Category: Poetic Realities (Page 8 of 9)

10 Lessons for Poets as Found in Modern Things

June 17, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Last week I returned to working at ICANN as a web consultant. Anytime after starting a new job (this happened at IAIA) or returning to an older job, I end up feeling like this picture here by the end of the week.

So I didn't blog last week. But I have lots of goodies in the que. My friend Mary Anne has sent some new Reading Poetry to Animals and Things That Don't Care photos and I've been reading some interesting books. More on that next week. For now I thought I would post a new Top 10 list for your enjoyment:

10 Lessons for Poets as Found in Modern Times

Don’t
hate forms just because they seem airbrushed like supermodels. Airbrushing
is an art too.
To own
your voice, you have to make peace with yourself.
Pop
songs that get under your skin infiltrate us with meter and provide us with
examples of pleasant off-rhymes, same as good forms.
Advertisements,
aphorisms (and Scrabble) can teach us about wordplay ruthlessness.
Learn
to make an argument.
Learn
to lose an argument.
Don’t
let the thesaurus push you around.
Poets have
gained a reputation at parties for being socially annoying, obtuse and
self-absorbed. (See Top 10 Reasons Why Poets are Bad Party Guests.) Practice generosity over cocktails. If generosity tastes
like a rice cake to you, try self-deprecation. It’s not just what you say;
it’s how you say it.
The best
stand-up comedy is poetry. Listen to Chris Rock’s album Roll with the New.
Admit
you love milk chocolate and Toy
Story 3. Find your muse in both opera and haunted houses, in the high
arts and in diner restaurant menus, in both documentaries and sassy cartoons. Highbrow
cares too much how it is perceived. (See #2)

Poets, Stop Blaming the Water

May 31, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I came across a link on a poetry group announcing the news that Salt Publishing was discontinuing its single-poet publications. Chris Hamilton-Emery says, "We have tried to commit to single-author collections by funding them
ourselves, but as they have become increasingly unprofitable, we can't
sustain it." I agree, this is sad news when a publisher gives up selling these types of books.

Many business owners all over the world agonize over compromises they are asked to make between what they want to sell, what customers want to buy and how to bridge the gap with marketing. I responded to the poster, saying

"Poets need to market, I hate to even say the
words, outside of the box. I've been working on speaking in front of academics
in science and other fields to show the value of poetry as a part of their
overall scheme of research. We are living in such a practical-based world where
(a) people seek practical enlightenment in their free time and (b) they are
buying all their books online. Poets need to make their books appeal to this
practicality and make sure poetry books can be found via online searches. It's
a challenge but I won't give up hope…

I've blogged about:

– Using Poetry for Research
Projects
– Supporting poetry-based projects on
Kickstarter
– Tagging to Serve Poetry: I also feel we can help each other out but
tagging our favorite poetry books on Amazon and other online storefronts so
someone searching for a topic like PTSD or motherhood or whatever will find books of poetry on that
subject and possibly get hooked.

Again, traditional methods won't solve the situation."

The poster responded thusly:

"i think the situation is very complex and not
merely a matter of sales and marketing but lies at in the changing fabric of
cultural importance and the role of art in a totally commoditised environment. The questions that need to be asked are not just
of poets or even publishers, but of educators and society as a whole."

I get a shudder down my spine reading this. This argument is basically that it's the customer's problem, not ours. You recognize it instantly if you're ever watched an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon Ramsay goes into a failing restaurant to try to help the owners turn things around. Invariably the owner states to Ramsay that the restaurant's problem is not their food quality, is not their decor, is not their levels of service or their menu selections.

Their ego can never take the next step of logic: you have no customers because…(your food sucks, your decor is outdated, your service is slow and your menus are uninspiring). Customers are not stupid. It just makes you feel better to believe they are.

"The questions that need to be asked are not just
of poets or even publishers, but of educators and society as a whole" is another way of blaming the customer. And contempt for the customer never works in turning a business around. Like…never.

