Nonetheless, I am going to include it on my CV.

I like how the same desperate feeling of “I must find my poem in this journal” occurred to me, even though it was not my poem, and I had to wade through 3000 pages to get there (eventually, the search function ended up working for me, but still). Perhaps part of the commentary here is on this need to see one’s name in print, or, I suppose, on the strange journal format status quo which is one hundred poets crammed together, each poet really only concerned with him or herself being there.

Anyway, I love the cover page. That’s ingenius.

on the other hand, i agree with andrew — too many great poets either never pursued or were denied recognition during their lifetimes. the first poster’s statement, that art without an audience is not art, is provocative but wrong. and “audience” is a term one has to define for oneself, anyway. why let poetry magazine define it for you? lew welch considered a poem to be “published” when he read it out loud in front of people. to “make public” — that’s the bare-bones definition of the word.

what seems to work for me is a combination of approaches. i do send stuff out, but i’m more and more selective about where i send it; i don’t bother with mags that, as nick says, i don’t have respect for and wouldn’t pick up. i also have a number of friends doing small press stuff and things tend to get out that way. and i try to read in front of my peers as often as i can. i have some faith, but i don’t have faith that someone’s going to stumble onto my poems in an attic and proclaim me the next whitman. so i try to help them out.

Dug the article. Interesting… one the one hand I’ve friends who tell me to send, send, send–amass those rejections slips and get your work out there. Then there are those who tell it different… I’ve a friend who spends most his time and energy crafting and completing manuscripts for mostly chapbook sized (15-20 poems) books, and doesn’t send anything out unless it’s asked for. Thing is–some people don’t have the luxury of knowing enough people (or having enough people know their work) to where that work is mostly solicited. (Love the words we use: submit, solicit, accept).

As someone who regularly reads and subscribes (to a few) literary journals, I lean towards thinking that it can only help a poet to be read. We write to be read. A magazine really only endeavours to assert a certain aesthetic, to assemble a chorus. The practical tediousness that goes into submitting to (and reading, selecting, & putting together) a magazine is necessary, (but, I’d like to think) _always_ rewarding.

kind of starting from the conundrum of that old groucho marxism, ‘i refuse to join any club that would have me as a member’, perhaps you should only submit to those literary journals which share your worries about artistic integrity – or start your own (and change the name of the process: instead of ’submitting’, how about ‘gifting’?).

my (seldom-followed) advice, borrowed from poets of a different color, is: ‘get your cake’, e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHjwd1C1FzM.

However, having this enticing spell of acceptance in mind when writing is only differentiated by a very gray line from considering audience, however slight that voice in one’s head may be.

Along these lines, it is hard to truly believe that one writes purely for oneself, because unless the writing is a journal entry, somewhere (hidden?) in the writer’s mind is the fact that with producing a piece of art comes the potential threat of it being read/viewed/heard, in this lifetime or not, via submission or excavation.

So to me, submission seems a necessary evil, not necessarily a narcissistic one, but with this act comes the importance of valuing the art itself over the comfort of acceptance, which can be a scary, lonely position.

I think of found art, too; many argue that’s not art – I haven’t reached a verdict) but it brings an interesting perspective when thinking about whether art must be seen to be art. In this case, the art can be argued to be in the seeing/finding; then we are in that forest; if it is not found, then well, it’s just stuff? The art is not the object in this case (and yet it sells, because well, yeah, America is profit-driven).

I find the house comparison to be a rickety shack, almost a crack house of an analogy. You can eat a poem for the paper, pass it like a loose leaf stool, but that’s about it. But, no real shock it was constructed, said metaphor, since everyhing in America must be a product, or the enevitable charge of selflishness flies fast. Share it with me, share it with me baby or you are just a commie hermit. Or a Hopping Kermit.

Dickinson tried and failed to publish her poems on a few different occasions, and the manner in which she left her manuscripts (tied neatly in bundles, clearly written) suggests she wanted them to be found and published at some point. Still, few saw them during her life, and they are none the worse for it.

A better analogy is Han Shan, Chinese recluse, Zen weirdo, who wrote his poems on rocks up on Cold Mountain, living in isolation, though in proximity to a monastery. They were rock-published, though not chiseled in stone.

I think an audience can spoil a poet just as easily as it make one.

Sure, all these things are valid. Is it a valid effort to create? I should say so. Are such creations as valid a commodity as, say, a house? I should certainly say so. And naturally, music, literature, and all the arts are useful and necessary to the body, mind, and spirit. No less so than a house. In fact, we find so many times that a person can live without a house, but cannot live without art. On the other hand, building a house, I’m sure many architects and builders would argue, is artistic as well as useful. But, is a suburban home a valid exhibition for an art museum? Is art found in the grocery store “real” art? Won’t these questions make for hours of discussion?

I agree with Ditch Poetry about art manifesting when it is viewed. Once, when I was feeling insecure about my own writing, being told it wasn’t urgent enough, and feeling that perhaps I shouldn’t bother to plague the world with more mediocre writing, a non-MFA friend reminded me that the only fulfilment my writing required was that it bring me joy. If that was true, then why stop? So, yes, writing is meant to be enjoyed by it’s readership, or more significantly, to move and change its readership, however small that readership may be. As for sharing, and I prefer thinking of it as “sharing” rather than “submitting,” for me, it is fine to do if my aim is to share, even if it is to get attention and reward. Yes, it can indeed be ego-stroking self-promotion. This is one part of art, but it is not its fulfilment. In face, the greatest danger of sending off work for the acceptance/rejection of a third party is to seek in this third party my own validity as a writer. That’s why for so many years, I have put off the arduous process of sending off my work, because at this moment, it would feel too much like “submission.”

