one point how the real world is abolished and something other appears, noting that Robert Musil called it “‘der andere Zustard’ (the other condition).” The experience can be either frightening or uplifting or both. My point is that Taylor seems to accept it more often than I do. Taking his definition, poetry and art thus more frequently serve as bridges to understanding cinema moments.

Reviewing this post, it all seems to be out there and too strongly to suggest that “unreal” situations are the point of art. I only wish to suggest that this is a part of art’s purpose. The mundane, the normal, the real are just as valuable for art and a source of inspiration.

Legend has it that Emperor Charles V stooped to pick up a brush that the master [Titian] dropped as he worked in his studio, a gesture of supplication the gravity of which it is hard for us to appreciate today. For centuries afterward, painters must have felt that they were working in Titian’s shadow.

While probably apocryphal, the story resonates and must surely have resonated with the people of the 16th and 17th centuries, when hierarchy, class, and respect for order permeated more deeply into core values and attitudes than anything we could possibly recognize in today’s world.

Here is a version of the poem I’ve been working on based on this legend, “Titian and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V”:

The world’s ancient order overturned briefly
By a single act and long told after
The master’s death by apprentices who
Still smelled of egg and cochineal, whose hands
Still blue from azurite flitted gestures
As they told when the studio fell swift
To rare silence as the master’s brush fell
From his arthritic fingers
And the Emperor stooped and gave the brush back.

When Charles returned to his white marbled
Palace, he sought to set the world aright,
To lift up again the scales of Empire
By razing four rebellious towns, torching
Thirty heretics, and beheading his uncle
For plotting his own separate kingdom.
With blood, Charles found the scales even again
And retired to live his last with monks.

The master returned to his work
For the years left to him, never once
Noting the day that unbalanced Europe:
When the Emperor knelt not to God but to art.

I do wonder if it might work better as

The world’s ancient order overturned briefly
By a single act and long told after
The master’s death by apprentices who
Still smelled of egg and cochineal, whose hands
Still blue from azurite flitted gestures
As they told when the studio fell swift
To rare silence as the master’s brush fell
From his arthritic fingers
And the Emperor stooped and gave the brush back.

The master returned to his work
For the years left to him, never once
Noting the day that unbalanced Europe:
When the Emperor knelt not to God but to art.