"When something is given away often and freely, does it lose value? Does it become common acceptance of being nothing more than a communal trade?" I asked this it myself about ten years ago. I was referencing writing for blogs, which are, for the majority non-monetized. Was it smart to give away knowledge on a given topic for free, simply for views? Subscribers, yes, they allow for monetization, but what about the audience? What profit is gained if even seventeen thousand people view a page...or even if seventeen do the same? Granted one can choose to monetize a blog, and most bloggers can gain a substantial amount of monies, yet when things are freely given away just for mere critique, then are they viable assets for capital? I'm of course talking about one of the least paid writing projects: poetry.
George Carlton's quip, paraphrased, of course goes "A jazz player is someone who will play music all night for money, then go someplace else and play for free." This is truthful of most artists, people don't see the craft as valuable as the red cent that is paid for the performance, but is it justifiable for poetry, something all people seem to do, and clearly do it post-haste without the usual reportorie of rules and regulations which made it an essential classical art pre Beat Era? Poetry has succumbed to so many ruthless changes that invariably wreck the original iamb. Poetry is done by nearly anyone that wants to perform it, and it's also a "classy" night out, and seen as intellectual, but really it's just a cheaper thought-provoking night out on the town than say, going to a theater or museum. It's valuable, but clearly has lost some of it's value over the years.
Unless you're a David Sedaris who has made a new niche out of it, or made into a Poet Laureate, like the infamous Mary Oliver, who is perhaps the most successful poet in the United States, exclusion to the likes of Robert Frost. Clearly poetry is an artform for the very select few still, and although a laymen even like myself, will confess that poetry takes months to master, whereas prose is able to be manipulated to fit the times...and even in the unlikelihood of success, will make you more money in a lifetime than poetry.
Also, poetry has another negation to it, in-that it's not really harken to the times. Granted, Hip-Hop and Rap are examples of how rhyming is more apt to make money, classical poetry is often misconstrued as urbanized rap these days, as opposed to classic iambic forms. In-truth,,poetry can absolutely evolve or change form into rap, but whereas the recent famous poets like Maya Angelou, and Sedaris repeated are well-known, poetry as a whole has vanished from the public eye. To quote George Caflin again, this time verbatim: " More people write poetry, than read it."
So who am I to say that anyone should even try to make a go at it with poetry? There are hundreds, of not thousands of publishers in magazines and trade journals that are always asking for poetry, until they get flooded over with too many submissions. The truth is, the market over-inflated itself more-often than it has drought. I've been an avid supporter of the art of poetry, and this isn't my first time actually institutionalizing my blog to uphold the art of poetry, and it's classic history. I'm a fanfare of the versified construct that holds the beauty and ambiguity of the poet and poetry amassed. I can not sit and sigh over the foreboding fate that this craft will have in the foreseeable future. The caveat is amply clear that if current trends continue, poetry itself will be but a barren stronghold bombarded with two-cent rabble rousers with no iambic soul, and callous free-verse without a scheme but hyped melodramatic doggerel prose. That, and trite verse will be sung about with the lecherous howling of violent curs, and screeching felines, pilfering the English language with superfluous patois floundering off into obscure, msapporiated, insufferable dialect.
How does one save poetry from itself, or really, its lack thereof? How can one even make equivalent to a haypenny in profits from writing poetry? There is a lot poetry can teach an upstart, or even the most tested of writers, but in a mult-faceted manner, it is impeccable to rate the experience as more as a self-deprecating process to facilitate one's artistic caliber.
Allow me to be furlong from the objective of this post for a moment, and be straight with you dear readers: one can imagine the difficulty of how difficult it would be to try and sell those out there who look to be serious poets on how they can become serious business acquisitions to a goldmine of a lofetimemof writing poetry. Quit while you're still ahead in the game would be the public outcry from most people who would ever hear your quibbles of dreams of being the next professional poet. The market has proven even brighter stars in the game wrong, otherwise it would be a highly competitive field.
