[Golias]

While I have some personal experience of the urge to write in verse, I do wonder why anyone should strain his or her brain to write what a few other people might call good poems.

Several years ago I saw an estimate (based on what sort of study I do not know) that the world-wide readership for good English-language poetry was in the neighborhood of 30,000 people, or roughly one in ten thousand persons. With the growth of populations in the English-speaking countries I suppose that estimate might now be 35,000.

I had thought this a reasonable estimate. Yet what are we to make of a report that the first book of Virginia Hamilton Adair poems (Ants on the Melon) sold 80,000 copies? Even allowing for its purchase by many public and school libraries in the US, and some abroad, the figure still suggests a larger readership than one in ten thousand.

Perhaps a tougher question is: what portion of the English-speaking population of the world can tell a good poem from a bad or mediocre one? My guess is: less than one in a hundred thousand. What's yours?

G/W

[Robert E. Jordan]

G/W,

It all depends on what you call "good English language poetry." Gary Soto, Rita Dove, Sonia Sanchez and Ai seem to sell well. Writers that many people posting here would not touch with a ten-foot Polish person.

Bobby

[Tom Jardine]

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[This message has been edited by Tom Jardine (edited January 29, 2005).]

[Tim Murphy]

Nobody strains his brain to write good verse with the intent of selling books. If that happens, it is a happy coincidence. Dana Gioia's books sell 50,000 copies, Wendy Cope's, 80,000, Billy Collins' a like number. By some estimate, Heaney accounts for 80 percent of the new poetry book sales in Britain. They're all good poets who have reached a large audience. By contrast some of our best poets sell relatively few books. My best result was about 5000 copies of Ploughshare. Our Beowulf will reach hundreds of thousands of students via anthology and textbook sales. But Heaneywulf sold a million hardcovers! Go figure. Last year my royalties from my own books were $16.17. Would I trade places with Maya Angelou? Hell no.

I wonder how Wendy Cope's popularity came about. Sure, her poetry is wonderful; sure, it is accessible; sure, it is humorous; sure, it is about normal everyday things that people can relate to (i.e. accessible again...).

However, she is by no means the first person to write light poetry, surely?

-- Geertjan

[Fred Longworth]

..

[This message has been edited by Fred Longworth (edited July 22, 2004).]

[Tom Jardine]

G,

Yours is a very interesting question, one I have thought about.

I think you must first break down the english speaking population. Although the population of the english speaking world has grown, the 'culture' has broken into many 'factions'. Millions of individuals in the USA would willingly tear down and burn any 1800's impressionist off the walls of any museum here, and they have said so.

This said, I think you are on to something, that there is a great need for good poetry now, but what happened since 1950 to now is the destruction of artistic integrity in all the arts, except for a few pockets here and there, mainly in individuals. Good poetry is still climbing out of a hole, and whether it will succeed remains to be seen.

Another question is one like this; there were four hundred people at West Chester this year? How many are actually writing sensible formal verse of any sort, whether or not it rhymes? How many regulars are here at erato?

Here is another question, which exemplifies my point, but remains objective. Name a truly major painter living right now. Are there any Picasso's? I don't know of any, but there seem to be heavily hyped by New York 'art consultants' artists. I haven't seen an interesting painting in years. Are there any major playwrights, with real drama? Most of theater is based on "Cats" showy, amusing, or maybe some shock.

I once read, years ago, an article in the Atlantic, that there are no longer any artists in Japan: they have all sold out to commercialism. I think the same thing is happening here. Money is god. This does not mean that if a modern Shakepeare popped up today there wouldn't be a demand, and so forth, but it is not encouraged. The lowest common denominator rules the land now adays.

(Another article I read said something like this. Shakespeare turned to plays because he couldn't make any money just writing poems. Isn't there a truth to this? And it is all right. Few things make me sicker than poets complaining about poetry not selling, and so forth. Poetry books should be given away like in ancient times! Give the books away, don't try to sell them! [Sell the special editions with full color pictures.])

Personally, I plan on changing all this. Don't you?

<DIR>I want the world, the world is mine, I croon!
The other guests are background people, fools.</DIR>

TJ

[Tom Jardine]

Tim,

I read Heaney's Beowulf at the suggestion of highly sophisticated people and I thought it was terrible.

