a modest proposal for poetry

Bill Knott is right. As he states on the Harriet Blog, the problem of poetry publication in America is "systemic." It is based in economics and it has driven poets and their would-be publishers into a smaller and smaller rat-box where they bite each other's tails and claw each other's eyes out—the poets, trying to push the lever that will release the book-pellet, the publishers, trying to push the lever that will release the funding-pellet to make the book.

Why don't publishers and poets cooperate, you ask. Why don't the poet-rats who want the publication pellet, help the publisher-rat get to the lever they need to push? In 2004 and 2005, due to the efforts of Foetry.com, some poetry presses were legitimately criticized for their contest practices, and, aided by CLMP, succeeded in making their contests more transparent and guidelines more accessible. But Foetry.com didn't know when or how to stop and spawned its own set of rats who continue blindly gnawing every publisher in sight, to wit: why don't publishers read manuscripts for free? Why can't they publish books without trying to get money to enable them do it? Why do they publish people they might have gone to school with or worked with—-even when it's not a contest? How dare they make judgments on the worth of someone's work and publish someone without making sure they've never heard of them, met with them, taught with them, had coffee with them, read previous work of theirs, etc.? And does a publisher think because they started a press and/or run it, they are entitled to publish who they want and when? Mostly: Why are they stealing my money? I paid the equivalent of two cups of Starbucks coffee and now my manuscript hasn't been selected! What did I pay for? Someone to open an envelope? It's all subjective anyway. It's got to be that the one who got published knows somebody! ("How many poets does it take to change a light bulb? 200. One to change it and 199 to claim he knew somebody."*) I demand that these rats be held accountable! And so forth and so on. You get the drift.

Meanwhile, the market for poetry is NOT THERE, the selling of poetry books is NOT HAPPENING (except for, you know, Billy C.), and the funding for the arts is NOT being directed towards poetry as Bill Knott correctly points out. Even an organization that was fortunate enough to receive 100 million dollars to put towards poetry, has asserted that they are "not in the business of funding." The money will be used to support poetry, yes, but only as this organization dreams up its own ways to do it, not to support those already working hard to make poetry happen—-the poetry publishers or even the poets themselves.

Granted, it is the audience for poetry that's missing and that's what is driving all this rat-biting and baiting, but while the unnamed organization is trying to create the readership (to effect a "trickle-down" economics), the rats are harming each other. Here is my modest proposal: let's kill off the presses! Let's make sure no press is allowed to charge a fee for reading a manuscript, ever. People should do things for free in poetry anyway, shouldn't they? Since the grants are so difficult to obtain, and since most small presses depend primarily on reading fees, that will take care of the ones with an already precarious existence (nearly all of them). Next, let's make it extremely difficult for anyone to START a press. Let's go back a few decades to when there were only a few presses that would publish poetry (e.g. university presses would survive since they are attached to, and funded by, institutions). Then, when the masses of MFA rats are swarming, looking for a publisher, so they can get a book, so they can get a job, they will not find one. We will be back to the time when being a poet did not automatically mean having a book—or, we will move ahead to a time when other means of producing poetry (e.g. internet publishing) will take hold and become respectable. So: Kill the poetry presses to save poetry!

At a minimum, an all-out assault on poetry presses will drastically reduce the number of them, thereby drastically reducing the number of poets expecting to be published, thereby drastically reducing the amount of poetry published, thereby giving the poetry that does get published more attention in the market, thereby creating a more interested readership, thereby increasing demand for poetry. Many fewer presses equals more selectivity, equals bigger readership. Side bonus: the paucity of publishers would discourage everyone who can pick up a pen from becoming a poet. The MFA programs would either disappear completely in the process—-why go through the program when there are only about three poetry presses left in America to publish you?—-or become a purely educational experience, like liberal arts degrees in general.

Frankly, I'm amazed that any small publisher of poetry would continue in the face of the ongoing ignorance and sheer vindictiveness of certain rats-in-the-box.** Whatever good was done in the name of fairness vis a vis poetry contests has been done. Now for the coup de grace: Put poetry presses out of business altogether through continual harassment, defamation and a refusal to support them, and then let angry readers ask for it, demand it—-We want poetry! We want poetry! Can't you hear it now? No, neither can I. The box is so small. Can't we at least be kinder to our fellow rats?





*Tip o' the hat to Ernie Hilbert.

**I have good reason not to name them. They are persistent and litigious. I have been harassed and I know many others have too and there is an especially disturbed individual in our midst who is making it nearly impossible to have these discussions openly—I don't like receiving nasty emails, being cyber-stalked or being defamed on the internet—and I have heard it’s worse for others.