The Myth of Declining Poetry Publication

July 3, 2006

From 1993-2004, the number of books in the poetry/drama category of US trade publications grew almost four times over. I have no numbers, but I imagine that small press and online publications grew at least 100x. The decline of mainstream poetry publication– like the decline of poetry publication in general– is a myth.

We can still argue whether more or less of that poetry is any good (I’ll stick with Sturgeon’s Law, generally, though undoubtedly the newest and most avant-garde work is happening online). We can also still argue whether or not poetry has any real role in most peoples’ lives anymore (unfortunately, I don’t think it does now; I do believe there was a time when it was important to a much higher percentage of people and was much more relevant to our culture). But to maintain that only the small press is publishing poetry is just silly. Even rhetorically it’s non-sensical, otherwise the post-avant crowd wouldn’t be so worked up about the poor quality of– and (ironically) their own exclusion from– the mainstream.

Tags: poetry, Publishing