Brain freezes, drop-offs, slack work, and so forth. I couldn't finish it. Yours and Alan's is much more interesting and viable, of what I have read.

Few things will happen these days without genius linked with hype, because the world is too large and at the same time too crowded. Whenever a place gets crowded, the person as valued entity gets devalued.

The sale of 50,000 books doesn't add up to much real estate or free time. Gioia has a family. Don't universities support poets, mainly? What Frost and Auden had to say about teaching is true. This is where I came up with one of three rules of things poets should never do. The first is not to teach. The reason is dual; join an institution and the institution rules, and two, the little blood-sucking students quickly sap the energy out the poet. The arrow of creativity needs to go forward, not backward. I've read many essays where poets say how beneficial teaching is. Hooey. I think it is different when universities rent a name association, such as Heaney's. They don't do much teaching. Gorie Jam has tenure with Harvard, which is blasphemy to the entire history of poetry.

Another thing is that I constantly encounter references to poetry in books, movies, journalism, advertising and elsewhere. I think there is a big demand for honest poetry out there, even outside of academia, but there is not much of interest. The bar is set very low with the writing seminars, come one, come all, jiggling jelly on the doorstep. Good honest poets should not fear hype.

I don't know, maybe I'm nuts.

TJ

[peterjb]

I think propositions like “only one person in x thousand can appreciate good poetry” are unhelpful. The implication is that it’s the fault of the public if they don’t recognize the poet’s genius. Does a writer have a right to a readership without any corresponding duty to meet readers half-way?

Verse that wants to be read must compete for people’s time with movies, TV, popular music, theatre, classical music, video and computer games, sports, magazines, novels, ezines. Well, it can and should be IN magazines and ezines.

Why should people read verse unless it speaks to them in a way all the competing experiences do not?

You can accept that any form of art is a kind of transaction between creator and audience, or you can cling to the hope that your sublime self-expression, undertaken in airy isolation, will just happen to strike a chord with milllions. Perhaps after you’re dead.

I suggest the following strategy for writers who want their verse to have a general readership:

1) Write in meter and, usually, rhyme. This is what most readers prefer. Of course you may have to get through the filter of an editor who thinks otherwise.

2) Forget publishing a book of verse unless/until your name is widely known.

3) Submit to magazines with a public readership, mainly (but perhaps not only) those that publish some kind of verse already. If they print mostly the unmusical, incoherent kind of free verse that readers dislike, all the more reason to send them something better. (And I did not say readers dislike all free verse.)

4) Put some on a website (preferably not a “Just My Poetry” site) and learn how to generate traffic.

Poetry journals are part of the problem, as far as increasing public readership goes. The public don’t read them, especially the print-only journals. Doubtless they have a networking value — and the metrical ones help to foster writing more likely to have public appeal — but once published there, to a tiny audience of mostly fellow writers, a work is no longer “unpublished”: you may be unable to place it in a more public venue.

I know there are counters to all these points. You might say publication credits in journals are necessary to get editors to take your work seriously, and so on. However, apply the “Doctor Phil test”: if the objective is to recover a public readership for verse, to the benefit of individual writers whose work gets exposure: “How’s that working for you now?”



[This message has been edited by peterjb (edited July 21, 2004).]

[Golias]

R. Mezey wrote to me once that publishing a book of poetry was, for him, like dropping a pebble into a canyon and never hearing it hit the bottom. Winning the prestigious Poets' Prize for his Collected last year was probably more recognition than he really expected.

It may well be that Clock and Rose Press and I are in for an experience similar to Mezey's dropping of a pebble. This despite reasonable efforts to publicize our book in selected parts of the country.

Well, never mind. As Tim observed, the poems, except for the newest half-dozen were not written with a book in mind. The book was an extraneous idea urged upon me by a few friends wishing to have a selection of my work in permanent or semi-permanent form. That much, at least has now been accomplished.

Indeed, the last little piece I wrote for the book was this one, which I think I posted on another thread, or perhaps at another website.

Hello.....hello...

Yearly the world is nearly drowned in books
of poetry at which nobody looks
except, perhaps, the poets and their friends.
I'd like to know where all this scribbling ends,
for when it stops and poetry is rare,
this book, dear reader....reader, are you there?


G/W