The Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Reviewed

Earl's sister:  Pearl the Squirrel

    Before you read this, please take a moment to jot down the names of your 10 favorite contemporary poets.  Just humor me. 

    Earl is neck deep in sports magazines, preparing for his 2013 NFL Fantasy Football drafts.  This leaves me, his sister, Pearl, with the onerous task of analyzing the two most significant recent verse-related lists:  Earl's "Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Today" and Seth Abramson's "The Top 200 Advocates for American Poetry (2013)", posted here and to the Huffington Post, respectively, on the same day.  Quite a coincidence:  Seth authored one article and was mentioned in the other!

    There may never be two lists on the same topic (i.e. poetry, in this case) that have less in common, reflecting in sharp focus the contrast between the established Print and the emerging Pixel worlds.  The key is the explicit stipulation in "The 10" presupposing that poetry would succeed in finding a public audience before 2030.  Seth's article shows no interest in poetry's repopularization.  Rather, "The Top 200" concentrates on practical, professional considerations, the realpolitik of indifference.  As always, Mr. Abramson speaks eloquently for the academic/PoBiz (the "AcaPoBiz"?) group aesthetic.

Seth Abramson

    Reactions to "The Top 10" were positive, criticism limited to a typo correction, AcaPoBizzers unfamiliar with the online world and a few suggested additions from those who missed the part about unread producers.  One Internetter remarked:  "The future isn't now but it is here."  With actual and potential careers at stake, reactions to Seth's "Top 200" were more mixed, often more visceral.  One commenter, referring to the lack of audience, said:  "It's like a beauty contest in the land of the blind."

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #37

    The most obvious disparity between compilations is their size:  10 versus 200.  Idealistic onliners tend to work on regaining viewers, including non-poets, with audience-oriented verse.  This puts them in a minority which may be adequately represented by ten or twenty figures.  The more careerist Page community is represented by 200+ people, adding more each day, lest an omission diminish anyone's prospects.   As for aesthetic diversity, more than 95% of the poets listed are, by the objective standards of my "Prosody Evaluation And Report Logger", prosers.  200+, though?  Well, there is an old saying among us squirrels:  "When someone gives you six reasons the real one is the seventh."  If there are 200 sources of influence in such a tiny, homogenous group there really isn't much discernible influencing going on, is there?  Why not find the few people responsible for this conformity and credit them?

     The Top 200 list could only be written by and for people untouched by the modern cyberzeitgeist.  This was evident in the first phrase of the introduction:

    "With more than 75,000 poets in the United States alone..."

     Ahem.  Let me put this in perspective, using one of my brother's favorite examples.  Francis Ford Coppola--you know, the one who gave us "Patton" and "The Godfather"--launched Zoetrope on June 21, 2000.  It began as a critical forum for screenwriters but soon branched out to embrace playwrights, novelists and poetry writers.  Over time, poets--most of them American--have dominated the membership, traffic and contributions.  Of the online poetry subforums that have survived for all or most of the last decade Zoetrope is, by far, the most obscure.  Most onliners either don't know what it is or refer to it dismissively as "Zoetripe".¹

     Zoetrope alone has more than 75,000 American poets as members. 

     How many American poets are there in total?  It's hard to say but, extrapolating from online, slam and other contest participation, one million American poets would seem an extremely conservative estimate.  Earl's best guess is that 2,000,000 Americans consider themselves poets, serious or not.  Does that sound like a lot to you?  Well, it's about .5% of the total U.S. demographic.  That may be the all-time high those using raw numbers boast about but, as a percentage, it might also be a historic low in any human population.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #43

     The second oddity to Internauts accustomed to dealing with anglophones from all over the world is the focus on American poetry.  Why not left-handed poets?  Or coastal versus mountain or flatland poets?  Do audiences today really care whether a writer is American, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, South African, East or West Indian, Kiwi, Australian, or Outer Mongolian?  If so, why?  Yes, I know this doesn't raise eyebrows among Print Worlders but within the cybercommunity of the past, present and future this is bound to appear strange--perhaps even antiquated or unhealthy!

