[New-Poetry] Small press sales

[David Graham]

Ron Silliman's blog reprints a very interesting squib about a survey  
of publishers that finds that over half of all book sales comes from  
small presses.  It would be fascinating to know how much of the total  
sales are poetry books.  It's long been my gut feeling that poetry  
sells in quantities unknown to any previous era, despite all the  
poetry's-lost-its-audience articles that appear, and despite the  
widespread assumption among many mainstream outlets that "nobody"  
reads it.

It's seemed to me for a long time that lots of people read poetry,  
but that the demographics and heirarchies have changed greatly.  We  
still don't quite know how to get a handle on the current scene, or  
attempt proper definitions.

For decades now, poetry in the U.S. has been fragmented into many  
competing factions, often unknown or hostile to each other, and  
instead of a handful of Big Names, we now have literally thousands of  
good poets.  Few of them have truly widespread reputations in the way  
that a Frost or a Millay once did, but it's very hard to argue that  
someone like, say, Hayden Carruth, isn't a contender for major poet.   
He's not in a great many teaching anthologies, has never been famous  
the way Lowell or Plath were famous, is not subject to front-page New  
York Times treatment, and yet he's got a truly impressive body of  
work respected fiercely by other poets.  And, I would propose, not  
well known among many other poets--people who move in different  
circles.  For instance, I have an old friend for whom today's short  
list of major poets would include Michael Palmer (not on my list),  
but who will cheerfully admit to having read almost no William  
Stafford in the past 30 years.  And so forth.

And the trouble is, there are hundreds of Carruths or Palmers out  
there, literally hundreds, none of whom have gotten the mainstream  
traction that Lowell did, and that many of us still seem to think  
necessary before a poet can be considered distinguished.


> http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/
>
>
> Small presses account for half
> of all book sales


==========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
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