Reply to Aimee Liu & Shannon Mann’s Interview On Advice To Poets Trying To Squeeze Through the Funnel Necks of the Publishing Industry

I’m sure Aimee and Shannon are providing excellent suggestions in their https://aimeeliu.substack.com/p/well-published-litmags. My question is, should that even be our mission?

All good, all well and yes, the subject is about getting published, or winning awards, or getting bookings, blah, blah, blah. Still, it is misses a huge, unspoke hole in our project. That wouldn’t be so bad but, in doing so, it discourages even thinking about a much larger issue which the very nature of this discussion fails to recognize. What is being said unintentionally is that we, as poets, and the community of poets, have resigned ourselves to being a subdivision of the entertainment industry, and little more. We read to those special audiences, and submit (a good word for what we do) to our specialized niche publications, mostly selling our work to each other and a small market of devotees. That’s it. None of which positions us anywhere in the real world, addressing its real problems with the skill sets we possess by virtue of the trade we chose (or been kidnapped to do by some passing Muse.)

Yes, we all write poems and stories meant to shake something up, tell truth to power, break through the walls of ignorance, stupidity and selfishness. We all do that, and what do we do with it? Hunt for an open mic, or a publisher/editor who will squeak us through after tying up our work for months with a “we don’t accept…” Ginsberg described the poets of Africa, the griots, who serve their villages as town criers, writers and keepers of public records, recorders of history, advisors to ministers and tribal leaders, masters of ceremonies at celebrative events and, yes, manage to write a poem or two along the way. They didn’t wall themselves in with poetry lovers or publishers, because there weren’t any of those around. What they did was use their ample skills to observe what otherwise goes unnoticed, and to say what otherwise cannot be said. That’s my job description, too. And it doesn’t mean observing what this magazine, or this group of poetry lovers might want from me. It means engaging in the real affairs and concerns of the people, things and events I write about. That’s the audience that really has use for our poetry, and much more if we follow the example of those long ago griots.

There’s much more to it, but let’s just stick to publishing for a moment. Let me ask how many of you who have written some species of a sea poem bothered to send it to a sailing pub? Or a weaving poem to a needlepoint or quilters magazine? A piece about building something that you sent to a construction trade magazine? I didn’t think so. Of course, if you’ve written a piece on the subject of writing poems, then some of those poetry journals Aimee and Shannon mentioned might be a natural place to send it.

But the real audiences for the things we often write about are not where we are looking, where our work will only be another “Good, oh wow! Great poem,” at best. It’s the things that the audiences we don’t reach actually know about, live with, confront daily, and often suffer. That’s where the market is, if by ‘market’ you mean those who might really listen to what we have to say and profit from hearing us relate to what they do, who they are, played through the lenses of our imagination. And that’s only a sliver of what is really out there.

You want markets, one’s that pay handsomely for what you can do? Consider poets on staff at all of our major social and scientific projects. Imagine how our skill set might be invaluable to them in so many ways. There’s no end to it. Imagine what Tracy K. Smith might have written if she’d been a poet on staff at Hubble, instead of just getting second-hand information from her father. Did you see a single poet actually working for the DNC or in any of the campaigns in the 2024 election? A very young Amanda Gorman left us speechless at Biden’s inauguration, and the Destructionists with absolutely no reply. They say bad messaging took us down, but they should have learned, then and there, who the language experts in America are. And we don’t need no damn focus groups to do it. It’s in our job description (and maybe our DNA.)

When I first heard Ginsberg describe the griots, it struck me like lightening. He was opening a portal we’d never walked through, not in the whole history of our project (well, maybe a few times.) In the 20 years since I read that interview, I’ve yet to see one poet, large or small, actually walk through the doorway he held open for us. We still cling to our mics and rejection slips, our dreams of Paris Review or “I’d settle for ZYZZYVA.” It’s the entertainment industry we’re working for, stupid!. Nothing more than units of fuel for their engines. Jackson Pollock had etched on his gravestone, “Artists and poets are the raw nerve ends of humanity. By themselves they can do little to save humanity. Without them there would be little worth saving.” My question for Mr. Pollock and a lot of others who have voiced the same sentiment, “How the hell do you know we can’t save the world? We’ve never tried.”

Nothing wrong with publishing and performing, and I’m not faulting Aimee’s interview. I’m sure it offers a lot of very useful how-to information , though it’s useless to me. I haven’t submitted anything for almost 20 years, and have no plans to do so. But, I have been hammering on this subject for a long time, and I think maybe it’s time we all started thinking about it. There’s a world of hurt out there. We should be in the front lines, but I don’t see us there, but for a few notable exceptions. Of the thousands of protest signs out on the streets of America, I haven’t seen one that ever prompted me to say, “Now that’s a poet who nailed it.” Have any of you? End of Rant, sorry to intrude this way.

Yes, I do have a little essay with some more thoughts on this subject. It can be had at https://aimeeliu.substack.com/p/well-published-litmags