     If none of the ten favorite contemporary poets you wrote down earlier are from foreign shores your chances of being a Page rather than a Pixel poet skyrocket.

     For the most part, the Top 200 was a list of underrated poets, many of them unfamiliar even to others in the Print World.  This is a reflection of that milieu's segmentation;  one doesn't produce iconic efforts by selling 200 copies of a book or by publishing in poetry magazines with, at the very most, 30,000 subscribers.  By contrast, Earl restricted himself to people well known to everyone within the established Internet community.

     All of this said, "The 200" is also remarkably expansive.  In addition to poets and publishers, it includes, as one cynical Kris Kristoffson fan commented, "songwriters, politicians, activists, organizers, scholars, essayists, critics, one troll, two semiliterates, 'an electric eye, two big dogs and a minefield'".



     No one is surprised by the aesthetic bias.  By my count, only one Nemerov winner or judge was listed in the 200.  Even multiple winners who have spent decades in open fora providing free expert critique to developing poets were overlooked.  By contrast, the Top 10ers, including the late Steve Sabol, all understood basic verse technique and its value.

     Speaking of Mr. Sabol, there is a parallel between the NFL and the poetry worlds.  Playing the AcaPoBiz role is the players' union:  The National Football League Players Association ("NFLPA").  Unlike a guild, it concentrates on its members' welfare without regard to performance.  Criticism of other members is actively discouraged.  Both the league and Players Association have a conduct code and rules encouraging uniformity--literally!--and respect when appearing in the public eye (i.e. playing onfield or being interviewed). 

     The more purist onliners are like the NFL Network, a television channel that grew out of Steve Sabol's NFL Films (which is similar to Stage poets, dealing with the more dramatic and amusing).  The NFL Network unabashedly promotes football as its raison d'être, often featuring technical discussions (something never found in literary periodicals anymore), form[ation]s, crowd-pleasing² highlights, humor, news, drama, and, of all things, poetry!

     Mr. Abramson has provided us a useful directory of those whose influence has brought U.S. poetry to where it is today.  Whether this is to their credit or not is another question entirely.  It is time again for me to quote Kristofferson:

    "Who's to bless and who's to blame?"

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Footnotes:

¹ - To be fair, Zoetrope poets have created no less than two of the top 10 poems of this century:  "There are Sunflowers in Italy" by Didi Menendez and "Specimen #31, Adult Female" by Sharon Hurlbut.

² - As opposed to performances of interest only to other participants.

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The Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Today

     The current fad is lists of the most influential people in poetry.  My particular spin presumes a successful future for our art form.  The question becomes:

    "Who will be most responsible if poetry regains an audience before 2030?"

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #69

     Most such lists will be dominated by authors, publishers or editors of poetry books.  This begs the question about people reading poetry.  They don't.  That is the problem.

     The role of teachers will figure prominently on other lists but, for our purpose, this would have to be confined to famous instructors who teach techniques, technologies, performance and forms that will appeal to non-poets.  As far as I know, that list is empty.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #52

    Far more important are the administrators and critiquers who mold that verse, the organizers and performers who bring it to the public's attention in open mics and slams, the videographers who post it on venues like YouTube, the bloggers and reviewers who filter out the shite and, finally, the editors of successful [web and maga] 'zines--especially non-literary ones (where and once they exist)--that bring poetry to the public.

     At the risk of stating the obvious, in this Internet Age the most influential people¹ will be those with a long and strong online presence.  That some of these individuals may be unknown to you says more about the transitional state of the endeavor than its participants. 

Peter John Ross

     Almost everything you have learned online about poetry fundamentals or the workshop ethos in the last twenty years can be attributed directly or indirectly to PJR.  He is the grandfather of successful 21st century poetry.

John Boddie

    "Whether or not critique is constructive depends on how the author uses it, not on the manner in which it’s phrased."

     If you don't know who John Boddie is then you have never encountered serious poetry critique.

