[New-Poetry] Recommending Poetry Presses?

[Skip Fox]

What about a book on how to make it in the small (big) world. Chapters on
how to lower expectations so that your goal is to have a situation where you
can spend hours every week writing. A chapter on how to follow your own nose
(and how not to follow the chapter). A chapter on how to ignore the fashions
and trust the way of your own work. And maybe a final chapter on the depth
of satisfaction one has in following his or her poetry rather than trying to
write for approval (and add to a culture already choking on landfills of
period style or other popular brands of poetry).

 

I love you post, Bob, but think the issue might be usefully reconsidered as
above.

 

(Actually some people have made their names by winning prizes, but I can't
remember any of them.)

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Grumman
Sent: Friday, January 18, 2008 1:23 PM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Recommending Poetry Presses?

 



AlMaginnes at aol.com wrote: 

There's a lot to be said against contests, but the fact is that for many
poets it's pretty much the only sot, long as it is. With presses
increasingly going to contest route and those that don't stocked to the
gills, sometimes you have to hold your nose and go ahead (I was looking for
a mom in a wet T-shirt contest metaphor, but I don't think I'm well enough
to go there).

I wish someone would do the research necessary and write a book analyzing
how poets make it in the big world.  My impression (based extremely on
guesswork, for the most part) is this--assuming you do have some talent and
don't grow up in lucky circumstances like having a father who is a bigtime
poet:

(1) You go to a bigtime University, and get the patronage of its bigtime
poet or critic

(2) You go to a bigtime University and make friends with other would-be
poets like you, some of them with connections to bigtime publications (this
is especially  effective if done in conjunction with (1)) 

(3) You find others who do your kind of poetry and make friends with them,
and group together, something greatly facilitated now by the Internet.  This
I know about because it was my way.  So far it hasn't gotten me anywhere in
the Bigworld, but it still could.  

(4) You enter contests.  I don't know of anyone who has gotten anywhere by
doing this, but who knows.

(5) You compose superior poetry and send it to established publishers of
poetry.  I think someone did this 87 or 88 years ago and it worked.  It
hasn't since.

--Bob G.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080118/0265c21c/attachment.html