World Class Poetry Blog

I had projected that I would get 10,000 unique visitors to World Class Poetry in the month of March. I was right. Setting a new record, I ended the month with 10,600 unique visitors, my first month over 10 grand. Those are uniques. My total visitor count was 14,970. I also set a new daily record for visits on March 12 with 683 and a new record for unique visitors in one day on March 31 with 636, but I shattered that yesterday with a whopping 818 visits and 752 unique visitors. April looks to be a not-so-cruel month for WCP. Since it is National Poetry Month, I fully expect April to be another banner month.

The blog is doing equally well. I saw 3,491 visits in March and 3,112 of those were uniques. Not bad for a blog that was started only six months ago. My biggest day to date was March 20 with 376 visits.

It’s equally interesting to look at the content and see which posts have been the most popular. How To Market Your Poetry Online is my most popular post to date. That’s very interesting since it was posted just 20 days ago. Since then it has seen more than 700 page views.

Other popular posts have been:

• Hyperbole: A Necessary Evil … In Poetry Or Politics (one of my earliest posts)
• In Poetry, No Subject Is Taboo
• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry
• My Favorite Poetry Blogs (Thanks Ron Silliman)
• Get Paid For Your Poetry
• Blog Critique: Poetry By Stacey

Interestingly, if I include yesterday in my analytics, An Ode To Alexander Hamilton, which was posted yesterday morning, comes in as the fourth most popular blog post since I started this blog last September.

And that’s the state of World Class Poetry today.

The State Of Religious Poetry Today
Speaking of yesterday, a commentator had this to say about religious poetry:

My own speculation is that most religious poetry today, like much of the contemporary “church” music, has a lack of depth (unlike many of the religious writers of the Renaissance). There seems to be, pardon the cliche, not much meat on the bone. There seems to be a lack of basic biblical/religious literacy that seems to pervade our society and spill over into the literature realm so that we end up with poetry fluff.

I empathize with this reader because this has been my own thought as well for several years. Why don’t religious writers of poetry write with more depth? For one thing, I think that most religious poets do not keep up with the latest trends in poetics. Many of them are still writing trite phrases in iambic pentameter as if mimicking John Donne or William Shakespeare. There is nothing wrong with iambic pentameter, of course, but if you’re going to write that kind of verse, whether religious or not, you need to bring something new to the park bench, which most poets don’t do. Your meter may be traditional, but your subject matter or the way that you present your subjects must be new and unique, and that’s where many religious poets fall short. They’re stuck on “Jesus loves me” and have forgotten that there may be other ways to say it, or to show it, than simply using Biblical language that one can read by picking up a leatherbound KJV.

I hate to commit to a month-long project on this blog because I never know when my full-time job will require more and I have to break a commitment, which I hate to do. I’m one who doesn’t like to commit unless I am sure that I can fulfill the commitment. Funny quirk I have.

But I would like to post a religious poem every day for the month of April. Especially since I got at least one reader to acknowledge me on that last post. There are some religious poets I admire. Donne, of course, is at the top of the list. And my favorite is Gerard Manley Hopkins. I will try to find quality religious poems that I can share throughout April. Some of them may be my own, but others will not (likely, most of them will not be). If I falter at this, please forgive me. I am only human, but I will do my level best.

The first poem I’d like to share is this one by Denise Levertov:

The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (A Painting by Velasquez)

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his - the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face - ?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
                                     the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

Notice how very different this poem is than your typical Jesus freak verse. How well laid out it is from the very beginning. Not in traditional verse at all, rather written like the postmodern free verse that it is. Yet, we know immediately what the poem is about, a certain man from a moment in history nearly 2,000 years ago.

If it weren’t for the title, we might not know in the first stanza who the man is. There is a mystery to it. The subject is a woman. The repetitive “listens” in the first line set up for what follows perfectly. Then the enjambment is in itself spellbinding. Words like “holding”, “touching”, and “listening” ending lines that lead to greater mystery. And the indented line toward the end of the poem - how jarring that the winejug gives the impression that there is an indenture in the air of the place of this setting, though the poem never tells us in so many words.

Again, without the title of the poem, by the end of the second stanza, when we know that the man has laid his hands on “the dying”, we are intrigued. Who is this man? This mysterious stranger. Is this a love poem? It is, but not the type of love poem we might imagine.

The mystery continues, and well.

The single line about his face, broken with a dash and a question mark. So simple a technique, but not common. Brevity in beautiful measure. And the perfect lead-in to the next three lines …

The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

There is no question who those lines can be about. If we did not know by now, we know for certain now. This man is the crucified Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh. His crucifixion so appealingly alluded to, his disappearance from the tomb, the rumors of his appearance to the women on the road … clues, yet no mention of his name. There is no “Jesus” in this poem, but we know who it is about. We know because of the subtle and crafty way that the poetess has lead us to discovery. And that’s what makes this poem a success. It appeals to our knowledge of the past while not spelling anything out. It leaves just enough to the imagination that all we need are the subtle hints, then the spirit (of the poem) does the rest.

I still, after several hundred similar situations, find these kinds of incidents disturbing. I understand the image question. The school doesn’t want an artist’s work to tarnish its image. I also understand that some parents are concerned that a teacher may prove to be a poor role model for their children. But do these people not realize that poets, artists, novelists, and other artisans are in a different category altogether? It’s not as if someone writing about a murder is going to go out and commit one. It’s actually just the opposite - he is less likely to commit a murder by directing those humanly qualities into a creative outlet.

What happens less often is a public uproar over the shaky ethics of the business community. A man can be guilty of a questionable business deal and continue in his position because his actions weren’t technically illegal. But if a poet or a novelist publishes a work of imagination where a character uses profanity then his entire character is maligned by a Puritan mob. Or if an airline stewardess exposes a thigh then, OMG, she must be a loose woman!

When will people begin to see the arts as a profession - one that reflects life and, as a reflection, must be truthful about that which it reflects? I have this recurring fear that I will some day be in a position again to have to look for a job (I am currently self employed) and I will be unable to find anyone to hire me because I used the F word in a poem or in a blog post. Never mind that my talents can increase the profitability of any company I choose to work for. Never mind that my character and work ethic are among the highest of my generation. Those qualities pale in comparison to how well one can fake morality. It pisses me off.