And selling books, reality check, is a business.

We must question a phrase like "the role of art in a totally commoditised environment" because both art and books are commodities…unless you give your books away for free or strap them up on a public monument. In fact, some would argue that books and poetry are part of the whole art/information/entertainment glut of trash we produce in this world. So if we could stop pretending and pretentiously sanctifying what we do for a moment, we might relate more effectively with our customers. Or at least be in a position to listen to them.

The paradigm of publishing is transforming just like the sales of music transformed a decade ago. And it's transforming similarly because publishers haven't been listening to their customers or serving their authors (my husband is at this moment reading a University of Oklahoma Press book full of confusing typos and grammatical errors).

The poetry biz is a long shot of long shots, especially considering even new novelists are struggling to find an audience. Actors, producers and directors are struggling to get an audience. Poets for years have been only marketing to other poets who cry poor and don't buy books of poetry. Meanwhile, in the outside world poetry has lost its moral authority and barely retains any intellectual authority. How does any business turn around a slump or a bad reputation: marketing.

It's all about marketing for everybody. And if you keep on denying reality and stubbornly adhere to the techniques that have been failing for the last 20-30 years, the same lame excuses about how society doesn't value poetry, you will sink.

I've been watching old episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show this week on DVD. Even in the first season's episodes from the early 1970s, the characters were complaining about the same things we complain about today: nobody watches the news, insurance companies are a racket, it's hard to find time for our heart's pursuits. Not much has changed in all these years. New technology just provides new ways for us to be who we already were. And even technologies are failing to better technologies. Cable TV has ignored and gouged their customers so long, Hulu is threatening them. Amazon has finally crushed the big book superstores who once crushed your small, independent, local bookstores. Nothing has changed fundamentally, including all the hand-wringing from the complainers and excuse-givers.

"They have bad taste and it's not my fault."

That's okay to believe if you want an empty restaurant.

Listen poetry peoples, you took this boat out on the bay and you've been sinking for years. Stop blaming the water.

The Overwhelming World of Poetry Websites

March 31, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Gone is the world of ink and quill poetry. Well, actually there probably is a website out there dedicated to writing poems with ink and a quill pen; I just haven’t found it yet. But for the most part, poetry has entered the Internet age, like it or not.

And maybe this isn’t the end of the world. Ink writing, as can be seen in the graphic to the left, was a bit messy in its own way. When you start to dip into the world of poetry and literature websites, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and throw yourself into lamentations that there are too many poets, too many bloggers, too many people spouting their opinions.

You may say there are not enough readers (for your poetry, let’s be honest). But I’ve just spent hours and hours over the last few months visiting literally hundreds of writing, literature, academic and poetry blogs and websites and all of these folks are happily reading and reading ravenously. I don’t believe for one minute that it’s a shame so many people are blogging about literature and poetry. I think it means only that the Internet has felled the gates of the gatekeepers and the masses have risen to talk about their love of books.

Today we have to be our own gatekeepers. Which for those complainers, this might be a drag for you. It means more labor in the service of literature. (You don’t sit on your fat ass reading books for nothin!)

I have discovered, however, that most literature websites have very messy blog rolls (lists of their favorite websites). Believe me, I’ve dealt with these blog rolls quite intimately. You have no idea perusing them which blogs are good for news, which blogs are good for commentary, which are good for book reviews.

And this is what makes my blog roll superior, in my humble opinion. I’ve used the social bookmarking site StumbleUpon to house my blog roll and recently I’ve created handy lists to categorize all the many fine websites. My categories are based not on what a website or blog may have been created to provide, but what I personally find useful about the blog. For instance a blog may be a book-review blog but I find it more useful in keeping up with industry news and so I’ve categorized it as such.

Please feel encouraged to visit my blogroll and peruse or “follow” my lists or leave comments about the way they’re organized or what would be more helpful.

All 107+ of my favorite sites can be found randomly on my StumbleUpon Likes page.

You can view all 10+ lists on my StumbleUpon List page.

