The Poetry Renaissance
Source: www.litline.org
Topic: Poetry
Sort Desciption: Except I see poetry thriving, thanks to the availability of e-books, ... The Internet seems to be picking up where traditional poetry publishers left ...
Content Inside: For several years now, I’ve been listening to people around me bemoan the sorry state of publishing. I couldn’t agree more. The dearth of serious fic- tion is frustrating, while a dozen or two hastily written popular fiction titles cross my desk each week, not to mention the self-help and blockbuster nonfic- tion garbage. Independent bookstores are a dying breed, as are many of the distributors who worked hard to promote books by the smaller presses. Chain stores return unsold books with coffee stains, and many independent literary presses have either folded or are working with diminished resources. Except… Except I see poetry thriving, thanks to the availability of e-books, distrib- uted over the Internet. The Internet seems to be picking up where traditional poetry publishers left off, and going further. Much further. I see this as an exciting and productive pe- riod. Literally millions of people around the world have access to poetry books on the Internet—new works as well as long out-of-print titles (most of the Internet sites reviewed here also contain e-book archives of books that originally had limited print runs). Space is relatively cheap (Robert Duncan’s 421-page The HD Book, in Acrobat format, for example, takes up less than two megs, while many Internet providers offer their users ten megs of free space, and various providers offer 1,000 megs of storage for under $40 a month). Design is limited only by the author and publisher’s combined imaginations. Colors and detailed artworks that would be far too costly to reproduce on the page are readily available, thus ex- tending the visual possibilities, for creation as well as presentation. The sorry state of publishing? Stop and look a little more closely at poetry publishing during the past half-century. In the 1960s, when the first onset of small-press frenzy began, many poetry books were mimeographed, often in editions of 100 to 300 copies. At St. Mark’s Church in New York C ...
