Umm...and it's essential why? I just don't get that mindset. The whole agonizing over getting your book published by a well-known small press is ridiculous and detracts from the actual WRITING OF POETRY.
i just wrote a blog about GC! man. i'm sad to see him go.
easier said than done, but force experience and writing to be the concern, the publisher and whatnot...
Justin -
Thanks for such an honest post. I've thumb-wrestled the same questions, and originally only sent the mss to well-recognized contests. While you shouldn't send your work to any ol' publisher you wouldn't subscribe to as a reader, I don't believe there's much reason to just fish the big lakes. Popularity owes no relation to quality. There are plenty of smaller hot spots in which to cast your lines, and most times the fishing is even better there. And patience. A decade of patience. There are plenty of poets towing their little boats around. Your publisher will find you.
I was unaware of the VQR thing that you linked to. I really believe there should be some punishment for that attitude. Something public. That was just terrible.
There is a lot of work out there that doesn't fit into a journal or at a press, and much of it is because of aesthetic stance and much of it is because editors see that work as unaccomplished.
But to go back to it for a laugh, that's just crazy. For one thing, there isn't time to waste on such things, and for another, it's just mean.
More in a bit.
Presses and journals. I have no advice, but to want to buy you a drink and give you a punch in the arm.
We're all failures, really. All art is destined for the junk heap, at some point. Some survives now and then, but very little, and that only for a fairly short time.
I'm not saying this well.
For me it's a question of why write at all. What is the purpose. What does it do? What is one wanting to accomplish? And in what way are these internal factors and in what ways are these external factors.
For me, I'll have some sort of little phrase or question in my mind, and I write my way around it, to see what I can do with the tone or idea. At some point I think to myself that this thing seems like somethign I do or don't want to share. If I want to share it, I'll often just email it to friends. After that, it all becomes very abstract. I suppose I put on a business hat and think of journals and presses. But I've long since walked away from trying to figure out where my poetry fits. Honestly, I don't really think it fits anywhere at all comfortably.
It also seems that the more well-known presses and journals reject things I've written at pretty much the same rate as the lesser-known ones.
Eh. I dislike thinking about these things. They seem so anti-art. But they are as important as anythign else, I guess, as art is not just the art object itself, but also a line on one's resume.
"I guess, as art is not just the art object itself, but also a line on one's resume."
I don't even have to see it as a line on my resume. There is the art itself, there is the artist, and then there is the desire the artist feels to be proud of what he/she has done in a public context.
We all want to feel special. We all want to be validated. Poetry, or any other medium, is merely a means to an end, and that is part of the conflict we must resolve, the paradox of being an atist. We need to be concerned with the art above all else. We owe it to the art form to sacrifice our ego, but at the same time creating the work is serving our ego, and part of our ego is public recognition. In essence we are feeding the drive while trying to kill the drive because it can spoil the art. But without the drive, we don't create and lose part of our identity, our specialness.
My trouble comes with believing in my work enough to put it in places I know failure is 100%. On some basic level, I need to know I have at least a chance. I even get that from Poetry. I get rejected, but I still feel I have a chance with them. With what I write and what I see places like Copper Canyon and others put out, I don't get that sense.
Thank you all for stopping by and I hope even more will put in their 2 cents.
If you ask me, there's too much writing about the philosophy of writing and not enough ACTUAL writing. If we stopped over-thinking why we write and feeding our egos about our place in "history," there would be better writing.
Collin,
I believe there is way too much actual writing, and I believe we all have a place in history: The past!
Justin,
Yeah, I get that. I like about half of CC's books. And I like about 10% of what Poetry publishes... so I don't send to Poetry very often. Once every few years, just to run it up the flag pole.
There is a gamut to what each publisher and journal publishes, though. It's difficult to think that failure would be 100%.
You just never know what will strike the fancy of some reader at some point. Think of Pitt, which publishes Reginald Shepherd and, well, poets very unlike Reginald. And BOA, which publishes G.C. Waldrep and, again, writers very unlike him.