When I was in Iraq, a company first sergeant sent an e-mail to my battalion commander accusing my wife of spreading rumors and making waves on a family readiness forum. Of course, military commanders have no jurisdiction over family support websites, but that didn’t matter. My battalion commander called me into his office and asked me about what my wife was doing. I confessed that I had no idea because I hadn’t heard about it, but I’d check into it. And I did. The things my wife had been accused of were actually being done by someone else. I promptly sent an e-mail to my commander and essentially told him he was full of shit because he didn’t have his facts straight and that he should have researched the matter before ever talking to me about the situation instead of just chasing rumors. He accused me of being unprofessional.

That’s the mentality of the upright and moral in our country. They get something wrong and you’re unprofessional if you bring it to their attention. That’s also, unfortunately, the attitude of many people in the religious community when it comes to the arts. They will go see a movie with bloodshed, violence, sex scenes, crime, profanity, and gratuitous sacrilege, but let an artist in their own community show a reflection of their own dirty deeds and he’s an infidel. I am dreading the day that I will have to talk to members of my church about the subject matter of some of my poems. Such is my cross to bear.

I was going to write about something else tonight, but I got tagged by Deborah at 32 Poems to write a six-word memoir. OK, sure, why not?

The game is an interesting twist on a challenge Earnest Hemingway was once offered. He bet $10 that he could sum up his life story in six words. He wrote: For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Evidently, this was discovered by Bookbabie who originated the current meme.

Here are the rules:

• Write your own six word memoir
• Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
• Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
• Tag five more blogs with links
• And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

So, my six-word memoir. About that. Hmmm ….

After giving this some careful thought - remember, I’m summing up my life in six words (not, as is usual with a memoir, giving an account of a specific time period within my life). So with that in mind, my six-word memoir:

Think,

pave a path,

die.

Why use more words than necessary?

My links: Blogging Poet, Poet Hound, Janet Leigh, Jim Murdoch, Timothy Green.

What is a poet? Is it anyone who has ever written a poem? Is it only people who have had poems published? How do we decide who fits the description of a poet? Or does it matter?

A few days ago I made a comment in a blog post that drew a lot of gunfire and I thought I’d expand on my thoughts on that subject. I was setting myself up for a first time critique of a blog by a new blogger who was looking for some feedback on her poetry and new blog. I admire anyone who has the guts to ask for such a critique, but the discussion ended up being a defense of a certain “status,” which was not what the post was about. So I feel the need to expand on the subject somewhat. Discussion and feedback is encouraged.

Definitions Of “Poet”
According to Answers.com, there are two definitions of poet:

1. A writer of poems.
2. One who is especially gifted in the perception and expression of the beautiful or lyrical: “[the naturalist John Burroughs] was the bard of the bird feeder, the poet of the small and homey” (Bill McKibben).

In some sense, anyone who has ever written a poem can be considered a poet. That includes a great majority of humanity - likely over and above 80% of us. Definition No. 1 above seems to confirm that except for the obvious question, “Does that refer to a one-time “writer” or does “writer” infer a continuous or repeated process?” I’ll leave that one for the peanut gallery. I’m more concerned with definition No. 2.

A person who is “gifted in the perception and expression” of something is entirely different than someone who does it as a hobby. It implies a certain level of quality not found in the other. But I’m not completely satisfied with that definition either as you’ll soon see. Let’s examine a few other sources:

The Free Dictionary has the same two definitions verbatim and the footnote leads us to the original source -

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Merriam-Webster offers two similar, but slightly different, definitions:

1 : one who writes poetry : a maker of verses 2 : one (as a creative artist) of great imaginative and expressive capabilities and special sensitivity to the medium

Whenever I am interested in a distinct and concise definition of a particular word, I like to turn to my trusty unabridged version of The Oxford English Dictionary. I have a print copy. The entry for “poet” reads like this:

1. One who composes poetry; a writer of poems; an author who writes in verse.
b. Formerly, in a more general sense: One who makes or composes works of literature; an author, writer. Obs.
c. In select or emphatic sense: A writer in verse distinguished by special imaginative or creative power, insight, sensibility, and faculty of expression.

I have not included here parenthetical clauses, examples, and other notes proprietary to the OED. That would be rather lengthy as the OED has a tendency to be very thorough, including endless notes on etymology. The Obs. in subparagraph b above denotes obsolescence. Other definitions included in the OED were not helpful as they pertained to artistry in a broader sense and the use of rhetoric when applied to fine arts in general. I’m not concerned with that.

Are These Definitions Helpful?
Formal definitions can only go so far. For me, they’ve always been a starting place. For a word is just a word and carries no special significance apart from context. If I wake up in the morning and yell, “I love you,” those are simply words in a vacuum. But if I had just woke up from a dream in which the love of my life was hopping aboard a train and I thought I’d never see her again then those words bear so much more significance. They now have meaning. The overarching question is, “What does that have to with the matter of who is - or is not - a poet?”

The context of our discussion earlier in the week was a critique solicited by a writer of poetry on her personal blog. I believed then as I do now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone starting a blog and sharing their poetry with the world. But does that automatically make them a poet?

If we heed the above definitions, it would seem to indicate that such poet bloggers are indeed poets. They do, after all, write poetry. I don’t see any harm in calling them poets for that’s what poets do: They write poetry. There is no truer statement than that. But does it also follow to reason that everyone who writes poetry is a poet?

Narrowing The Poetic Context
I think anyone can define themselves any way they wish. If a person wants to take to calling themselves the Dalai Lama, well, I see no harm done. Of course, if they aren’t the Dalai Lama then I’d say they have a serious credibility problem. The natural response to that by someone who wants to argue their point might be, “Well, we aren’t talking about something as serious as the Dalai Lama!” But I disagree. Poetry is a serious matter and to speak of it as just poetry or not as important as anything else is to denigrate the medium and render it worthless. We have enough people on the outside not concerned a bit about the subject doing that; we don’t need members of our own small ranks doing it. So I do think it matters.

I started World Class Poetry and the World Class Poetry Blog for one reason: I wanted to improve my craft and I wanted to help others improve their craft. There were poetry websites online before mine. Some of them are quite good. But I saw none that focused primarily on offering tools, tips, exercises, and resources bent on helping working poets improve their craft. None. So I thought I’d start one.

While I am no expert in matters of poesy - I am not the know-all, be-all, end-all - I think I know it pretty well. There is a lot to learn, of course, and I’m on the path. One of the ways to learn something and learn it well it to teach it to others and I thought I’d give it a go. Help others and in the process learn more on my own. That’s the idea. But to do it right, I knew I had to define my audience. Who am I targeting? To put it into marketing terms, “Who is my ideal customer?”

