Advice to poets

Try publishing your poems in book form, rather than on the internet.

See, it’s simple. You have to do the math. If something inspired, say,

is available for virtually free on my PC, why should I buy books of poetry? This is good for me, but I was just thinking, you poets would get more money if you’d put this stuff into book form instead.

The problem is, however, you’d all have to do it. If one good poet keeps publishing his or her poems online instead of in book form, then everyone would read that instead of buying the other poets’ books probably.

Also, it would make reading poetry in the tub safer. Like, only the sheer inspiration of words would shock you.

3 responses to “Advice to poets

  1. Poets never get any money for their poetry. They get paid for readings and for teaching poetry. Occasionally they receive sexual favors, too, but not the way athletes and bankers do.

    We do feel better if our poems exist in dead-tree editions, so any of the publishers who throng this site feel like it, they can publish my book, which is posted at my URL in a really tacky format. But ironically tacky, in a really super post-modernist way.

    Mig, you daring me to do this, right?

  2. mig

    I dare you to eat a bug, and drink the rest of that vodka in one go. You know what, that reminds me, I was at a New Year’s gettogether, and the adults had bought booze for the kids, too. Seriously. Not play champagne, like the little kids had. They had stocked up on these sweet vodka- and rum-based drinks in glass bottles and twelve and fourteen-year olds were drinking them. I was sort of shocked. Beta didn’t drink any, smart kid.

    What I’m saying, all I’m saying is, I dunno; lots of good poetry on the ‘net, as far as I can judge that.

    Thanks, poets!

  3. zizka

    I don’t like vodka, but termites are tasty, sort of like sardines. They only eat wood so they’re less of a health risk than you, me, or that guy with the tough penis in Germany. (You might get dry rot I suppose, or Dutch elm disease, or blight). My guess is that penis is sort of like tongue and needs to be prepared specially, you can’t just fry it up like I did the last time I cooked it. Tongue, I mean — it was tough.

    I wouldn’t eat a stink-bug, though.