Here are the individual lists

Poems to Read – Sites that primarily exist to provide you with good poems to read.
Lit Chat – Braniacs working over all kinds of literature topics.
Ruminations on Poetry — like Lit Chat but all poetry braniacs.
Lit News – My most favorite type of literature site: gossip!
Life as a Poet – Blogs that talk about the day-to-day life of being a poet. Invaluable honesty.
Off-the-Beaten-Path Book Reviews – Quirky reading journeys.
Books as Objects – Sites that “cover” book design.
Specialty Poetry – Sites that deal with specific kinds of poetry, war poetry, avant garde poetry, Sci Fi, Mathematical, sacred poetry, translations.
Interaction – Sites that provide ways for you to interact with other poets, teachers or get involved in the world of poetry.
Good Literary Distraction – Sometimes you just get tired of heady literary bickering and you want a website with pictures of books that have fallen into the bathtub or posts from a bookstore owner or reviews of the covers of dime-store novels or posts that will talk you down from ever desiring an academic career.

The Paradigm is Changing for Publishing

March 10, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I posted three recent spring transcripts for NPR shows discussing the current paradigm change in publishing. This has been a very controversial subject on the LinkedIn book and poetry forums recently, especially revolving around these three sticky wickets:

eBooks
Self publishing
Social media marketing

eBooks & Self Publishing

Simon
& Schuster just made an unprecedented contract to a self-published
author letting him keep his self-published eBook rights. Read the story from The Wall Street Journal: "Authors are snubbing publishers and insisting on
keeping e-book rights. How one novelist made more than $1 million before
his book hit stores."

Here's an excerpt from the story:

It's a sign of how far the balance of power has shifted toward
authors in the new digital publishing landscape. Self-published titles
made up 25% of the top-selling books on Amazon last year. Four
independent authors have sold more than a million Kindle copies of their
books, and 23 have sold more than 250,000, according to Amazon.

Publishing houses that once ignored independent authors are now
furiously courting them. In the past year, more than 60 independent
authors have landed contracts with traditional publishers. Several won
seven-figure advances. A handful have negotiated deals that allow them
to continue selling e-books on their own, including romance writers
Bella Andre and Colleen Hoover, who have each sold more than a million
copies of their books.

Print-only deals remain extremely rare. Few publishers want to part
with the fastest-growing segment of the industry. E-book sales for adult
fiction and nonfiction grew by 36% in the first three quarters of 2012,
compared with the previous year. Mass-market paperback sales shrank by
17% in the same period, while hardcover sales declined by 2.4%,
according to a recent report from the Association of American
Publishers.

It's worthwhile to read the NPR stories to get the real scoop on self publishing as it's happening right now.

And last week I found another interesting article from Blogcritics on how Barnes & Noble may be crashing for reasons related to the success of self publishing, "How Amazon Killed Barnes & Noble, and Why We Don't Care":

An excerpt from this story:

Barnes & Noble had a better product, a better reputation, and a
farther reach than anyone else in the book selling business. The problem
was that [CEO Stephen] Riggio misjudged – very badly – how to handle the burgeoning
business of self-publishing.

With the advent of epublishing, writers who could never hope to see
their books in print could get their work to readers without the
time-consuming, and usually fruitless, task of trying to snare an agent,
followed by the even more frustrating job of trying to hook a
publisher. With epublishing, writers could simply upload a file, set a
price, and voila! Instant publication. What's more they could do it
anywhere, any time. No deadlines, no delays. An equal draw was that
writers who epublished could completely control their work…To add icing to the
cake, writers who epublished got to keep 70-80% of their royalties.
Compared to the measly 10% (and that was on a good day) meted out by
print publishing houses, it was a no-brainer.

This surge in self-publishing, owing in large part to e-books,
represents not just people “living the dream,” but an enormous business
opportunity for anyone with the ability to turn other people's dreams
into their hard cash. Barnes & Noble, with its gentlemanly rules of
conduct and brick-and-mortar mentality, simply had no concept of how to
corner the market. Amazon did.