I narrowed down my niche to three areas:

1. Beginning poets who want to learn more about the art of crafting a poem
2. Already established poets who want to network with other poets and who want to read insightful commentary on poetics
3. Others - poets or not - who have an interest in poetry but who may or may not have an interest in writing poetry themselves; they just like reading up on arts, culture, literature, and similar topics

I realize that is a very broad audience, particularly that last one. Beginning poets are perhaps the easiest to reach because they are the ones who have the most to learn and largely are most eager to acquire knowledge and skill. Established poets generally come in two types: Those who are too proud of their achievements to receive anything from a third rate hack like myself and those who realize, as I do, that they aren’t the cat’s meow and can learn from anyone - even the first-time versifier. I had my work cut out for me, in other words.

I decided to narrow down my audience into one succinct statement of purpose: To provide commentary and resources on poetics, the state of poetry today, the history of poetic movements, and a place to network for poets and friends of poets.

This statement of purpose gets to the heart of what the World Class Poetry Blog is all about. I found it necessary to define what a poet is simply because there are so many people today who are writing poetry and publishing their own poetry online. I felt the need to have a guideline for determining who I would link to in my blogroll and who I might consider promoting through my own blog. I don’t want it to be all about myself. I want it to provide some value to a set of readers who are looking for this type of commentary. That’s why a discussion on who is a poet and who is a hobbyist became important to me in terms of what I can offer to my audience of readers through this blog.

What Makes A Poet?
Poets come in all different colors, shapes, sizes, nationalities, skillsets, backgrounds, professional associations, socioeconomic levels, and educational backgrounds. You can’t spot one on the plane, they don’t smell a certain way, and you’d never know one if you bumped into him in an elevator. So what does make a poet?

In a certain sense, anyone who writes poetry is a poet. There’s no denying that. But in another sense, and I think in a more important sense, there must be something else that draws a line between a professional poet and a hobby poet. There is a clear difference and I think it boils down to intent, or motive, for writing. It has nothing to do with skill. Many hobby poets are much better at writing poetry than some of the better known “masters.” Sadly, Emily Dickinson published only a handful of her poems in her lifetime, but other poets - Allen Ginsberg comes to mind - published far too many. The one poem that he is best known for and which earned him his fame is so incredible that it overshadows everything else he wrote. One can easily see how he has earned for himself the title “poet” even with that one poem.

So if it isn’t quality, what is it? Earned income? It has been repeated so often that it has become cliche to say that no one earns money by writing poetry. I have given this a lot of thought and I’d have to say that I disagree. Many poets are able to make a living with stipends, grants, fellowships, and salaries from higher education institutions. While these poets may not be getting rich or may not even earn much from the writing and publishing of their poetry books, they are making money from the profession. University professors, literary journal editors, public school teachers, and others of similar professions may not be full-time poets, but they are in a field that is related to poetry and in some cases their professions may afford them more time to pursue poetic interests than the average poet. University creative writing professors, for instance, only teach one or two classes per semester. The rest of their time is spent writing, reading literary journals, submitting poems for publication, and other such activities that poets in other professions have to do as well, but with less time for doing it.

Unless one is able to list “poet” as an occupation on your IRS forms, one likely isn’t making a full-time income from the writing, publishing, or reading of poetry. But even if you are, how much money you make from poetry or in poetry-related pursuits isn’t what determines whether you are a poet or not. That would shut out most of us before the first word.

Perhaps it is more like what one commentator says:

I was always under the impression that the title “poet” was conferred upon someone much like the Queen dubs her knights. In other words, one writes until they have carpel tunnel syndrome and can’t write anymore (hyperbole), and over this same time span one’s work is noticed by others and then passed around. Then this “publishing” engine is started and one’s work is circulated. It either becomes more and more read by others or withers on the vine. It’s the buzz of other poetry readers and publishers that starts conferring the label “poet” onto the writer.

I’m not sure that this is accurate either, though it is perhaps closer to the truth than any of us would realize. This kind of democratic process might imply that being a poet is a popularity contest, and I don’t think it is. There are many fine poets who have been relegated to obscurity for one reason or another. And many writers who “dabble” in poetry have been recognized more for their prose than their poetry yet it would be an injustice not to call them poets just because they were better known for their novels.

Alright then, so what makes a poet?

The Nitty-Gritty On Being A Poet
There are many different ways one can draw distinctions. Much of what we term poetic achievement is subjective: book sales, popularity, quality of craft - these are things that are important in varying degrees, but they are not good measures for determining who is a poet and who is not. A poet is someone who writes whether they feel like writing or not. A poet is someone who must write or die. A hobbyist merely writes for enjoyment; a poet may hate writing, but does it any way. It is so much more an internal being than an outward sign, though the outward signs may give an indication of the internal reality.

One who is especially gifted in the perception and expression

Gifted by what measure? According to whom?

All of us have our preferences. I may like Keats and you may like Shelley. You prefer Rimbaud, I am enamored of Rilke. Mr. So-and-So may admire the Beats and detest the Moderns while Mrs. Flabbergast enjoys the Moderns and cringes at the Beats. That doesn’t mean that Gregory Corso isn’t a poet, or that T.S. Eliot is more of one than Diane di Prima. Preferences are just that - preferences. Nothing more.

While one cannot dismiss preferences, they do not define what is a poet. What does define the poet is his lifestyle, his manner of expression. Not quality, but whether or not he seeks to say what has been said before in a new way or simply repeat what the ten thousand poets before him said using the same words. The verse I just wrote may be a poem, but if it adds nothing new to literature and could be forgotten as just another hack piece written by a dreamer then it likely wasn’t written by a poet. Unless, of course, that hack piece was written by someone who has proven himself a poet before. Ginsberg may have written too many poems, but he wrote “Howl” and so he is a poet.

That is not merely expressing a preference. I have read other poems by Ginsberg that I like, but I have read many more that I didn’t care for. The significance of “Howl,” however, goes beyond what one person admires. It is significant in the fact that it historically challenged what is considered literature and, even a more demanding challenge, what is considered appropriate literature. When a poem gets its author and publisher arrested for violating obscenity laws, that says a lot about the value of that poem and puts both the poet and the publisher in a brand new light. But the light it puts them in is not a light that shuts out all other poets or would-be poets. It brings them in without shutting others out. In that regard, I’d say if Ginsberg had never written another poem then I’d bestow upon him the title of poet.

Other poets are known by their volumes. Most people today couldn’t name one work written by Alexander Pope, but they quote his verses all the time. One-hit wonders and widely available tomes from long dead poets possess more knowledge about what makes a poet than any one blog post ever could, but I hope that one blog post could shed some light on the subject that the tomes and one-hit wonders cannot reach.