Margaret Ann Griffiths

     That Maz was the Critic's Choice as best poet of our time and that the first two editions of her posthumous collection were oversubscribed will not be what puts her on this list.  As a mentor, commenter and, most importantly, as a role model she simply had no equal.

Marc Smith

     Any list of influential contributors to poetry's future that does not include the inventor of the slam cannot be taken seriously.

Nic Sebastian

     Nic's attention to presentation puts her decades ahead of anyone else in imagining the successful poetry [performances] of the future.

Christine Klocek-Lim

     Chrissie twice rescued one of the world's largest poetry forums.  In its day, her "Autumn Sky Poetry" was among the top three webzines;  despite being on hiatus for more than a year people still deep link to its particulars.  Recently, she has started a poem-a-day version, "Autumn Sky Poetry Daily".  Ms. Klocek-Lim's gentle style doesn't create waves but, if influence can be measured by the loyalty an organizer inspires, Christine's name must be recognized.  If the poetry world had a dozen more people as effective and level-headed as Chrissie we would not be having this discussion.

Seth Abramson

     Famous blogger Seth Abramson's frequent and exhaustive analyses of PoBiz and academic practices make him the Noam Chomsky of the poetry world.

Michael Burch

     Say what you will about his mixing poetry with politics or religion but Mr. Burch's "The HyperTexts" remains the single greatest source of contemporary poetry.  If nothing else, this is a tremendous convenience for those wanting to cite a great contemporary poem.

Tim Green

     If the Print world survives it will be because of the innovative approaches pioneered or perfected by Rattle magazine's editor, Tim Green.

Don Share

     Whether we are talking about dinosaurs, armies or organizations, the larger an entity is the slower it moves.  While "academic" efforts will continue to play a decreasing role in discussions of contemporary verse, Poetry magazine's resources ensure that it will continue to be the elephant in the room.


Honorable Mentions:

Gary Gamble

    "Try to have your writing make sense²."

     More than anyone else, Usenetter and Poetry Free-For-All moderator "GG" can be credited with putting an end to cryptocrap, to say nothing of unearned respect.

Kei Miller, Mary E. Hope, Stephen Bunch, Bob Schechter and Richard Epstein

     These prolific online critiquers, along with many others, have contributed more to the revival of poetic competence than anyone else.

Steve Sabol

Stephen Douglas Sabol (1942-2012)

     I knew I would forget someone!  This oversight was so egregious that it required immediate correction with this post-edit.  As of this writing, the single most successful contributor to poetry's repopularization (a subject that existing producers avoid) is the late, great NFL Films director, Steve Sabol, ably assisted by his predecessor and father, Ed.  He did whole segments on poets and recitations from poems (e.g. "Hurt but not slain, lay down and bleed awhile, then we’ll rise and fight again.").

     In 1974 Steve wrote the closest thing to an iconic poem in the last half century, "The Autumn Wind".  Sports announcer John "The Voice of God" Facenda recited it, reminding us of the value of fine performance and production.

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     My apologies to the many whom I have omitted.

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Footnotes:

¹ - We needn't broaden the discussion to include squirrels and the like.

² - Mr. Gamble's original phrasing was "Try to make your writing make sense."  He arrived at the final wording with the help of a fellow Usenetter.

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Why Your Poetry Fails - Part III

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #38

Judges, Editors, Forms and Meter:


    Stories abound of great poems or poets being rejected by editors.  The greatest poem of the 20th Century was initially put aside because the editor didn't know it was metrical and thought it was obscure rambling.  Ironically, the greatest piece [so far] in the 21st Century was rejected by the same outlet and under the same misapprehension:  that it was non-metrical and too obscure despite the fact that its theme was, literally, spelled out for them.

    "How can this happen?" you might ask.  "Twice, no less!  Are they crazy?  Stupid?  Utterly lacking in taste?"

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #16

     No.

