Some Knowledge

First, go to poetry.com and enter a poem in the free contest.  Then, wait for the letter in the mail.  The letter will inform you that your poem is great and that you have been selected for inclusion in an anthology.  You will only have to pay $50 for your copy of the book, $75 if you want to include a short biography of yourself.

Then, wait for the invitation to the “Poet of the Year” awards.  You will have to pay $595 for a ticket to this event.  You will also have to pay travel and lodging out of pocket.  Of course, there will be a prize for poet of the year.  Pay the company and go to the event, where you will be crowded in with all the other suckers, err, poets, and eventually somebody will be picked to win the award.

This contest and the resulting shakedown are the product of a subsidy publishing company.  They are in the business of making money off of authors, not book buyers.  If you really want to lose money and self respect, check out these people.  They have been doing this for over ten years, and somehow what they do is not technically illegal.  Perhaps you might want to run your own poetry contest.  If it works for these guys, it might work for you.

New York City has declared Thursday, April 17 to be Poem in Your Pocket Day.  The city is encouraging residents to carry a peom in their pockets to share with friends, family, and coworkers.  Since April is national poetry month, this is another attempt to popularize poetry.

While it is all well and good to support literature and try to make poetry more popular, I really doubt that a lot of people will actually participate in this celebration of verse.  If you walk up to your friends and start reading them a poem, or recite a poem from memory they are likely to think you’ve gone a little insane.  Poetry is not a usual form of communication.  I suppose if you justify your oddity by stating that it’s Poem in Your Pocket Day and have the imprimateur of the city council to back up your strangeness, it might not seem so weird to people to be reading them a poem.

It’s nice that people are trying to popularize poetry.  Still, all poems are not the same.  You might have problems reciting epic poetry.  It’s kind of long.  You might get in trouble reciting some of the modern poet’s works, as they tend to contain occasional obscenities.  You might piss some people off if you start reading them slam poetry.  Still, the idea is nice.

Maybe this will start a new cultural phenomenon.  Maybe people will start carrying their favorite poems around with them to read to bored strangers at the bus stop.  Maybe people drinking in bars will recite classic poetry to each other over beers instead of just staring at the television and cheering on the game.  It would be a different world.  It would be a strange world.  It would be a more interesting world.

I’m all for poetry and think that everyone should write their own.  Maybe in the future people will begin to speak in verse when they talk to each other.  Language could sure stand an injection of musicality.  I think having poetry days and poetry months is all very nice.  It would be nicer if people actually went to the trouble to read poetry and bought books of poetry.  It would be cool if people went to coffee shops to hear poets read their works.  It would be nice if we could all go to performances and readings of some of the great poets of all time.  Still, a little bit of poetry in life is maybe something interesting to start with.