To be in the ranks of poets is an honor and a privilege. It is one not easily obtainable, but it is also one that is not easily lost once obtained. No amount of scandal will get one removed from the Poet’s Hall of Fame. At the same time, one can’t just walk up to the front door and be admitted in an instant. Being a poet takes hard work, grit, sweat, thready desire. That is something hobbyists don’t have. It is also something that many hack writers do have even though they may lack in other ways, including substance.

No one person or clan can form up and cast out poets they don’t like. No one person or clan can form up and vote in poets they do, either. Becoming a poet is just something that happens - either by sheer determination or by accident, but rarely does it occur because someone just sat down and wrote a poem one day and through a meaningless act ushered themselves into the circle of poets to be admired and loved forever. Being a poet is not a royal appointment, but it isn’t a pauper’s plea for acceptance either. What it is we may never know, and certainly will never agree on, but what is clear is that it isn’t an open door through which anyone who wishes to make a claim can enter without effort.

The Hobby Poet’s Conundrum
Few people get to report to the IRS that they make a full-time income from writing poetry. In fact, for most people, the IRS considers poetry a hobby. That makes even the most professional of poets living in the U.S today a hobbyist. But should the IRS be the one to determine who is and isn’t a poet?

Tax reporting classifications aside, poetry is both a profession and a hobby, depending on one’s approach to the writing and publishing of it. Poets who write for money will be disappointed when the greenbacks don’t start flying in. Unless they can make a decent living from producing popular greeting cards then they are likely not to make much. Winning contests that pay large amounts of money is unlikely and landing a huge book publishing contract is even unlikelier. As already noted, almost all poets are forced to earn their wages doing something else and writing poetry as an aside. That makes us all hobbyists then, doesn’t it?

Publishing opportunities for poets are not lacking. Get the latest copy of Poet’s Market and you’ll see how many different places you can submit your poems to in hopes of getting published. But would a hobbyist concern himself with such opportunities?

A poet who wants to be recognized for her gift in writing and crafting poems is much more likely to seek out publishing opportunities. She will - or should - make some effort to learn how other poets approach craft, what poetry publishers are looking for, and why certain poets receive the recognition they get while others do not. In a word, a poet that is serious about being a poet is concerned with more than just the mere act of writing it. They are also concerned with ways they can make their poetry better while working toward publication or some level of recognition.

A professional poet is more likely to attend workshops than a hobbyist. She is more likely to pay several hundred dollars to attend a prestigious writing retreat. She may even enroll herself in an MFA program that is recognized as an honorable institution. And you’re likely to find her at several open mic poetry readings each month as well. A hobbyist likely isn’t interested in spending a great deal of money for no return. And it boils down to just that - there is very little return in the writing and publishing of poetry.

Hobbyist poets have a tendency to take the easiest way out. You’ll find them at the local poetry reading because it takes hardly any effort to hop in the car and drive over to the coffee shop to hear a few others read their poems and to share a few of your own. There is usually no money involved with the exception of the price of gasoline and you get to tell the world how you feel. There is even an audience. These people came to hear me!

Well, maybe not. But for about five minutes - or three minutes in some places - you can have a captive audience. People are listening. What you say for those three minutes may be the most important thing those five or ten or twenty people that night hear. Or at the very least, one of them could go away and remember your name. That would be fabulous.

This is not the type of recognition that I am talking about when I say that professional poets seek it. A professional poet is seeking a different type of recognition. He is concerned with being known as a person with an ear for music, or a person whose metaphors are sublime. He wants someone who understands the difference between a trope and synecdoche to say, “I thought the way you delivered that line was interesting in a retro kind of way.” The hobbyist is more concerned with writing and being heard. The sharing is more important than the craft.

Hobby poets may love poetry as much as, or more than even, professional poets. But they are likely not to spend as much time revising it. If you open up the hobbyist’s portfolio you are likely to find a string of first drafts that should be revised but will never see a day of revision. The professional poet could spend hours, days, weeks, mulling over one line or word. The hobbyist can’t wait to get to the next reading to share the five poems he wrote while listening to Green Day’s latest album on his iPod at the family picnic last Saturday. The professional poet may miss the next reading to revise the one poem that has been plaguing him for the last three months. You are more likely to find the professional poet at the critique group arguing about the comma in stanza four and whether or not it should be removed, but the hobbyist won’t come back because she was offended that you told her she should take her comma out.

The primary difference between a professional poet and a hobbyist has nothing to do with earned income, quality of writing, style or tone, voice, diction, the breadth of one’s publishing credits, or whether one is accepted by the “in” crowd. Rather the primary distinction between a professional poet and the hobbyist is that the professional poet will spend hours and countless dollars improving a poem that takes years to get an ounce of recognition while the hobbyist will spend ten minutes jotting down notes just to read on Saturday night at the local coffee shop reading and then never look at it again except to post it on his blog two months later. The dilemma for the hobbyist poet is that he desperately wants to be noticed and recognized as a poet, but he doesn’t want to put in the time, the sweat, the urgency that other poets put into the revision process.

Poetry is an art. Like any other art, you can’t whip it out in a ten minute sitting between appointments with your masseuse and psychiatric exam. To be sure, even professional poets have those poems that “just come to them” in whips of thrashing winds and they have to hurry to write it down before they forget it. Those are rare moments. But if you find yourself writing more poems in this fashion than in the revision process then you are probably just hurrying through. You might be hobbyist.

Conclusion
I don’t mean for this to sound like a rant or a slanted downward glare across the nose at hobby poets. One can move about freely between the two distinctive types of poet and never lose any skin. Many poets start out as hobbyists and move into the ranks of professional poets and others start out with grand aspirations that die into nothing but momentary twitters from time to time. There is nothing wrong with being a hobby poet that a little more seriousness toward the craft can’t cure. There may be a lot more wrong with the professional poet who needs some time in the sun to feel human again. But I believe these distinctions are important, at the very least for the purposes of my writing this blog, and I hope they shed some light on why it is important for poets to take the business of craft seriously. If I can turn one hobby poet into a professional poet that lives for centuries or discourage a professional poet from churning out any more bad verse then I have made my mark and the world will be a better place than it was yesterday. Of course, I may have to buy myself an entourage of body guards in the morning, but as long as they can tolerate my eccentric qualities and don’t mind tolerating a few poetic puns along the way then I suppose it will be worth it in the end.

Note: This blog post took all day to write and went through several revisions. It’s still not finished.