     Too many people seem to think that contests and periodicals have dozens of screeners and judges/editors waiting for submissions to trickle in, each of which will be studied like the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Wrong at every level.  Judging and editorial staffs are always undermanned, almost always receive far more entries than expected and, with a deadline looming, have nowhere near the time for a "close read" of each poem or manuscript.

     Typically, like a sports franchise cutting players in training camp, the process involves slimming down the stack of entries using progressively more stringent criteria.  Only in the final stages will judges or editors be sufficiently familiar with the candidate works to consider subtle nuances.  It follows logically that "deep" poems are usually eliminated before these stages unless they also have an eye-catching exterior.  Gotta have some sizzle with that steak.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #48

     Many assume that editors and contest judges are students of the craft.  Not so.  Most are students of the products of the craft.  Literature majors, not technique freaks.  More like car dealers than car mechanics.  This state of affairs isn't new.  Harriet Monroe was an excellent editor but would not have published "Prufrock" if Ezra Pound hadn't stepped in and scanned it for her.  True, T.S. Eliot got away with outwriting his editor but you won't...unless you have Ezra Pound riding shotgun for you.

     Today, thousands are earning MFAs, PhDs and positions as editors and contest judges without knowing the basics of verse, starting with scansion.  This is hardly an ideal situation--indeed, it's one of my pet peeves--but as long as we are aware of the editor's/judge's level of technical knowledge it can work in our favor.  We can treat them more or less as we would the average poetry lover, employing the tricks we speak of in this series without detection.  Many would ask:  "Isn't that as it should be?  Isn't poetry intended for poetry fans as opposed to poetry geeks?"  (I'm biting my lip here.)

     Given their lack of interest in and familiarity with the elements of verse, the easiest way to outwrite such editors or judges is to write in form.  It's too conspicuous, like speaking a foreign language around unilingual anglophones.  Rude, even!

Acrostics:

     An acrostic is a poem that lists its theme with the first, last or other letters from each line--most often the first letter, as with "Beans".  Here is how they operate:

• Person hears or reads the poem;


• Person experiences a "WTF?" reaction;
  
  
• Person has the time and curiousity to investigate; and, ideally,


• Person looks at the poem on paper and sees the acrostic.  Mystery solved!

     The catch is that a judge or editor, pressed for time and inundated with cryptocrap, likely won't bother to check for the acrostic.

The Fate of Other Forms:

My sister, Pearl Gray

     When people complain that judges and editors are unpredictable I show them the Great Canadian Literary Hunt, an international writing contest sponsored by that country's national broadcasting conglomerate.  In tracking the winning manuscripts over time I have been so struck by the lack of diversity that I had my Rik Roots wannabe sister, Pearl, write the "Prosody Evaluation And Report Logger" (aka "PEARL") [in her favorite programming language, Perl].  By counting repetitions of rhythms and sounds, its algorithm revealed that, even though the contest employs different judges each year, the winners invariably hovered around 1.8 out of 10 on the PEARL scale.  This means they had less poetry than a weather forecast (which might repeat words like "rain", "heat", "temperature", etc.).  One year, the second place entrant in the prose competition scored a full PEARL point higher than the poetry side winner.  What is more, in all the years I followed the contest not one triumphant manuscript--these were collections,¹ not single poems--had a single line of verse in it.  Subject matter rarely ventured far from diary entries and feeble fables about coming of age in small towns.

     This makes two points:

1. You must check out not just the judge's or editor's track record but that of the contest or periodical as well.  The sponsors always pick the same kind of judges.  Read their previous output carefully.  Indeed, most publishers' submission guidelines implore you to do so.


2. Many, if not most, judges and editors take a jaundiced view of form (e.g. sonnets, villanelles, ghazals) and, if they can detect it, meter.  Biases range from "simplistic doggerel" and "light verse" to "precious", "trying too hard" and the Kiss of Death:  "too clever by half".

