Mark and Janet, alas, if you’re participating in online workshops and discussions, you’re already sullied by notions of audience.
It’s sometimes hard to reconcile one’s art with the selling of it. They are two entirely different activities. Here’s something by Kay Ryan that might be of interest in regards poetry and readership (from Poetry magazine, actually):
I should say I’ve snipped some sections. I can only type so much.
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If I were one person I could answer the question of how I perceive the audience for poetry in a single way. But I am of two people, so I must answer in two ways—first,
as the godlike writer of poems, serenely independent of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and, second, as her cousin.
So to begin, let us draw close to the empyrean springs and ask the poet, even now
dipping her alabaster hand into the poetical waters, how she feels about audience:
“Do you think, as you write, about who will read your poems and how they will like
them ? Be honest.”
No, I do not. My attention is entirely taken up by the voice in my head – a perfect tyrant,
utterly without charity, and a pig for pleasure. Ordinary conditions do not obtain. Take the condition of time, for example. While I’m trying to satisfy this inside voice, time takes on that bulgy condition it has during the most critical stage of a skid, where astonishing maneuvers become possible simply because they must (or you’ll crash). It is extremely occupying. (snip) On the other hand, this lofty condition enjoyed by the poet takes up only two hours (of ) a week. A good week. I must spend the rest of the week as my cousin.
This cousin has a higher, and I’m sorry to say, a lower nature. Her higher nature
sees itself as the steward of the poet’s work and responsible for helping that work secure a place in the world. This means that she must take an active, practical interest in living readers, not just by tidying poems themselves so they’re fit to be seen, but also by moving the poems along… the best that she can. In this spirit, she seeks good journals for the poems and good presses for the books, accepts reading dates and interviews, so that the poems might reach an audience and rise or fall fairly, based upon their merit instead of simply resting upon the bottom because nobody ever saw them.
I often see her as a betrayer of the poet, but she isn’t. Secretly they are best friends.
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[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited July 20, 2006).]
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