For writers, and for Amazon, it is a win-win situation…And for those writers who simply must hold their
precious darlings in their hands, Amazon also provides print-on-demand.
Amazon’s CreateSpace took first place in the self-publishing world last
year with 57,602 new titles. Amazon is happy. Writers are happy.
Customers are happy. Everybody is happy.

Except Barnes & Noble. Which is dead.

What's interesting to me about these two stories is how critics will ask you to believe that publishers are making money off people
wanting to self publish. And some self publishing sites do charge authors money to hand-hold them through the publishing process.

However, in the case of Amazon's success, it costs their self-published
authors zero dollars to publish a CreateSpace paperback book and zero dollars to publish their Kindle book. Nada to distribute that book via Amazon and only $25 for extra distribution through Broker. All
that money Amazon made recently at the expense of Barnes & Noble is from
book sales.

And that's a paradigm shift. But one that makes everything more interesting and challenging for both traditional
publishers and self publishers. Because these new successes and changes
don't guarantee a hit for anyone.

Social Media Marketing

Whether you self or traditionally
publish, you need to learn how to market yourself. Most published
authors I speak to are telling me they get little marketing help from
their publishers. Doing your own publicity is a skill you must learn in
today's publishing world in either case.

It's hard for me to dismiss social marketing as some writers seem to want to do. Having worked
in the corporate world and in marketing departments, I've seen how
social marketing is a huge part of every business and artist's strategic
plan. And that's just growing every day. If statistics didn't play out
positive returns, I'm telling you they wouldn't do it.

A lot of people tune out traditional marketing AND new marketing; a lot
of people don't. The brilliance of social marketing is that it works
almost entirely by word of mouth, a architecture that should suit the
way readers buy books. But that doesn't mean it will work for everybody.

They say that writing your next (good) book is the best marketing one can do.

Great Book on Social Media Marketing

February 26, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Zero to 100,000, Social Media Tips and Tricks for Small Businesses by Sarah-Jayne Gratton & Dean Anthony Gratton is one of the best books I've read on social media marketing.

There's a book out there I haven't bought or read yet called Every Book is a Startup. Once you acclimate to that premise, that every book is a business (which is a big step for all poet-kind), you can see understand how learning about how to market your small business (and what could be smaller than the poetry book business?) might prove useful to your endeavors. If only Walt Whitman had the Internet to work with!

This book recommends itself in four ways:

Explains what the main social media tools are and why they were created in the first place. It's a concise history of social media for newbies and advanced users.
Explains why these tools matter to a small business.
Shows you how to evaluate your social campaigns after you implement them.
Gives real life examples of small business owners and
entrepreneurs who have used social media to raise awareness of their
products.

It's also a fast read.

Longfellow’s Guide to Writer’s Toil

January 20, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

I guess he doesn't get much respect these days, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although when most non-poets think of famous American poems, his greatest hits tend to crop up.

We never studied Longfellow in school but I'm a bit fond of the furry fellow. Years ago when visiting some family who had moved to the 'burbs of Boston, we would occasionally get a wintertime feast in the town of Sudbury at The Wayside Inn, a place I absolutely loved because it was colonial-old and quietly writerly. Longfellow stayed there on occassion and published Tales of a Wayside Inn in 1863.

Their website explains it well:

Longfellow's Wayside Inn is proud to be the oldest operating Inn in the
country, offering comfort and hospitality to travelers along the Boston
Post Road since 1716.

How quaint is the horse-bound journey of the poet finding this inn like a port in a storm? Pretty f*ing quaint, I thought. Add to that an old timey dining room with some old timey vittles. You had me at words New England Oysters.

Years later I visited Plymouth and Concord Massachusetts with friends over Thanksgiving weekend and we made a trip to see not only Cranberry World but Longfellow's house, now a National Park Service site, near Harvard Square in Boston. Unfortunately it was closed for the holiday weekend but we did pick up some buttons offered in a box at the front gate, buttons with Longfellow's image and the declaration: "I'm a poet too!"

