Taking the Fall, A Few Thoughts on that Utne Poetry Essay, and Poetry Reviews, Sales, and Empowerment

Orange Sunflower

Taking the Fall

Welcome to August, everyone! A beautiful time for flowers (dahlias! sunflowers! last roses!) but not a great time for me. MS symptoms like to act up in the heat, and I’ve spent time in the hospital the last two years in August. This last week we’ve had temps up to ninety degree, and on one of the hotter days, getting in and out of the car on the way home from physical therapy, I lost my bearings and fell hard into the sharp edge of the car door, which banged up my arm pretty good from shoulder to hand. Glenn and my physical therapist both also mentioned that I’ve been shaking uncontrollably in the hands, feet, and face. Not good.

New Hair and Hot Girls Pearls

But I try to learn lessons. For instance, a low-slung sedan with limited trunk/back seat space is probably not a great car for someone with balance problems, vertigo, and a wheelchair. So Glenn and I will be trading in our old sedan (2010! How is my car nine years old already?) for a car more appropriate for someone like me. Sigh. It hurts to acknowledge the changes in your life you make to accommodate disability. I’m “too young” for a wheelchair (does that even mean anything?) but still, with MS sometimes I need one and I need a car that can fit, say, a cooler and luggage and a wheelchair if I want to make any car trips. I don’t like having to stay inside on hot days, or days with wildfire smoke (currently from wildfires in Siberia – 7 million acres of forest on fire – and Alaska and Canada  – 100,000 acres on fire.) I don’t like basically having to go into hibernation in August. On the plus side, I did find these cool “Hot Girls Pearls” (in picture) that keep you cool for thirty minutes while you’re out and about, which allowed me out long enough to do errands (or get my hair done.)

In the name of praising the beauties of summer in the Northwest (despite my increased MS symptoms,) here are a few more pictures of flowers around Woodinville:

A Few Thoughts on that Bob Hicok Poetry Essay in the Utne Review

So, I posted a couple of observations on that Utne reader Bob Hicok essay on Facebook (if you are interested, you can read the threads here) and thought I might develop further here. This is not just to pile on to Bob’s racist/sexist/privilege issues but to discuss other issues his essay brings up. I think he’s missing a few larger issues in publishing, book sales, and mindset.

• Bob has won two (!!) NEA fellowships and a Guggenheim, as well as a pretty cushy teaching gig, and has published ten books. I just, sorry, don’t feel like weeping for him because I (and most of my friends) have never had any of those things. Never been in Poetry or the New Yorker either. So, you know, he needs to check his privilege before he gets whine-y. Lots of poets have never been the flavor of the month, but Bob has had a lot of time in the sun. So it was an insensitive essay in more than one way.
• My friend Kelli is always talking about “scarcity mentality” in poetry – the feeling that because someone else gets something, you get less. She points out that it is not true, even if it feels true, and not only that, it’s destructive. I wrote a little last week about poets cheering on other poets and how important that is. It definitely makes being the poetry world more rewarding. Helping others – by mentoring or reviewing or publishing – will increase your happiness, I guarantee. Everyone feels hurt when their book doesn’t sell or get reviewed or their book or grant gets rejected – but that hurt can be mitigated.
• What Bob is lamenting – that his books sell less, that he gets fewer reviews – has nothing to do with poets of color, LGBTQ writers, or women getting more air time. It has to do with the landscape of publishing. The print book market is very fragmented, and I’d bet that most poets are selling fewer books and getting fewer reviews because there are so many books out there now. Gen Z have their own book buying tastes and habits – very different than his generation. Instagram poets, for instance. It’s not bad, just different, than it used to be. I’m sure, say, Billy Collins is still doing fine. Book publishing in general is changing. Book reviewing is in flux, too.
• Also, it seems strange to talk about how all these troublesome non-white-male poets are taking up space when most of the prestige poetry presses and journals ARE STILL RUN BY WHITE MEN. I was trying to name the poetry presses run by women and people of color – can you help me? Are they the ones most poets want to be published by with, or get good distribution? (People have mentioned: University of Akron Press, Mayapple Press, Alice James Books, Sundress, Two Sylvias Press. as presses led by women..I’d love to hear more (especially presses run by people of color?)
• Most tenure track teaching jobs are still given to men. In academia in general, women have much less chance of being offered tenure, and I’m sure poets of color and poets with disabilities could talk more about their experience with this. You’ve already lucked out if you’re an older poet with a tenured teaching job.
• I don’t know about other reviewers, but there’s a reason I like to shine a spotlight when I do reviews of poets of color, women, LGBTQ poets, and poets with disabilities. In general, these poets are more vulnerable to prejudice, so I think it’s more important that their voices are heard above the crowd.
• What am I missing? Anything else to add to the discussion?

More About Poetry Reviews, Poetry Sales, and Empowerment

So, I have been told by more than one person at a major poetry publisher that poetry reviews, Twitter followers, and such don’t always translate into poetry sales. So Bob feeling neglected may have nothing to do with his lack of book sales. I personally choose to review books that resonate with me – and because I have always felt like a little bit of an outsider, that often means books by women, poets with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and poets of color resonate more with me.

If you review books of poetry – and most poets don’t, but I consider it one of the things I can do for the poetry community – you probably want to amplify work you think is great and people that you think are great. Sometimes those things blend into each other. For instance, I probably won’t review a poet that has a reputation for being a jerk, because there’s enough of that in the poetry world, isn’t there? And there are so many kind, generous, not-terrible-human poets out there who just aren’t getting any attention. At all. They’re not winning grants of fellowships. Maybe they’re a little older, or live outside New York City, or write outside the mainstream in some way. But they’re writing interesting, accomplished work. I want to shine a light on them.

Of course, to avoid hypocrisy, I want to say I do care about winning grants, or getting into certain journals or getting books published – of course I do! Most poets don’t write so that their work can sit in obscurity. But PR for Poets was written to help poets channel their frustrations about their books not getting enough attention, or selling enough copies, into something positive – some kind of action. I wanted poets to feel empowered in a process – and a world – that can often seem disorientating and powerless to the participants. It’s best to focus on things you can control – whether we’re talking about MS symptoms or the poetry world – than things you can’t.

What do you do to feel empowered rather than peeved by the poetry world? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!