In his ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound notes that literature is news that STAYS news. Instead of only publishing the same transient news each week, let something eternal slip into your pages, and print a poem.
All the evidence suggests that, despite the rapidly growing number of new poetry journals and book publications each year, the general American reader is more distanced from poetry than ever in the history of letters.
The marginalization of poetry from diverse bohemian neighborhoods to bureaucratic offices in English departments across the country has turned poetry from an art into a profession. The solution: Make poetry more available to readers outside closed academic circles.
David Alpaugh in January/February 2003 edition of Poets and Writers Magazine notes that practically every highly acclaimed poet in America is teaching in a college or university writing program
and that this overconcentration on writing can Johnny-one-note an aspiring poet's education. If this continues, dedicated readers of poetry will only have metapoems and ars poeticas awaiting them.
Further, Dana Gioia, the current Poet laureate of the United States, writes No longer part of the mainstream of artistic and intellectual life [American poetry] has become the specialized occupation of a relatively small and isolated group.
One of Gioia's main complaints is that newspapers don't publish poems anymore, and that most poetry is published in journals that address an insular audience of literary professionals. The solution: Print poems in newspapers!
I'm not na+
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