    It follows from #2 that if you are going to write in meter break it up into paragraphs (called "corata", like "Shadows") or irregular linebreaks (called a "curgina", like "Beans").  It isn't a stretch to assume that those who don't understand meter won't recognize it when it is disguised, however thinly.  Some don't even have someone read the submissions aloud to them.  (If I ruled the world contests and editors would pay Nic Sebastian to record every poem they receive but, hey, who listens to a squirrel?)

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #49

    As predictable as contest judges are, print periodicals are more so.  Few will publish anything that doesn't align with their aesthetics, philosophy or politics, all of which can be remarkably narrow.  Except for formalist magazines such as The Lyric and David Landrum's "Lucid Rhythms", I could find no magazine that scored higher than 4.0 on the PEARL scale, which is to say that most of their poetry isn't.  The three outlets that cracked 5.0 on a steady basis were all ezines.

    The takeaway from all of this, as encapsulated in Rules #48 and #49, is to use the tricks we mention in this series (e.g. diaeresis, bracketing, curgination, etc.) without making it apparent, just as your opponents have been doing. 


    "If knowledge hangs around your neck like pearls instead of chains..."²
  

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Footnotes:

¹ - Recently, these collections have been limited to two poems each, no doubt in an effort to reduce the judges' workload.

² - If you do not own Alan Price's "O Lucky Man!" album buy it.  Thank me later.

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Series Links:

1. Why Your Poetry Fails - Part I - Diaeresis



2. Why Your Poetry Fails - Part II - Brackets



3. Why Your Poetry Fails - Part III - Judges and Editors

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Novels versus Poetry - Part III

    In Parts I and II we discussed the value and nature of performance.  Now it's time to revisit an old theme to examine the approaches of prose versus poetry.  If you're a regular here you are more than familiar with the Watermelon Problem:  how do we get readers to notice exceptional writing?  What pedestals do we use to highlight masterpieces?

    Prose writers have the luxury of using an axe to cut through this Gordian knot.  Reviewers do help but novels are so popular that, as long as we get their genre right, they will usually find a readership.  As long as it makes it into the stores or libraries, the worst whodunit of 2013 will fetch far more readers than the best contemporary poetry collection.  Once the work finds its audience reader discussion, critics and the passage of time will separate the Timothy Findleys from the Stephen Kings.

    The novel's size will force a consumer to devote a whole day's leisure time to it.  He or she will stay up late trying to finish it before sleeping on it.  No film or poem will be accorded such time and attention.  In essence, the fiction world solves the problem by growing a watermelon so humungous that nothing else will fit on the cart.  Crude, but effective.

    Compare this to what little individual attention poems will receive from consumers, nestled in collections with other pieces.  Things are even worse at the wholesale level, where great verse might be overlooked by overworked editors.

    So far this century the poetry world--print, pixel or stage--has not solved the Watermelon Problem.  No best sellers.  No viral YouTubes.  No memorable movie or television dramatizations.  No iconic verse, even within the fragmented community itself.  True, every Usenetter knows "Hookers"* by Marco Morales and all webbers beyond the blogosphere are familiar with Maz's "Studying Savonarola" but even these classics are unknown outside their medium.  If we can't popularize the signature poem of the greatest poet of our time, what chance do the rest have?

    Whatever the solution, it doesn't start with a poetry magazine that has a circulation lower than a campus newspaper.  It may begin with their staff, though.  Imagine a forward-thinking editorial group, organization or individual searching for the word "poetry" on YouTube, contacting the authors of the very best offerings to get permission, and creating an eclectic series based on such efforts.  In time, a publication could get the word out to encourage YouTube poets to include the name of the periodical in their posts (e.g. "Could you please mention our magazine/webzine, 'Rattling Pedestal', when you post your videopoems?  This will help us with our searches and signal your willingness to participate.").  Meanwhile, existing 'zine fans could be encouraged to post audiovisual productions of their work to the Internet.  Indeed, one could save resources by creating a videopoetry channel like Nic Sebastian's "Whale Sound Poetry" and linking to it.  What could be simpler?

