The Place of Poetry - Is it Obsolete?

The readership of poetry has been declining, on average, steadily since the late 1800's and the rise of the modern novel as a literary genre. Yet poetry as a literary art has indeed survived into the twenty-first century. Many people are asking the question: is poetry obsolete? And if the answer is No, then what is the Place of Poetry in modern society? With the internet distributing amateur content to trillions of viewers a day, and publishers swamped with hundreds of thousands of manuscripts from so called "poets" who read Readers' Digest's poetry edition and write poems about their cats, how do the educated, erudite, crafters of language who deserve to call themselves poets get themselves noticed? Perhaps the increase in interpersonal networks and internet media has decreased our society's need for poetry. To truly answer this question we must ask the following three questions: Who are the poets? Who Publishes Poetry? Is Self-Publishing Viable? Follow as we examine the complex answers to these questions and thus decide once and for all the Place of Poetry in our changing world.

The human interest side of this issue is of primary importance to the consideration of poetry's place in society today. To answer this question we must first define the term, "poet". Is a poet anyone who writes poetry? Or do we narrow the qualifications to say that a poet is only one who has published a poem or a collection of poems? For the sake of discussion it seems necessary to narrow the definition slightly, but not solely to published poets. The category of "poet", in regards to this question, includes anyone publishing poetry as a primary occupation (of which there are few), anyone publishing poetry as a secondary occupation (usually with an academic position as the primary career), and anyone in higher level education who plan to make poetry either their primary or secondary activity in the next 2-4 years. Essentially poets, poet-professors, and student-poets.

This definition allows us to excise the three biggest irritants of poetry advocates everywhere: hobby poets, retiree poets, and niche poets. Hobby poets are those who write poetry the way many build model cars, or make bird houses on a garage work bench - their craft is shoddy and often full of errors, but they get excited about their finished product, and want to show it off to everyone. Retiree poets are self explanatory - they are people living in retirement who use poetry as a pastime. That said, many retired persons are indeed excellent poets, but usually they are those who began their poetic pursuits prior to retirement, not after. Finally, Niche poets are those who write poetry to fulfill a specific market space, most frequently topical poetry; poets who write poems about dogs or children's poetry are niche poets.

So, excluding these three pastime poet groups, the poets we will consider as we discover the place of poetry are poets, poet-professors, and student-poets.

We've considered who the poets are, but those who decide which of these poets get noticed (besides other poets of course) are the presses which publish them. While the big presses such as Random House, Penguin, Norton, or Signet do publish some poetry, a majority of what they publish is canonized - in other words it is the work of mainly deceased poets whose work has been accepted by the academic community as worthy of merit, and thus sells a few hundred thousand copies per year to students. These large presses as a general rule do not publish current, progressive poets.

Poets who are current, who are writing today, who are writing new, progressive, experimental, cross-genre, multi-format, multi-media poetry are being published by so called "small presses" (although ironically many of them are quite large). These are often run by just a few people who are poets themselves, and usually publish a quarterly or semi-annual journal of poetry as well as a few full length collections and a few chapbooks per year. For those who are not familiar with the term "chapbook" it refers to a short collection of poems/literature published as a low cost, often paper bound style. They are usually anywhere from twelve to forty pages, and can be the size of a side-fold greeting card, or the size of a full 8.5x11 sheet of paper. The point is low cost in combination with brand new poetry. Poets often publish a series of chapbooks themselves, which brings us to our next question.

Many people are curious about the viability of "self-publishing" both online and in print. The fact is that the internet, although one of the most valuable ways to get your work out there for people to read, is in fact a double-edged sword. Although it makes it easy for you to create a web page, blog, online publication, or ezine to get your poetry (or other writing) noticed by others, it also allows everyone else to do so as well. That means that although it is easy for you to self-publish online, you run the risk of your work getting lost in the midst of innumerable others, especially if you don't have the internet expertise required to direct significant traffic to your website.

The positive side to this is that there has been a proliferation of online presses that are designed both to generate incoming traffic and to publish up and coming poets and writers like you. Check out the link below for some small press resources through a great dual medium (both print and online) press called Tarpaulin Sky.

But if you have the tenacity and the internet savvy, it is possible for your self-publishing endeavors to be successful. You need to first make a chapbook (using a program like PageMaker, Microsoft Publisher, or others) and print a few copies. Then, design a website to promote and sell your chapbooks. Publish the website, find a way to direct traffic to it, and hope people stop by and purchase your chapbook. That might sound simple, but it is quite a lot of work, and usually is time/cost prohibitive.

So is self-publishing viable? It can be, in some isolated instances, but usually it is better to try to go the more traditional route - online journal to print journal to full length collection.

To pull all this together and turn it into an answer to our original question on the role of poetry in today's modern, mechanized society, we must simply look at the answers. First, are there enough poets left to create enough poetry to be a driving force in the publishing industry? The answer is resoundingly yes. There are too many poets writing right now for the meager space the larger publishing houses devote to the genre. Second, are there people out there who are publishing poetry, and if so, who are they? Once again, the answer is yes, and they small presses found easily on the internet. Finally, can a poet self-publish his or her work as another viable outlet? And again, the answer is absolutely, provided that the poet has some resources, talent, and internet know-how (a how-to Hub on self-publishing your own chapbook soon to come, so stay tuned).

What is the place of poetry in today's society? It is a valuable art form that has not, despite what critics say, become obsolete. Poetry carries within it a current of the human collective consciousness, the universal human myth. No culture worldwide is without poetry, and no culture should be without it. If poetry ever became obsolete, our society would lose an important mode of expression and an even more important method of language enrichment, and our culture and language would suffer an irreplaceable loss.