True story:

Last night I was preparing to take my step daughter to work. We live in a rural part of Adams County, Pennsylvania and she works in Gettysburg. Having moved here from Texas after graduating from high school - she doesn’t yet have a vehicle so we’re her primary mode of transportation until she does - she is still a little bit dependent on us for some things. She was feeling a little bit under the weather and was headed off to work so her attitude was not the most chipper, as you can imagine.

Since she sleeps during the day, because she works the third shift, the time was about 11 p.m. Her boyfriend is still in Texas, though he is planning to move up here after he gets his tax return. But that’s taking the story in a different direction.

Leah lives with her sister, a single mother of three, a couple of miles from us. But she often stays at our house because it is easier to get some sleep during the day. Today, she was planning to spend the day at our house when she got off of work because her boyfriend had arranged to have her Valentine’s Day gift delivered to our house to ensure that she got it. That was a smart move.

As we were preparing to take Leah to work, my wife commented on the weather forecast over the next couple of days. They were predicting snow. This didn’t sit well with Leah, who moaned.

I looked up from putting my sneakers on my feet and said, “You know what, it might snow and it might get cold, but Cupid doesn’t care about the weather.”

I’m a cocky bastard and everyone knows it. That’s why I get along so well with my wife and her children. They’re all just as cocky as I am and never let me get away with it for very long before whopping my testosterone-charged sense of humor with a jackhammer of estrogen. The repartee can sometimes get out of hand.

Well, in typical family redhead fashion, without missing a beat, my stepdaughter stood feet away and with a straight face, pointed out, “Yes, he does. He flies around in a frickin’ diaper. He cares!”

Oh, I rolled. I’m still rolling. I guess that’s the price to pay for love. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday, Ron Silliman published the first half of his answers to a questionnaire sent by the Poetry Foundation. Today, he published the second half of his answers. I am struck by how much we are alike in our thinking on these things yet so unlike in our poetry. Here are a few gems from his online rant:

And the role of the self-published book, the commercial object with perhaps the least prestige of all, has been important to poetry in the U.S. from Whitman to the web editions of today.

Poetry is the one area of literature where you can self publish and people won’t look at you like you’re some kind of odd creature of mythological lore. That is, after they stop looking at you as if you are because they discovered that you do write poetry.

The days when major publishers brought out poetry as a “loss leader” (or because some poet might turn into a profitable novelist) are almost entirely behind us.

Summed up perfectly.

The number of trade publishers who even touch poetry are so few, and their collective aesthetics so very narrow, that they have largely relegated themselves to irrelevance.

Book publishing in general is so averse to risk that it is difficult to understand why poets are so full of it. There is no other type of writer in the world willing to take so many risks as a poet worth his salt. Yet, there is hardly a book publisher in the world, even publishers that specialize in poetry books, that will take risks along with the poets they publish. Good poets are squeezed out by the trite, blase Hallmark verse of Helen Steiner Rice. If the publishing world were to rest its eyes on today’s equivalent to William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope, they’d mistake him for a bus driver.

The same social forces that are creating pressures on the book industry are having an impact on society at large – they register as as rising demands upon time and the decline of literacy overall. What a curious moment in history to have more poets than ever before. And more good poets at that. One sometimes imagines that we will soon become a nation of poets, but simultaneously a nation without readers.

I’ve heard poets criticized for “writing to each other” as if we’re some overly large country club. We almost have to write for each other because we’re the only ones reading poetry. When I go to an open mic poetry reading there are so few people in the audience who just want to be in the audience. Almost everyone feels like they should read. At most readings I go to, there is only one person there who doesn’t write poetry and therefore doesn’t read aloud. My wife. She understands that good literature must have good audiences. Where are the rest of the poetry lovers who don’t write?

Where Silliman’s Brilliance Really Shines

I would love to see some of the money that is currently being misused by the National Endowment of the Arts to promote dead British playwrights redirected to ensure that each major metropolitan area has at least one decent retail outlet for poetry.

I’m not a big fan of the NEA, but I have to laugh at this. Dead British playwrights? I wouldn’t redirect any NEA funds. I’d cut them off altogether. But the idea of ensuring that every major metro area has at least one decent retail outlet for poetry is a good idea. If I did support funding for the NEA, that would be one area where I might agree to spend it.

By substantial I mean a minimum of 1,000 titles, not more than 25 percent of which are published by trade presses nor more than 25 percent by university presses, with at least five percent of the stock being chapbooks.

1,000 titles. That’s pretty substantial in terms of poetry books. Not many book stores carry that many poetry titles. Of course, they’re more interested in selling the autobiographies of strippers and other such pickled pabulum. But I like the 25/25 requirement. I’d up the 5% for chapbooks to at least 10%. I think self-published chapbooks is an area that should be encouraged as much as possible. It’s the one area where I think most poets can see the best return on their time and energy investment. We go through so much trouble to create the output and most of us never see a dime for our efforts. For me, I know I can spend hours revising a single poem and publish it in chapbook form with ten or a dozen other poems and sell two or three chapbooks at every reading I attend for months. The $3-$5 I charge for them will usually pay for my gas to drive to the readings and sometimes even a beer and/or a snack afterwards during social hour.

A separate mechanism that might be created even by the Poetry Foundation itself would be a mechanism for the sale and distribution of chapbooks and print-on-demand volumes, perhaps coordinated by Booksense, but with a common front end on the web so that readers could turn to a single source for finding these difficult-to-obtain items.

I actually prefer this solution above the first. I’m a believer in free markets. Poetry is being read. It’s being written. And a lot of it is good. One reason poetry doesn’t sell is because there is no distribution outlet as Silliman craftily points out. When I walk into Barnes & Noble or another major chain store and go to the poetry section, almost every title I see is a classic. I love the classics, but how will contemporary readers of poetry ever be exposed to anything else if they aren’t exposed to contemporary poets at the places where they shop? Universities seldom sell their journals through retail stores. University and small presses seldom distribute their books through the retail chains. One reason I suspect they don’t is because the return policy of distributors makes it a money-losing proposition for them. This somehow needs to change.

Teaching Poetry K-12
Let’s get real. The state-run education system is failing miserably. It’s failing the students. It’s failing the parents. It’s failing the teachers. It’s failing society. It’s failing itself. As a society, however, we are in denial of this fact. One of the areas where this failure is most evident is in the teaching of literature.

