Can Poetry Survive?

There has been a lot of interesting talk on this topic around lately.

Here are two very interesting posts from Charles Jensen on the topic:
—http://kinemapoetics.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-bubble.html
—http://kinemapoetics.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-on-literary-market_16.html

And one by 32 Poems editor Deb Ager on how to keep a lit mag alive in print:
http://blog.32poems.com/1281/can-print-publications-survive

And an amusing discussion of poetry shopoholism:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238198

Publishing is changing. Are people reading poetry less in print and more online? I haven’t seen statistics, but my bet is yes. One of the weird things that happens with my poems is that they show up on people’s LiveJournals and blogs after they get published in print, so that they have kind of a second life. If people like poems they read, they want to share them. I think this is a good instinct.
But what would happen if each of us had the technology to take the poems we liked and make our own custom anthologies out of them? If a ‘poetry itunes‘ existed that could take a look at our preferences and recommend similar poets? If we could have every new poem that a poet we liked published downloaded automatically to our computer so we wouldn’t have to search them out? There are ways that technology could make poetry more popular, not less, right? Or am I just too optimistic?

I happen to like print lit mags and hope they stick around. I like reading books instead of screens, too. Therefore I spend money on both lit mags and books, especially small press books. I like discovering a new literary magazine that surprises me with its brilliance, or a new poet who will go in my “new favorites” shelf. I’ve found a lot of my favorites by accident, by stumbling into a reading or picking up a poetry book with a cover I liked or a title that sounded interesting.

This note, as well: if you like poetry lit mags and you’re not subscribing to any, this is the time. If you were thinking about making a donation to a small press but never got around to it, this is the time. Buying a poetry book these days can seem like an extravagance; go ahead and do it. Like everything else, the arts suffer during a recession. Giving a little to a cause you care about can go a long way.