To this day, that is my favorite button.

So I have mixed feelings about Longfellow. Poets beat him up for being an imitator of the English Romantics. But…I have that button and he had good taste in motels.

Also, while reading Hand of the Poet, I came across a poem that spoke to me as a toiler of verse. It was the poem "A Psalm of Life." You know, the one where he coined the term "footprints in the sands of time."

(By the way, what cliche have you coined lately?)

The poem goes as follows:

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream ! —

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal ;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

Is our destined end or way ;

But to act, that each to-morrow

Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,

In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle !

Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !

Let the dead Past bury its dead !

Act,— act in the living Present !

Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

Sailing o'er life's solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate ;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

I guess it bears repeating:

Let us, then, be up and doing,

With a heart for any fate ;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labor and to wait.

Think about that vis-à-vis your own life's efforts. I posted the following quote on my Facebook page last week after watching the documentary The War Room, a behind-the-scenes look at the campaign of Bill Clinton. After winning the election, James Carville, when congratulated for his successes in the campaign, gave this speech to his staff:

"There is a simple doctrine: outside of a
person's love, the most sacred thing that they can give is their labor.
And some how or another, along the way we tend to forget that. And labor
is a very precious thing that you have and anytime you can combine
labor with love, you've made a merger…people are gonna tell you you're
lucky. You're not. The harder you work, the luckier you get."

Growing up, I never believed it was honorable to be a writer. I thought it was a soft job, like being a philosopher or a politician. A thinker doesn't work. I believed that until the day I saw Mark Twain's typewriter in a museum in Hannibal, Missouri. In a single moment I realized writing is a physical act. Typing itself is labor. Writing is work.

Love the work and wait.

Take the virutal tour of Longfellow's house.

Ask a Poet

January 6, 2013 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Introducting the new column Ask a Poet!

Why live in the dark when you can ask a poet?

Do you think poets and their poems are mysterious, difficult or a bit cultish? Are there questions you have always wanted to ask a poet but have been too scared (or dreading the long-winded answer) to ask?

Well, lucky you are because in the vein of the ground-breaking syndicated column and book by Gustavo Arellano, “Ask a Mexican,” this is a place where you can stop tip-toeing around quirky poet relatives and friends and their notebooks of garden haikus and you can finally ask a poet.

Don’t be shy. There is no question too offensive, bewildered or cranky.

Archive of Questions Already Asked:

Poets and Money
Poets for Company in Desperate Situations
Poems Hurt My Head
Poetry Appreciation Affectations
Is Formal Verse Dead?
The Incontrovertible Evidence of Living Poets
The Poetry Vortex
Successful Poet Slackers
Hazing Poets
Badass Poets
The Face of Verse
Poets in Bed

Send all Ask a Poet Questions to mary@bigbangpoetry.com.

Top 10 Reasons Why Poets are Bad Party Guests

December 10, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

Are we skinny poets because we are shunned from dinner parties? There are ten reasons why poets make infamously bad party guests, described as follows:

