“Without obvious fanfare, over the past 10 to 20 years a seismic change in publishing has occurred: Poetry has become our fastest-growing literary cottage industry, relying less on legions of editors in New York and elsewhere to shape literary tastes than on the energy and inventiveness of the poets themselves.”
The story of how poetry is alive and well thanks to poets who have “stopped whining about the death of art as we know it and embraced the new reality.”
2 responses
Not to rain on the poetry parade, but is poetry really “our fastest-growing literary cottage industry” if (as noted a few paragraphs later) “few people seem to be reading or buying poetry”?
“The fact that most of this happens under the radar of public consciousness is really neither here nor there. It’s also beside the point that one reason poetry can thrive in this way is that it costs much more to publish even a slim collection of short fiction than it does a collection of poems. The relevant fact is that in a reduced economic climate, poetry seems to be alive and well, at least on the Front Range. People are writing it, reading it and supporting their colleagues’ endeavors to do the same. Would that the rest of the literary world could follow their example.”
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