Yesterday I announced the addition of the second chapbook by Gary B. Fitzgerald to the World Class Poetry Toolbar. Today I’d like to offer you two free poetry chapbooks available for download.
- Going Dutch – Going Dutch is actually a couple of years old, but I’m making it available for free for the first time. These are poems I wrote while on R&R leave from Iraq in 2005 when I met my wife in Germany and we toured the country by train. A nice little poetic-pictorial journey just for you.
- Twitter Poems – Twitter Poems is the outgrowth of my Twitter poem experiment, which I conducted in April. I posted one poem a day on Twitter. Each poem was limited to 140 characters or less, a stricture placed by Twitter itself. These are the poems in a chapbook, free and available for download.
In addition to adding these two chapbooks to the toolbar, I’ve reorganized the blogs that are accessible from the toolbar as well. This was long overdue and finally I made the time to get it done. The blogs are alphabetized now for easier reference. There are 29 blogs in addition to the WCP blog and website. The latest addition is PoemShape.
Feel free to download the World Class Poetry Toolbar and enjoy your free chapbooks. There is also a call for submissions at the end of Twitter Poems.
Allen,
Thanks for adding me to your likable sites list – I appreciate that. I do.
When I first discovered your blog, I tried out your toolbar but it didn’t install correctly. I’m computer savvy but couldn’t get it to cooperate with FireFox. On the other hand, I run security software worthy of the uber-paranoid. Is there another way to see these chapbooks?
Patrick, I don’t know why the toolbar wouldn’t install. I use Firefox and have no issues. As far as I know, no one else has had any issues either. Perhaps you have another Firefox add-on that is conflicting with it? Or it could be your security software. The security software I use asks me if I want to allow certain files to operate on my hard drive and with the other toys I have and if I tell it no then there are issues. Maybe you have a software that does that.
At any rate, to answer your question, as of now the chapbooks are not available to the public any other way. But stay tuned ….
P.S. If you’re really interested in Going Dutch you can click the cover image in the right sidebar under “Poetry Books” (which I need to update) and that will take you to a sales page where you can get it for $1.49.
//If you’re really interested in Going Dutch you can click the cover image in the right sidebar under “Poetry Books” (which I need to update) and that will take you to a sales page where you can get it for $1.49.//
You know… since we’re on the subject…
(And before I go on I have to preface this with the following: You *are* offering your chapbooks for free, so what follows is not a criticism of you…)
That said…
I’ve more or less taken an ethical stance which is this: I will only spend as much money on poetry as a take in from poetry. Over the years, I have seen various adds for poetry workshops, associations, competitions, conventions, chapbooks, books, etc… They all want my money, my money, my money…
I have asked every single poetry guild and association: What do *I* get out of it in terms of my poetry. And every one suddenly can’t remember how to use E-Mail – or they readily suggest more ways for me to part with my money: You can give us money to take this course! – You can give us money to come to this convention! – You can give us money for these books!
I ask them: How about *I* teach one of the courses?
And then I *never* hear from them again. They have their cliques – a little cabal of poets, in every one of these associations, who have reserved the honeypot for themselves and their friends. And they’re not sharing that income with *anybody*.
I swear, Allen, the whole poetry industry is a pyramid scheme – seriously.
So… the long and the short of it is this. I have made $0.00 off poetry. Therefore, I will spend $0.00 *on* poetry. The only way I will every join a guild or association is if the return on my investment is equal or greater. Otherwise, your just putting money from *your* wallet into somebody else’s *wallet*. And for what? For what? What’s a membership in a poetry association worth?
Contacts. Less the money you gave them.
Patrick, I can’t say I disagree with that too much. I have devised a simple mathematical formula for living my life:
Which is another way of saying where two or more people are gathered for a single cause, there evil ensues. So I’m not much of a joiner either.
That said, I do believe in buying poetry books and sampling journals and such. If I find a journal I like I might subscribe if I can fit it into the budget. Or, like you, I’ll take money I make on poetry and redirect it toward a purchase.
I have actually made money on poetry through sales of chapbooks. Poetry readings is where I generally do best. But there are a lot of schemes and ploys, which I think you’ll find in any field of knowledge or professional association. Be careful where you tread, but I question the wisdom of completely avoiding the forest for fear of a falling tree.