I love how Silliman states the obvious (what is obvious to those few of us who know it):

Whether you are a new formalist or a slam poet, a visual poet or a language writer, the absolute materiality of the signifier, the physicality of sound and of the graphic letter, is the one secret shared by all poets to which nonreaders of poetry seem literally clueless.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a poem and someone will say to me, “I don’t get what it all means, but I like it.” I always just feel like punching them in the face. Most of the time, the people who don’t get it are the same people people who misinterpret simple wording of Bible verses and the Fourth Amendment. People don’t understand hyperbole or metaphor anymore. At one time, these figures of speech were so common that if you didn’t know how to recognize them then you couldn’t get by socially. Today, it’s just the opposite. If you can identify the figures of speech then you are the social outcast. People have been so ingrained to take things literally that when it comes time to analyze language for any purpose at all they are entirely lost. Oh, but they “like” it. I have to remind myself of that.

This is a larger problem than just one for poetry – it is one consequence among many of the larger issues confronting our schools in general. Dropping a few poets-in-the-schools into programs like a Marine strike force is hardly going to undercut the message students get continually, day after day, that language is to be mined for “information” that can be later regurgitated in test formats. It is more, even, than just the goal of developing critical thinkers, tho it is one important aspect of this. Until such time as our schools are given the resources they need in order to really address the whole child, not just managing to standardized tests, we haven’t a chance.

Again, I’m with Silliman all the way up to that last sentence. The schools have plenty of resources. They aren’t using them. They don’t know what to do with them. Or someone somewhere ties their hands so that they don’t fully realize the benefits of them. Some parent wants to restrict the reading of great works of literature because they are offended by some racial slur, or an innocent sex scene, or simply an idea that they can’t get behind. Works like Huckleberry Finn, Pride and Prejudice, and Lord of the Flies have all been targets of censorship by parents, school boards, or some religious or political group. Instead of teaching children how to think critically on difficult subjects we teach them instead to hide their heads in the sand so they don’t have to deal with them. It is hardly any wonder that students being home schooled are outpacing students in public schools in almost every area. How ironic it is that these are the kids who are made fun of by the C students from public schools who are elected president (or selected for Speaker Of The House) and their bully-on-the-playground friends.

Ron’s Brilliance, My Delight
In all, I’m very impressed with Ron Silliman’s thought process on the Poetry Foundation questionnaire. He said a lot of things that needs to be said. I disagree on a few points, but they are so minor that they hardly are worth noting (with the exception of my political leanings, of course). Nevertheless, if poetry is to survive the 21st century, poets and poetry publishers need to find a way to distribute poetry to an audience that loves to read it but has no interest in being involved in its production. They need to look for my wife.

There is an interesting discussion going on about the state of literary criticism and blogging. It was started by William Skidelsky of Prospect Magazine. I found this little gem through Bud Parr’s blog, Chekhov’s Mistress, though I was disappointed to find that the quote Parr borrowed from Skidelsky was nowhere to be found at this URL. The following snippet was actually borrowed from the Prospect magazine blog:

“A healthy literary culture is one where books can be publicly discussed in a serious and informed way. I don’t think the blogosphere comes close to providing such a space at present, largely because it is completely unregulated, but also because blogs are so bitty. What you get is little snippets of opinion and gossip—the virtual equivalent of a conversation in a pub. That is a valuable thing, of course. But sustained critical evaluation of books is different—and to my mind it is even more valuable.”

Bud Parr does a great job of responding to this overly shallow analysis. One would think, by reading Skidelsky’s comments above, that he had nothing good to say about blogging at all. But a careful reading of his longer, more critical essay on book reviewing reveals a different attitude. That doesn’t mean he’s not wrong in his analysis.

Parr’s take was to defend blogging. As well he should since he is himself a literary blogger. But I’ll take a different approach. Though I do appreciate Parr’s staunch defense of the literary blogging phenomenon, which appears to be picking up speed. In his own words:

It is here where translation is not a dirty word. It is here where the publicity schedule means little. It is here where literary authors from independent presses get equal or better attention than whatever hotty the New York Times is billowing about this week to accommodate the tastes of myriad general readers. This is where being bitty becomes an asset. It’s specific, it’s personal, it’s opinionated. Those traits aren’t mutually exclusive with being critical; in fact they are the very assets that gives criticism life and probably why so many professional writers are finding themselves writing online, inviting comments from their readers, discovering others who happen to share their interests, no matter how specific.

I couldn’t agree more, and neither can one of my favorite politerary bloggers, Andrew Sullivan, who writes The Daily Dish for The Atlantic. I was glad to see Sullivan get in on the discussion because it takes the defense of lit blogging out of the fringe and puts it in the mainstream where it belongs. Sullivan says:

The ridiculous Hollywood-style roll-out of books - in which they have seven days to make it, or else - does not reward reading or writing. It rewards marketing. The blogosphere can give books - especially those with more to say than gimmicks to flaunt - the time and space to breathe and gain discerning readers.

He then promises to provide that breathing room. I’m sure that he’ll deliver on that promise.

Skidelsky’s Premise, My Rebuttal
Getting back to Skidelsky, I think he does an outstanding job of covering the larger topic of book reviewing and its virtual decline. He compares the literary landscape in the U.S. to that of Britain, claiming that UK readers place a higher value on the critic. I’m sure that’s true. Since President Theodore Roosevelt put a fist in the face of critics everywhere, claiming that the man to admire is the one in the ring rather than the one with the microphone, Americans have been more interested in glorifying violence than in critiquing its exploitation. That’s a shame.

The problem with Skidelsky, however, is that he does criticize blogging and its shortcomings, claiming that it doesn’t provide the depth that real book reviewing provides. This is where I diverge from the path in the woods.

I agree that literary criticism is a form of journalism. But journalists have not always been the powder room elitists they seem to be today. H.L. Mencken, if he were alive today, would make a great blogger. G.K. Chesterton as well would have his moments. The problem with journalists today is that they believe that only they can save the world from itself. There is this attitude among the corporatist news hijackers that the public should rely upon them alone as the sole source of news, commentary, and all things literate. But how that can be? Journalists are taught to write toward a sixth grade audience.

It appears that journalism has done just the opposite of what it claims to do. That includes literary criticism and book reviewing. Reviewers tend to write mostly toward an academic audience. Unless they are writing about sports or fashion. But try to get one to engage the average reader on a gut level and it’s worse than trying to pin a ring on the finger of a boar hog.

The state of book reviewing has declined for more than one reason. It’s difficult to say it’s because, as Skidelsky does, technology has changed the balance of power from the literary priests to everyone else. That’s much too simple an explanation.

In Skidelsky’s own words:

Creative writers may have some vestigial authority, but in the domain of opinion, the old hierarchies no longer hold sway. Bloggers, booksellers, prize judges, critics: nowadays all inhabit the same, frighteningly level playing field.