    Indeed, that may well be the future of the poetry 'zine:  to address the Watermelon Problem by highlighting and documenting the best written, performed and produced poetry of our time.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #33

    One final point:  Poetry needs to get over itself.  Let's stop promoting by mode.  Seriously.  Who does that?  Do we go to movie theaters to see films or cinematography?  Do we go to bars for drinks or liquids? 

    Imagine if people used the term "prose" in the same way, [correctly] describing everything other than poetry.  The reason no one ever says "Hey, let's go check out some prose" is that it could mean anything from political speeches on C-Span, a contemporary play on Broadway, a novel or an instruction manual to the latest Star Wars movie.  There is nothing prose can do that poetry can't.  In dealing with the public, at least, let's remove the words "prose", "poetry" and "verse" from our focus.

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Footnote:

* "Hookers", by Marco Morales:

Missing you again
I embrace shallow graves
pale faces, doughlike breasts
help me forget.

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Preservation, Presentation and Promotion - Part III

Impressions: William Shakespeare understood that, in order to survive, verse needed to be meaningful, entertaining and adroit. That the three current supercommunities each specialize in a different one of these aspects is a reflection of their media--most notably their media's lifespans. To wit:

1. the Page poet hopes to address the ages and, naturally enough, chooses the format that lasts longest;



2. the Stage poet speaks directly and literally to those present with less regard for those beyond earshot, including future generations; and, finally,



3. the Pixel poet concentrates on technique as it affords the same portability that the Internet itself does.
   

When we speak of someone as being from the Print World we don't mean a one-time vanity author who thinks "Christian Wiman" involves pious ladies from the Ozarks. By the same token, a 3-minute recitation in an open mic doesn't make us a Presentation Poet. We refer to an individual who has been around since dirt was dust and knows the ground rules and major players.

An e-poet's attitudes reflect the pre-blogosphere online experience and ethos. These were forged in web-based critical forums (late 1990s to the present) which, in turn, were fashioned after Usenet newsgroups (starting in the early 1980s). Such discussion groups are a far cry from the peer workshops we see in the Face-to-Face ("F2F") world. In online forums, most of which are tiered according to experience level, poems are analyzed in depth by critics of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities. Imagine how this would go over in the other metacommunities! Picture an open mic where, instead of the usual polite applause, audience members would stand up and go through your performance, word by word, gesture by gesture, pointing out strengths and weaknesses.

Why is the blogosphere excluded? Because while it is, in theory, where the three supercommunities can intersect, in practice it has become largely the domain of Print Worlders, used primarily to discuss the PoBiz.

The world wide web's poetry community is still in its first generation. Future participants will undoubtedly be much better equiped to exploit its capabilities, including those yet to be developed.

Overview: Consider the difference in environments to appreciate how Shakespeare's "meaningful, entertaining and adroit" aesthetic has been splintered into a trichotomy. Book publishers serve a few hundred readers. The collections are blurbed but few are reviewed by strangers, rarely for technical rather than interpretive merit. Live performances meet with tepid, obligatory clapping. The detailed critique that onliners receive in workshops encourages audience orientation and technical expertise. E-poets also produce the widest variety of form (starting with more metrical poetry) and genre. To wit, the two best received e-poems are both elegies, one of them unabashedly romantic, the other in a form seen only twice in the Print World.

Pixel poets are a cautious, humble lot. Having every word you write analyzed by the greatest critics alive does that for you. Bearing in mind that anyone can start their own vanity website, online poetry exhibits, by far, the greatest range in quality. I don't care how awful last night's newly published reader or open mic performer was; I can show you dozens of onliners infinitely worse. On the other hand, this same community produces some of the greatest contemporary verse you'll find. The trick is knowing where to look.

While critical sites form the backbone of the online community, webzines complete the skeleton. These rarely have any financial backing, if only because governments and universities are usually focused on local talent and audiences. Not surprisingly, these e-zines are labors of love and rarely survive ten years; a page can last ten centuries while a performance rarely last ten minutes. Just weeks ago two eminent webzines, Christine Klocek-Lim's "Autumn Sky Poetry" and Paul Stevens' "Shit Creek Review" went on indefinite hiatus. Yes, I realize that print magazines go under every day but at least some of them survive for generations. The instability of the online platforms, coupled with the modesty of the denizens, makes filtering difficult.

