Relative Success, Relative Failure: Life as a Poet

I met with some writer friends last night where we talked about what success really meant for a poet: a certain number of books sold (maybe over 1000?) or a certain prize (one with a sticker, one of the members of our party said) or certain publications (Poetry, Paris Review, American Poetry Review.) A reading at a prized venue? A PAID reading? A teaching job? (We talked about the job market: jobs that used to require two books now require three.) Does success mean that someone across the country who has never met you might recognize your name? A Pushcart Prize? A grant? A review in the New York Times?
One of the party mentioned that poets ask for so little. That’s true, really. When I worked (albeit briefly) in technical book publishing, a goal of selling 60K of a certain title was considered pretty modest. When a book only sold 10K, it was considered a sad failure. On the other hand, a poet with 10K sales should throw a party. 60K would be considered pretty off the charts of a poetry book.
We talked about the things that help promote poetry books and which thing was the most effective: readings? reviews? We agreed that reading could be unpredictable (stories of a reading with 100 attendees and 0 book sales, or 12 attendees and 10 book sales, etc) and that the rewards of reviews were not directly tied to sales and were mostly intangible. Still, we poets do what we can. Not for the money, not for any specific expectation of reward, but more of a kind of intangible goal: to connect with other people with our writing.

We have dreams that a first book will change our lives. With a second book, we know the book won’t really change anything, but we hope for the best.