On the other hand, Wave publishes a much more narrow gamut of writers, for instance. So perhaps I'm talking in circles.
I find it's not so cut and dried. Or maybe that's just because I don't have much of a sense of how, why, or where, my own writing fits anymore. If I ever did.
I don't think the business of poetry has anything to do with being a poet.
It has nothing to do with being either a good poet or a bad poet, IMO.
I, like Collin, am befuddled by the po-biz-validation attitude.
Amen, Jilly.
Jilly,
I think it depends on what one means by "business." As I see it operating, everything one does with one's poetry after one is out of the moment(s) of composition is business. Posting here about poetry is part fo the business of poetry. You've just made a transaction, and have gotten validation from Collin.
Not to expose my lack of education in these things; but I doubt very much that a poet would naturally be good at "the business of poetry".
My opinion has been validated, yes, but I don't see what that has to do with my actual poems/being a poet?
So I'm not sure what you are talking about John Gallagher -- I'm not being a smart ass -- I genuinely am confused. 
BTW I consider the Po-Biz to be primarily the MFA -- > contest -- > poetry book -- > job? / award? trajectory, which I find alternately icky and silly for the most part.
Jilly,
There is a way that some people talk about poetry that can seem icky or silly or self-promoting. Is there really a trajectory? Well, a great number of people who write poetry find that MFA programs are a great place to hang out and write, and almost every first book of poetry published is published through a contest. And once one has published a book, one finds that one might be able to get a job staying around some school of some sort talking about and reading more poetry.
One writes one's art from out of some private moment. What feeds that private moment, I have no idea. Could it be some cynical desire to win some award with ones' poetry? If so, that seems to me a terrible waste of energy. But, even if there were some cynical looking at all the places out there that have something to do with poetry (jobs, awards, contestes) as some sort of business that one might be able to "get ahead" in through some sort of manipulation or crass planning, and one's poems were still good poems, I don't see that harm, outside of to the inner life of the one writing the poems. And I'm not much concerned with the inner lives of others, since I can't really know them.
The reason why I mentioned blog posts as a perhaps poetry-business, is because one could look at blogs in the very same way. One could write on them as a form of cynical self-promotion, and therefore be just as icky and silly as one who went to an MFA program as a form of cynical self-promotion. Whatever one does in the public sphere will be seen by others however they see things. I'm not accusing you of anything, bythe way, in the same way that I'm not accusing myself of anything (we both posted something on a blog). All I mean is that whatever this thing called Po Biz is, we're all a part of it. For better of for worse. Hopefully for better, because a positive public discourse on art is a very good thing for art.
I heartily support self-promotion. If you're not going to promote your own work, who will? A blog is one way, and there are many others. I'm not going to rely on an "acceptable" press, reviewer or MFA program to put my work before an audience when I can do it myself just as easily and with less headache.
Collin,
A perfectly reasonable stance.
oops sorry about the typo in your name. I understand how it is to have your name spelled wrong.
My issue with the "trajectory" is one of fairness (and to a lesser degree opportunity). My problem isn't with the MFA - I have one - or self-promotion.
I don't like the contest system - it seems like a really really artificial way for a form of art to "advance" itself. And, at the moment, the contest-winning books are the ones that are "validated." No wonder Justin is having angst about his poetry's place in that schema.
It's kind of crooked too. I wrote more about all this on my blog when I released my book http://tinyurl.com/5g5zuz I don't want to hog Justin's comments stream.
i agree totally that there is too much talking about writing and not enough writing.
i have read over and over and over by writers throughout history that the most important things about writing are
to read and
to write
what's that quote ' write you damn fool, write! '
of course sending things out, getting published, that's great, nothing wrong with thinking and doing.
but putting too much emotional or physical energies into it drains the artist totally of their life blood and their writing easily becomes a product instead of an expression.
Maggie,
Well, unless that physical energy drives one to write better and more. Each person is different, and there's no reason to write every waking moment.
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