Paradoxically, the editor of "TheHyperTexts.com", one of the best and longest-standing webzines, is decidedly not an onliner.

What identifies the Pixel poet? A shared view which includes among its aspects:

• familiarity with key organizational figures such as the late Gazebo founder Jaimes Alsop, Poets.org administrator Christine Klocek-Lim, Eratosphere Head Moderator Alex Pepple, Poetry Free-for-all moderator Gary Gamble, and editors Mike Burch and Paul Stevens.



• recognition of the great crossover poets (e.g. A.E. Stallings and 3-time Nemerov winner Michael Juster) and, for sure, of the Internetter selected as the one critics would most like to read in an anthology: the late Margaret A. Griffiths;



• gratitude toward selfless, authoritative critics like John Boddie, James Wilk and Richard Epstein, to name only a few;



• a concentration on how good we'll be in the future rather than on how good we are now;



• an understanding that the person who took the time to call our last poem "unspeakable shit" was doing us a favor;



• a skin thicker than the earth's crust;



• a greater interest in poems than poets;



• a waning interest in the Print World;



• a nascent interest in the Presentation World;



• a more technically centered and, dare I say, technically informed view;



• an understanding well beyond lip service that poetry "isn't about what you say but how you say it";



• a preference for candor over diplomacy;



• a disdain for blurbing;



• a palpable contempt for Convenient Poetics; and,



• a healthy lack of interest in the blogosphere.

Perspective: Given that they are, by definition, computer literate, we might expect online poets to be at the forefront of multimedia presentation and technology. In truth, they are a distant third. Every minute of every day another slam poet posts a webcam performance on YouTube. Host venues archive their latest open mic. Meanwhile, magazines sport spiffy e-versions of their issues and recordings of poetry readings and lectures. Only recently have blogzines like Nic Sebastian's defunct Whale Sound offered voice recordings.

The Internet is the most cost-effective way to promote anything. The onliners' focus on poems, the readercentric nature of their work, and free access to it combine to raise e-poetry's profile. Compare a webzine's hundreds of hits per week to a slam conducted in front of a few dozen people or a "successful" book that goes out of print after selling a few hundred copies. Show any editor a list of the top online poets and they'll report, often to their own amazement, that many of their favorite contributors are included. As mentioned in Part I, the best selling book of 2011 (excluding educational sales) was authored by a Pixel poet. In short, e-poets are beating Print poets on their own turf. How? Easy. Over and above the sales to alumni, associates, friends and relatives that all poets enjoy, Internetters can sell dozens or even hundreds more to fellow onliners.

Conclusion: Personally, I'd urge ever poetry fan to reach beyond the limits of their community and closer to the Shakespearean model. Not familiar with the Print World? Check out some of the blogs and online newsmagazines, beginning with the Poetry Foundation's "Harriet". Click on their Blogroll links. If you're on Facebook, befriend "Poetry" Senior Editor Don Share; those who have attest that he's always good for an interesting link or two.

New to the Performance World? Drop in at your local open mic to develop your performance skills. Don't be put off if the calibre of presentations is poor...all the less reason for you to feel nervous!

Interested in online poetry? Lurk on Eratosphere (coincidentally, an online workshop created by a print publisher, Able Muse), The Alsop Review - Gazebo, the rough-and-tumble Poetry Free-For-All or the friendly tiers of Poets.org for a year or so to appreciate the critique found in their expert forums. Note how different their conversation forums are from those on the blogosphere.

The future of poetry is its past: audiovisual presentation. Think YouTube here. Practice your delivery in front of a webcam and, as they say, "post it when you nail it". In addition to performances, options include videos and slideshows. Along with some recording equipment, consider purchasing a video editor. Adobe "Flash" is the industry standard but Roxio "Creator" is cheaper and, in my experience, more user friendly (especially in a Windows environment).

