You’re doomed to Oblivion! And other cheerful blog posts…
Because I’ve been really sick I’m not really doing much else so I found more interesting blog links to put up. The first one (from a Canadian/English poet) talks about your pitiful chances of ever being successful, recognized, or read in the future unless you are anointed by a chosen king/saint-maker. The second one talks about the implications of that, and whether “Fame” – the song/the idea – is really so great any way. Thanks to Bookslut’s blog for both links:
http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2008/01/canons-to-right_29.html
http://samizdatblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/baby-remember-my-name-poets-and.html
My opinion? Fight the good fight. Even one person reading your poem could make a difference. Fight the system! Subvert the paradigm (See Steven’s comic blog post on this phrase http://www.steveschroeder.info/2008/01/two-things-that-make-me-glad-i-didnt-go.html) and write because you love to write, because you can’t not write. Do what you can to make poetry relevant, to get poetry into people’s hands. If I had a defeatist attitude towards other things – like my immune system (what? Born with one kidney? Asthma since childhood? Crappy inability to fight off germs? Rare bleeding disorder? Messed up thyroid? Just give up already, you Darwinian-ly cursed girl!) I’d be dead. That’s why I take my vitamins and antibiotics and herbal teas – and why I studied pre-med as an undergrad – hey, you gotta do something, take some steps, fight the powers that be, have some faith that what you do makes a difference. In health, in life, and in poetry.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Felicity
I’m with ya! Poets and Writers was gettin’ me down the other day — litmags doomed by postal rate hike, fiction crushed under the wheel of nonfiction — and I agree with you. There’s nothing to be won that way.
We have to write as if the world were the way it should be, to show it what it can be. The good fight, yeh?
Joannie
We write because we love to write, but I’ve found another little secret. You mentioned that if one person reads your poem… I’ve written poems for one person or two people–poems I worked really hard on (sometimes nearly a year, or 10 years, or more), no schlocky faux greeting card verse–and then sent them off, and the people who have received them LOVED them. So sure, it’s an audience of one or two, but it’s the audience I’m wanting that specific to reach. For me, that might be more valuable than anything in the long, true run. At least, that’s what I try to remind myself.
Collin
Who’s got time to worry about legacy? I really can’t be bothered with that. There’s too much writing to do. Does anyone really sit down and write a poem thinking, “I must be writing for the ages.”? It would be nice to be remembered when I’m dead, but really, I doubt I’ll be giving a damn. lol
megalopoet
J: have enjoyed your posts of late, as always, and am soo sorry you didn’t get to go to awp. hope you’re feeling better & better each day.
to make yourself feel even *better* could you blog about the persona poem? you know, part of the stuff you were going to present in the pedagogy forum at you-know-where…
and to add on this topic: i don’t think anyone’ll be studying my poetry 400 years from now, nor do i think they’ll be studying many contemporary/modern poets– there’ll simply be too many poets for that to happen. of course, i don’t think euripedes or shakespeare thought aboug everlasting fame either: just wound up that way. but, you’ve got to work for the reader; and trust they’ll keep the work around. truly, i enjoy your enthusiastic posts!
keep fighting that good fight!
nicole