Grant me, I wouldn't want to be tasked to write one, two, or a thousand articles by volumes on the subject of poetry as profit, but alas, I'll state here that I too feel your pain, those who would love to harken back to the golden days of Blake, Yeats, and of course, the modern chique of Dickinson's wroughty stylings of forlorn, with the incomparable Edgar Allen Poe, presumably the most important poet/writer of American history in comparison only to Mark Twain. However, I'd dare say that this isn't to say that the next great poet isn't out there...but let's talk more about profits first, not atonement to the greats of yesterday.
Firstly, profits for almost all poets in history have been nil, they have been a microcosm of their wealth, if any were to be obtained. Poems have always been more sideshows to the stage acts of the authorship of most writers, including as far back as the Dantean era of long-form epic poems,,which was merely replaced by prose only to circumvent the growing printed word. Poetry was the writing of the land, it was ambiguous in nature from the Epic of Gilgamesh, to Milton's Paradise Lost. Poetry was masquerade as the esential writing style, it had prowess and contempt to the work, and omitted needless abhoramnces, rather than tricky effulant language that spurred on and on only to fill heedless word punts and redundant unbearables. It is evident today why the language has become aesthetically duller, and dumbed down to simplified majestics, the lack of poetry in even its most elated form has christened the written word to a dim-witted myriad of absolute atrocities. Even text has been replaced with since titanic verbiage to a thinly veiled diary entry of how much one has learned, and telephone tag teachers it back to an even larger dumbed-down audience.
So to tell you that you can make money off of poetry, I have but a Grand Canyon to cross, and a spider line of tread in which to cross it, but the risk taker I am, I accept the challenge of explaining the best manner in-which to sell one's poetry, and the most apt attempts to turn those stanzas into strewns of cash flow....or coin-flow if you will invite the pun.
Poetry books are always sought for through smaller presses, because they're easy to distribute, and surprisingly have a fair return. Many university presses will want to publish books of poetry, especially for local markets, like regional poets, and usually the books are done by well-established writers, or master of another craft, such as art, or small business owners to niche markets. Still, poetry books have some pull in the market, especially with the right positioning on the shelf of local book stores, but it's more about marketing, and although this is apropos to failure, most have to share their poems with others in anthologies, but you get lost in those who outshine, and outsell you in that circumstance.
Poetry is a difficult little thing to get others to fancy these days, but fear cripples the soul of any poet who has the guff to withstand the criticism, and will endure the process to better their craft, they will still be lucky to break even. Ironically, the best market where poetry is still of some viability is through the greeting card market. American Greetings cards, and all the smaller affiliates to other card companies, even the likes of Shoebox look for idioms for snarky rhymes.
Greeting cards are a good way to assert your abilities, as are poetry contests and awards, some of which give you money, offer publications, and others that give free workshops on the craft. Still, you can look up the Writer's and Poet's Markets online or buy the 2017 Poet's Markets for more listings, but most information can be scoured online these days, but I feel a hardcopy of the Writer's market is valuable on hand so that in a quick access from anywhere you can have information on a market, and their address.
Personally I feel the markets have become amateurish, with little proper editing, and most of the book is lost on fallacies of nonsensical listings that are more hapless than helpful. Still, for a poet, it's best to broaden your writing horizons regardless. Poe wrote everything from newspaper articles to short stories, creating the modern mystery novel, and some even now link him to science fiction and steampunk.
Conclusion to this hyperbolic topic on extremes of both good and bad narratives, writing is a clinical instrument, and poetry was a precision scalpel. A. Instrument of clean, precise cutting-edge accuracy and exactitude, replaced by the bulky lazer cutting stylings of heavy-handed prose, which is accurate, with a bit of burning,,but bulky, shiny, and fancy, but if pales in the timelessness of quick-cut accuracy thwt comes with the poetry style. My best suggestion: make your prose poetic, prophetic, and amazing, and it won't matter if they're lines, sentences, stanzas, or paragraphs, and the cantos will sing for themselves.
Thank you for reading the Malacast Editorial
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