Scant seconds may be all that is required to distinguish inhabitants of the three supercommunities from each other. In theory at least, immersion in the pixel, page and stage subcultures can triple our appreciation of this multifaceted art form.

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Poets, do you promote poetry-not-your-own?

Blogger Nic Sebastian writes: "Poets, do you promote poetry-not-your-own?

"Amy King asked this question on Twitter. She has just finished a marathon tweeting session on behalf of the Academy of American Poets, in which she spent many hours asking questions, promoting poets, poetry, poetry presses and poetry initiatives."

Do I promote poetry other than my own? Were I a human I would answer "yes" without thought or hesitation. After all, in addition to this blog I write critique, reviews and articles ranging from the anecdotal to the technical. I am the only one at our local open mic who has ever performed a contemporary poem authored by someone else. True, I've never blurbed but for certain poems, collections and poets I've been an unabashed cheerleader in everything other than uniform.

For better or worse, though, I'm a squirrel. Hungry hawks hovering overhead have taught us Grays to be circumspect. Let's look twice before we cross this street. Do I promote poetry other than my own? Note, as Nic did, that we aren't talking about specific poets, poems, presses or initiatives. We're talking about poetry in toto. Thus, the "not-your-own" that is central to Nic's discussion is more or less redundant in ours.

So, do I promote poetry?

Doesn't the word "promote" suggest that you are trying to expand beyond current participant levels? Doesn't "promote" suggest bringing new blood into the arena? Doesn't "promote" imply more than energizing the troops and preaching to the converted? If Wallmart has a promotion shouldn't it be aimed at more than their staff and existing customers? How about an enterprise that doesn't have customers yet? Would it make any sense if their promotions were targeted strictly at their employees?

So, do I promote poetry?

Do I really need to specify poetry consumption? With the current rate of overproduction?

So, do I promote poetry?

No. I may try but I'm just a squirrel chirping into the blathersphere.

Does anyone promote poetry these days?

Not effectively. Not in North America, at least. As with any guild, the League of Canadian Poets does a fairly good job of promoting poets to those with a modicum of interest. If anyone needs a demonstration of the difference between highlighting poets and poetry they need only watch the "Heart of a Poet" series. Blurber host Andrea Thompson does her best introducing the poets but, with a few exceptions, the poetry samples on display are bad.

How bad? Groundhog Day bad: if the public were watching we could expect six more decades of oblivion. As for attention to potential readers, never has disregard been so palpable.


Despite Christian Wiman's good intentions, the Poetry Foundation's focus is on a tiny fringe element of contemporary poetry. Both Wiman and the organization bear the scars of a losing battle against Content Regents shilling anti-aestheticism. The $200,000,000 Ruth Lilly grant insulates them against the public's concerns. The Poetry Foundation's one outreach is a remarkable idea: Poetry Out Loud, a contest to make videos of classic poem recitations. Unfortunately, their silent war with the pre-existing online community prevented them from enlisting aid, causing that initiative to suffer as the interactive Harriet blog did.

In many ways, the Academy of American Poets is the mirror image of the Poetry Foundation. With their learning resources and workshop, Poets.org is not held hostage to Content Regents. Unfortunately, their Poem-A-Day intiative suffers from inflexibility. Instead of a hodge-podge that pleases no one they could consider individual genres (e.g. Check one or more of: metrical, non-metrical, traditional, modern, contemporary, literary, popular, romance, drama, comedy, et cetera). If nothing else, the statistics might prove interesting.

To my knowledge, not one of these organizations polls the public for its opinion on defining issues. All are more interested in dictating taste than catering to it. Do we really need a degree in marketing strategy to spot the flaw here? Is it any wonder that there is no public outrage when government funding for the arts in general and poetry in particular is cut?

"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

- Adrian Mitchell

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Coming Soon: Time for some good news

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