You do, though, propose a couple fascinating questions:
1. Is literature, music, visual art, etc. the same as building a house? Is their utility of equal validity?
2. Re: the last sentence of the comment—is interaction with the audience necessary for the creative process to be consummated as art? Is the poem or story or painting or song that never sees the light of day any less valid as art than the widely distributed?

Music is created to be heard, visual art is created to be seen, plays are created to be performed, literature is created to be read.
Art without an audience is nothing at all.
Presenting the work to an audience is part of the creative process.
Houses are built to live in. Would you build a house and leave it empty? No. So why write something if it is not meant to be shared with an audience?
Submitting for publication is not simply ego stoking. Any artist risks jeers as much as cheers. Anyone who was acting purely on ego wouldn’t risk the jeers, therefore, the act of submitting is not egotistical, but courageous.
It is part of the fulfilment of the work. The interaction with the audience is the necessary completion of the creative process – or it isn’t art.

I do have repeat poets (e.g. Simon Perchik, E.G. Burrows, John Grey) who have tuned in to my editorial taste and send poems that I accept every couple of issues or so. But they always send 3-5, and I always just pick one (when I do!), because only one appeals to me.

I agree with a previous commenter who invites you to do your own journal: that’s one way to solve the problem and fill the gap! I was a featured poet in a book of three poets published by a friend of mine. It was nice to have 50 pages or so to give a home to a long sequence of poems that needed to be all together for it to make sense. Another journal, Color Wheel out of New Hampshire, also published a 20 poem sequence of mine. So it does happen… it’s just not common.

Thanks for the post, in any case. Since I’ve been writing in series for the last few years, publishing has been a bit obnoxious; when someone takes two or three tiny sections of a six-page subseries, I usually end up embarassed by how atrophied they seem out of context, and wish I hadn’t sent them at all…

Thanks for your thorough discussion of poetry publication. I’ve been thinking a lot about the benefits of publishing multiple poems by the same author in an anthology and hadn’t even really questioned or considered the current practice of most journals who publish single poems or, if accepting multiple poems, placing them separately.

Sure, authors create poems that are meant to stand solely alone; poems that are in essence an artifact of the author’s life and experience. But too there are many, many poets and poems that, while they can stand on their own, are better appreciated and understood in context of the author’s other poems, even if the poems are not inherently connected (arguably, poems by the same author would be inherently connected, though maybe not consciously or deliberately).

A couple of well known collections that immediately come to my mind are “Spoon River Anthologies” by Edgar Lee Masters, and “The Wild Iris” by Louise Gluck.

Many of the poets in my own circle are working on books of poems that not only contain what is referred to as a “theme,” but are intimately connected. Together, the poems collected will create a Gestalt whole; a sense of time and a dimensional look at what the creation. Separately, while still good poems in their respective right, their dimensionality is at best overlooked.

First, I think your blog is great. I didn’t know you had it in you (I guess I should have known). : )

This is an interesting and infinitely complex subject. First, I am unmarried, so I don’t speak from experience (life has taught me to be wary of those who do not speak from experience). Take this for what it is worth.

I feel it is important to note that nothing (that immediately comes to mind) in life is a purely positive experience. I would expect marriage to be no different. I think part of the cause for today’s excessively high divorce rate is the expectation that marriage will be a purely positive experience – when many people find that this is not the case, they take the high road.

I think that most people who are fortunate enough to live into their old age and stick with their marriage throughout their life would attest that for all of it’s shortcomings (loss of control, increased dependence, less autonomy, etc), marriage is one of the few ventures in life that is MOSTLY positive.

Too many people take on this commitment without being really, truly prepared for what lies in store…

Again, great blog.

Dave B.

i disagree about music being such a radically different model–i know lots of musicians and lots of poets / sp publishers, and worn out many a barstool talking with them about production and distribution etc.

aside from the strange phenomenon whereby a regularly gigging musician can be quasi-famous in his hometown, but completely anonymous outside of it, whereas a poet can be totally unknown in his neighborhood, but draw large crowds in distant cities, i don’t see much difference at all. there are presses right here in town, run by a single person out of a tiny house, selling hundreds, in some cases 1000+ copies of handmade chaps and other product. i don’t disagree that music is far more of a mass medium, but the internet has opened things up for everyone. the communities and economies that we’re talking about exist, but they are under the radar and very dispersed geographically.

as for the beats, i don’t think they were nearly as unified as we tend to think they were–and to the extent that they were, it was largely a white boys’ club, not the most attractive model for today’s gender- and ethno-conscious poet. yet even so, they wouldn’t have had anywhere to publish their work if it wasn’t for individually run presses that many of them were involved with, like floating bear, origin, city lights.

finally, the DOA status of mags is a two-edged sword; on the one hand it totally sucks, on the other it means that i have as good a chance at putting out a worthwhile issue as Great Western Quarterly (or whoever). in the 2002 BAP, selected by creeley, there are as many or more poems that appeared in “little” mags like skanky possum, hambone, can we have our ball back (!!) etc. as in biggies like poetry, beloit, this-or-that review–so they were getting into his hands somehow, and they were good.