To be sure, capitalism itself is partly to blame for the decline in literary criticism. As Skidelsky points out, mergers, acquisitions, and other shames have led to a narrowing of the decision-making field at the top. That hasn’t helped.

But consumers, too, don’t feel that they need it. In the past, readers relied on critics to point out the worthy and not so worthy in the books they read so that they could make intelligent buying decisions. But so much has changed since those days. One of those things is that literary criticism itself has become nothing more than a shill for the marketing department of large publishing houses. The priests have gone beyond preaching to the choir and have taken up preaching to their wives and mistresses. So forgive me if I heap my criticism upon the receiver of my confessions from down below.

If the playing field is “frighteningly level” then perhaps it is because those who once stood at the top of the power ladder squandered what they had. Technologies change. I wonder what the scribes said when Gutenberg rolled out his famous printing press. Did they cry that the balance of power had changed? Too many journalists are so busy scorning the blogosphere that they fail to see its benefits. How much more could they themselves leverage its power and influence if they would only embrace it? Skidelsky has obviously seen its benefit because he criticized literary bloggers from the bench of his own magazine’s “bitty” digital platform.

The Value Of A Blog Is In The Market
One of the chief benefits of owning and writing to a blog is that it can be whatever you want it to be. If I choose to write little snippets then that’s what I write. If I choose instead to write long, critical essays then I can do that as well. It’s my blog. That’s how the blogosphere works. Or at least how it should. It isn’t so much the “democratization of opinion” as it is the influence of the market. Again, straight from Skidelsky’s own pen:

The idea that all opinions are equal, of course, pre-dates the internet. But the internet has given it a kind of tangible impetus. After all, before the internet existed, a measure of inequality was built into publishing. All opinions clearly weren’t equal, because while everybody could express a view on any matter, only those who were paid to do so could publish them, and thereby reach a wide audience. But blogging has removed this barrier. Now anyone can publish their opinion on any subject, and that opinion can (theoretically at least) be read by everybody. That time-honoured refuge of the unnoticed—self-publishing—has been reinvented as a vehicle of self-empowerment.

Skidelsky follows this bit by stating that just because a person is blogging doesn’t mean that anyone is listening - or reading. True enough. Just because you write a blog doesn’t mean that it’s worth reading. The same could be said of a book - just because you write one, or edited one, or published one, doesn’t mean that anyone should read it. That’s why critics were always of high value. An educated reader could tell those a little bit less sophisticated about all the qualities of a book and whether or not it was worth reading. That was a clear market force in earlier days. The market is different today.

One clear way the market is different is that more people are capable of reading on a higher level. People are more educated, better traveled, and more well read - even though, if you look at the latest statistics, fewer people are reading books. But the same statistics also tell that the ones who are reading books are reading more books. And they’re also talking about them. To their friends.

I was in a forum when a successful book jacket writer and publishing house cheerleader commented that Amazon.com book reviews were not to be trusted because they weren’t real reviews. They weren’t, after all, being written by real reviewers and educated critics. She missed the point.

Amazon.com book reviews are intended to be the equivalent of a friend telling a friend, “Hey, I like this book; I think you’ll like it too.” This is also one of the benefits of blogs. An avid reader can write about the books that he enjoys and tell his readers why he enjoys them. If he only gets 20 people a day to read his blog and he influences those 20 readers to either buy a book or not buy it then he’s done all he’s set out to do. He’s told his friends what he wanted them to know and they responded. At the end of the day, that blogger and his readers will decide if it is worth their time to continue that pursuit. Let the market decide.

I for one am glad to finally be, partially at least, in an environment where the market can have its influence for good or bad. We don’t need priests, particularly if the priests are simply going to stick their hands down our pants and cop a feel in exchange for a pat on the back from their mistresses at the big publishing houses. It’s time for the indie artist and indie critic to have his say. Don’t like what you hear? Change the channel. We promise not to kick you in the shins.

John Giorno is a giant among poets. He was friends with William Burroughs and Charles Bukowski, lover to Andy Warhol, disciple of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg, and has been an inspiration to at least two generations of poets since. That’s quite a pedigree.

This article plugging tonight’s performance of Giorno and Thomas Hellman in Montreal is quite a treat. I’d like to respond to some of its prose:

Charles Bukowski, the American poet, novelist and Giorno’s longtime friend, once described his experience in reading the great poets of the literary canon as amounting to “a goddamn headache.” Bukowski’s complaint is far from uncommon. Outside academia, popular audiences often regard poetry as traditional and arcane, elitist and unapproachable. But in the documentary Poetry in Motion – a project Giorno helped to coordinate – Bukowski stresses that this does not have to be the case. “Poetry itself contains as much energy as a Hollywood industry, as much energy as a stage play on Broadway. All it needs is practitioners who are alive to bring it alive. Poetry has always been said to be a private hidden art….The reason it is not appreciated is because it hasn’t shown any dance, any guts, any moxy.”

If you can relate to Buk’s proclamation then you’d probably feel right at home with the Beats and their offspring. The Beats rejected much of Modernist poetics simply because, as Bukowski so eloquently put it, the stuff was stiff, esoteric, arcane, and just plain too academic. Ever since, there has been a raging battle between the high brow academics and the gutter stench street poets like Buk and his religious followers. I find myself stuck somewhere in the middle.

The Modernists And The Beats
T.S. Eliot is one of my favorite poets. “The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock” is still one of my favorite poems. But, like many of his critics, I find the constant footnotes nerve wracking. For that reason, I can do without his more popular poem “The Waste Land,” although I do agree that April is the cruelest month and that is an awesome line, but if a poem needs endless footnotes it should be an essay, not a poem. That said, I don’t mind one or two short notes to shed light on a word or phrase that may be borrowed or that an average reader might not understand the reference to. And just for the record, I find Ezra Pound, who was a close friend of Eliot’s and helped him prepare “The Waste Land” for publication, even worse.

Ah, but the Beats are not without their problems. Their admirers are even worse. Trash garage poetry has become so chic in today’s post-punk world that we will soon start seeing Bukowski imitators gang raping has-been Elvis impersonators in the foyers of national museums. But the hills do strangely look like white elephants.

All of that aside, however, Buk is right on point when he says poetry needs verseteers who can bring it alive, whether they come from the halls of academia or the dark and deadly alleys of Inner City, USA.

Performance Poets Versus Formalism

Giorno’s work literally breathes life into poetry: “If you are performing to an audience, it is just like a singer in that when I perform, I use my breath in a strong way and allow the sounds of the words to come out,” Giorno explains to me. “Music is just the sound of the words. But poets aren’t trained; it’s not like they go to singing school.” Giorno bounds and sweats on stage like a musician, too. “I am not playing with my body to amuse the audience, it is the poem that moves the body that way,” he says.

