Adjuncting and Another winner, money and poetry, lit mags and politics

So, the second winner, Ron, never sent me his contact information, so I had to pick another winner for my poetry book giveaway: It’s Candace at elisamaza@gmail.com. You can leave me a comment or I’ll e-mail you for your snail mail address. Congrats on being a winner! (All winners selected with random number generators. Much quicker than pulling a literal number out of a literal hat!)

Adjuncting: Neither as glamorous nor as lucrative as you might think. That is all.

This article at the Chronicle of Higher Education talks about how young, female professors are more likely to experience harassment and incivility on the job. Yes.

Poetry and money: Once again, as the summer comes around and the economy creakingly seems to be getting a little better, I’m thinking about how to make a little more money. Freelance writing has been slow. Poetry costs more money than it makes, typically. Contest fees, conferences, travelling for readings, not to mention books and lit mags – all of these take money. See above re: adjuncting paychecks. Worry worry worry.

Speaking of money, how will lit mags stay afloat? Here’s an interesting tidbit: I bought a used book called “The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors on their Craft.” Apparently, back in 1980, the average subscription base of a lit mag was between 200-800. Today, the average subscription base of a lit mag? You guessed it. About the same. Besides the odd rant against how the NEA and feminists were ruining poetry – many of the editors, whose publications are now defunct, sound like today’s editors – problems with increasing readership, staying solvent despite tough times, etc. The literary magazine today, with the decrease in major book publishers doing anything with unknown poets, is probably the only way for a talented writer to have his or her work seen. But who cares about them? Who is reading them? Is there an audience for them outside of writers? It seems very hard to get my own MFA students to purchase a lit mag, and those are the folks that should be motivated to do so.

Someone was complaining about how poets don’t engage politically. I would say, perhaps the publishers of poetry don’t like poetry that engages politically, which is why you don’t see more of it. It’s not that people aren’t writing it – it’s that it’s not getting published. Also I would say, what is “political?” Is it merely talking about military issues or party lines? Or does it include discussions of class, the environment, gender?