Poets, with their proverbial "head in the clouds," tend to get pedantic over cocktails and are often accused of being disconnected from reality (behind their backs, of course) and at worst, boring. And although most poets write poetry to convince the world they’re not, in fact, boring, this is the academic version of the man insisting on the first date,“I never hit women.” It's eerie and often disconnected from reality.
Two words: Pretentious and Precious. Poets foolishly think they're more interesting than they actually are or think the things they love are more interesting and valuable than those things actually are to other people. It's only fair, really. Poets don't care about the obsessions of others or think everyone else is brilliant. Why should party people return the favor?
Related issue: in extreme cases poets can be insufferably arrogant, often accused of “lording their thoughts over others.” They take a posture of being better informed, better read and better able to understand the subtle nuances. They aggressively question everyone’s ideas in order to grandstand their own. This is a bad arguing posture and 9 out of 10 Playboy models would include this in their top list of turnoffs. This will not get you laid. Why would it? Who likes being shit upon? This arrognce suraces in anyone who responds to your comments with useless condescending prefaces such as “Listen my friend….” which is presumptous because you are not anybody's friend yet.
Also related: poets who use obscure references in conversation in order to feel superior. I’ve seen this trick at parties and corporate meetings. You try to use complicated sentence structure and arcane words to fool others into thinking you are really saying something. Some people write entire poems this way. You may be fooling some dim bulbs in the room but not the other literates (who are probably there on the down-low) who actually know how to diagram a sentence and have figured out pretty quick that your blather doesn't contain both a subject and a predicate. Boob.
Poets love to talk; listening gives them heartburn. If this describes you, stay at home and talk to yourself. It’s a big world out there. People are having conversations. It’s not all about you.
Goth drunks. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a Goth drunk but usually they only party well with other Goth drunks.
Poets are known for lacking in fashion sense. I admit I have none. We have no mental energy left over for that sort of thing and most partiers will give you a pass on this. After all, they already think you are clueless.
Poets are known for having a bad sense of humor. This one really hurts. Even poets who think they are pretty damn funny…in the cold light of day, they are pretty amateurish compared to the deft comedic acrobatics of our top comedic bards like Daniel Tosh or Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Hell, Mark Twain can still kick their ass with his well-crafted comedy. So I usually sound pathetic if I try to offer myself up as a funny bard. No one believes me.
Poets are uncorrectable, the stubborn type of person who will read items 1-8 above and say, “Who cares about your stupid bourgeoisie parties anyway!"
Poets are sensitive. After a few cold shoulders, they might make a suicidal gesture over the bannister, but not before a very wordy, rambling soliloquy.

Stereotypes? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. But as long as poets still behave this way at parties, they will continue to be unpopular and not even get invited to social gatherings in book form, which is the real sad situation.

However, we can get back on the social calendar if we take stock before every social encounter and focus on some new social tactics. As Andrea Lunsford says, Everything’s an Argument. To impress people that you are a funny, brilliant poet you need to sell your argument. And to do that you need:

Mad arguing skillz
Panache

Short of that, try modesty, curiosity, listening, a little itty-bit of affection for that innocent body your words are hitting.

Buy Poetry on Black Friday

November 21, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

This year for the holidays, buy something that will make your friends and family more profound.

Fill your carts with some bona fide good tidings.

Buy poetry.

Shop poetry on Amazon.

Ultimate Dog Tease: Ultimate Poet Tease

November 12, 2012 / Big Bang Poetry / 0 Comments

One of the popular YouTube videos going around over the last few years is called "Ultimate Dog Tease."

You have to see this video. It is adorable.

It reminds me of what my boss used to tell me when I worked for those people who ran the Internet. If you think important stuff is happening out on the Internet, just remember the most popular pages are the ones that have these stupid pet videos.

As so it is true.

So in honor of the fact that this Ultimate Dog Tease is still one of the most popular videos on YouTube, I have created a script for Ultimate Poet Tease. And here it is:

Voice Over: Hey, little poet!

Poet: Yeah?

Voice Over: Guess what! The creative mind behind Ultimate Dog Tease took all his inspiration and craft and all his verbal dexterity…

Poet: Yeah?

Voice Over: …and used it to take a video of his dog vocalizing and overdub it with hilarious comments that sound like they're coming out of the dogs mouth!

Poet: Really?

Voice Over: Yeah. Why do you think people like that so much?

Poet: I dunno.

Voice Over: Do you think these videos are so popular because we love our pets more than we love our deep thoughts?

Poet: Probably.

Voice Over: And you know what?

Poet: What?

Voice Over: As of today, Ultimate Dog Tease has received over 121,949,862 hits.

Poet: Aaaawwwww!

I still love the video. But don't get me started about Talking Cat Turf War or Talking Beaver on the Highway.