I’ve never been able to perform. I’m not a performer. To me, the performance can often detract from the actual poem. I love to read a good poem on the page. But I’ve seen many performance poets who can make their poem ring, and that’s OK. It sounds like Giorno has found his medium. Performance is good as long as it doesn’t take over. I still want poetry.

Like the Beats, his work is highly politicized and overtly critical of traditional and conventional values, but he is no stalwart disciple. After all, he was a full generation younger than a lot of the beatniks, and wasn’t afraid to immerse himself in other artistic movements. In 1963, he collaborated with Warhol – his lover at the time – as the star in the “anti film” Sleep, composed of a single long shot of Giorno lying in bed for five hours.

I think it is very important for poets not to get stuck. Immersing yourself in other artistic movements and literary styles can only improve your writing. If something doesn’t work for you, you can abandon it. No harm done. In fact, it might even make your poetry stronger. I think this is especially true of performance poets.

In the 1980s, as a student at the University of Texas at Dallas, I had the opportunity to show my poetry to a former editor of The Kenyon Review, Frederick Turner. Those familiar with Turner will know him as a formalist poet, which I’m not. At that time, in my early 20s, I was beginning to write in a style of contemporary poets - without rhyme, unique line enjambments, and in a conversational style. Although my poetry was much more lyrical than the norm, I was capable, due to being raised in a musical family, of creating poetry that could make its own music. I still like writing those poems even today, rhyme or no rhyme. But to shorten the story, Turner encouraged me to read - and write - more formal poetry and added, “It can only strengthen your own style and your voice.” He was right. It did.

Why Burroughs Should Be Beat

To explain his interaction with the Beats and Pop Art, Giorno borrows the metaphor of “the third mind” from another one of his long-time friends, William Burroughs. Burroughs’s model of artistic process rejects the idea that one artist directly influences another. Instead, he believes that two minds come together to create a work that is more than the sum of its parts, transcending either poet’s vision. “This metaphor of William’s,” explains Giorno, “is not so much about influence as it is the mind flowing together.” The two clearly admired one another: “He had one of the most brilliant minds in the world and so it was a great blessing to be with him. William and I lived together. I knew him for 40 years and I lived with him for most of it.”

I don’t agree with Giorno’s perception of Burroughs. Though regrettably, I’ve never met him. Had I, I might change my tune. But I’ve read other statements that Burroughs has made about things and I’ve never seen a quote from him that I thought made any sense. The Third Mind is such a concept. Artists do influence. The idea that somehow T.S. Eliot and I have collaborated on certain poems, or that Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes were co-creators, is just absurd. That is just metaphysical swill. I like Burroughs as a writer; I think he stinks as a philosopher.

The Future Of Poetry

John Giorno has worked tirelessly to bring poetry to the masses and to ensure its accessibility. In 1965, he started Giorno Poetry Systems, recognizing a great potential in mass media and technology to promote the arts. The project, perhaps best described as a non-profit artist collective, committed itself to the distribution of LPs, videos, vinyls, and tapes which featured performances by some of the most influential and innovative poets of the past five decades, from Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to Michael Ondaatje and Patti Smith. The idea was groundbreaking, but to Giorno, it seemed obvious. “One had a feeling that one should be connecting with an audience. It was common sense to work with all of the opportunities that media offered. Nobody had done this before, so I was walking a bit blindly into it.”

Until this article, I’d never heard of Giorno Poetry Systems. I like it, though. It’s a sublime idea and I agree with Giorno that such experiments are what poetry needs to keep it alive. I believe we are now on the verge of a new poetic movement, a digital movement that will transcend anything that has ever happened in the world of poetry. Keep your eyes open. This new digital poetry is about to explode and it will take the idea of the poetry slam to new levels. Just watch.

Giorno’s aim is not only to connect to an audience, but to evoke a response: “When you connect to an audience they can perceive the poem in their minds. They can relax, or you can shock them – any one of any feelings that can allow the mind to feel. It’s all a part of connecting to an audience. People tend to think a poem is like Beethoven or Mozart: you can’t scream! Audiences treat it like classical music.”

No truer words were ever spoken. Catharsis, to borrow a word from Aristotle. That’s the poet’s aim. Create catharsis any way you can.

As for poetry’s current status, both Hellman and Giorno are particularly excited about the growing amount of poetry slams in Europe and North America.

I think the days of the slam are coming to an end. Something better is about to emerge. Something really wild. I mean it. Keep your eyes open.

Giorno echoes this optimism. He entrusts today’s emerging spoken word artists with moving poetry forward – and with hip hop and slam poetry on the rise, his legacy is in good hands. “When you go to these slams, you see these kids who just get some real physical reaction in the heart and mind. Slams are all over the place. It is a fabulous phenomenon,” he concludes. Giorno is evidently an idealist at heart: We are in a “golden age of poetry,” he says.

Yes, this is the golden age, but the slam is history. It has run its course. Time to move on.

I once sent a few poems to Don Wentworth at Lilliput Review. He rejected them gently. Though he did encourage me to resubmit more poems later. I never did. It wasn’t because I was crushed, angry, disappointed, or bitter. I don’t write many poems of less than ten lines. What I didn’t know then was that Don was a blogger. Well, I couldn’t have known because the year was 2006. He didn’t start his blog until late 2007. But I like it nonetheless. Welcome to the blogosphere, Don.

Jacob Russell asks, What is meant by “taking a risk?”

I think David Hall might have a clue.

To answer the question at the end of Hall’s blog post, I’m not sure that you can. But you can damn sure give them a good swift kick in the balls. Just write a poem about them. That’s what I do.

Speaking of poetry that kicks, today is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday. Did you know that? I didn’t.

The National Book Critics Circle has new board members.

The ABA calls it a good year with 115 new independent book stores. Silliman points out that the ABA fails to mention the 250 independent book stores that closed. He doesn’t name his source.

According to an article in USA Today, the 10 most literate cities in 2007 were:

1. Minneapolis
2. Seattle
3. St. Paul
4. Denver
5. Washington
6. St. Louis
7. San Francisco
8. Atlanta
9. Pittsburgh
10. Boston

I guess that makes the Twin Cities the most literate metropolitan area in the nation. Interestingly, none of the top 10 are in my home state, Texas. Not that anyone should be surprised. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder what are the 10 least literate cities. I’d like to know - so I can stay away from them.

The nominees of the most coveted prize in poetry.