Poetry is for Wimps. pt 1

[[This is the introductory article to a new series of articles I intend to write on here.]]

Poetry is easy to write
anyone can do it
it takes a purposeful mind
and a moderate level
of clever.

I think regular poets
are cheapskates
That's right!
Anyone can write a poem
and make it enjoyable
--and my grandmother
wrote better poems
than most people! (it's true, she did)

The point is
everything you write
if you're skilled at the trade
should be written in verse
or at least poetic-like prose!

See how easy that was?--I'm not even going to revise it because I think it's perfect and has multiple levels.

The real writer writes for length. Anyone can carry on a little pattern, or write witty lines--anyone can rhyme and people rhyme all the time without knowing it--that's just how our brains work. Sure, it takes talent to write a good poem, but it's way too easy to get that talent.
Maybe I'm being too harsh--I did in fact write many poems for several years of my life and that might be why I think it's easy (I started writing poetry when I was 16 and quit when I was 21--occasionally I'll write a poem to kill time or make a point but it's so rare). It bothers me though that people can get paid to write 100 or less loaded words and that's all they've got to do. They write maybe 100 or 200 of these 100 word or less poems and they compile it into a book and can sell it to a publisher and make a few bucks off of every book sold. that's just 20,000 words.--Or maybe the industry standard is more like 100w x 500p --that's poems--and still you only have 50,000 words.

[[ Just to wrap your head around this, the poem above is only 67 words--now imagine a book of 500 of these organized into 20 different topics--25 poems of each topic about one thing: love, lust, words, life, death, family, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, society, religion, politics, fame, wealth, individuality, divinity, nature, technology, creativity, and individuality (that makes 20 topics). The title of that book reads: 500 Short poems to incorporate into your next speech or your next life. ]]

 If you self publish your 500 Short Poems book, you'll sell between 60 and 100 copies on average (that's according to some low end estimates of the self-publishing market). And you sell them for $15/book and it costs you $6 to print each one. You stand to make $540 - $900  for 50,000 words or a little more than a penny per word.

This week I wrote a 15,000 word short story. A couple weeks before that I wrote a 24,000 word pair of chapters for an imaginary book for the same class. I also wrote a 5,000 word essay about a touching, prominent theme in the movie KPAX (My favorite American movie). That's 44,000 words. I'm probably not going to make any money off of these. In fact, I had to PAY to get the opportunity to write these. [now someone do the math for me on how many words I've written on this blog alone].

Let's say you submit to a publisher though and make maybe $10,000 profit for your silly book of poems. That's $0.20 per word.

How many people do you know that read poems out of a published collection of poems? How many people do you know that read literary magazines?--You'd figure only English majors would do that right? Well each year the U.S. graduates 50,000 English majors but very few of them read literary magazines--I don't, none of my friends do. Maybe a handful of them do in my whole department--and they may or may not graduate this year.

And what does poetry do for you? Does it make you think? Does it help you escape? Does it brighten your day?--I prefer texting friends to reading poems. If I go over my texting limit each 160 characters costs $0.25 and I could probably fit more than 25 words into that.--It would be rather neat if the average price of a written word (speaking universally) was a penny. But it costs two pennies to manufacture a single penny and 9 words to say that. Go figure.

Poets used to hold an important function in society--back when their job was more than merely writing verses. The original poet was the society's record keeper. He or she would come up with lengthy, memorable phrases that could be repeated and spread across the countryside. Kings would pay these bards to make up a story about them and share it with the population so that their name and deeds could be spread around--or they'd pay to spread someone else's name around. There were also clerics and other similar "jobs" that utilized poetry to spread the religion around the world.
Why were incantations and spells written like poems? Because poetry is easier to remember than prose--it's how our minds remember things: when they are composed in a unique manner we remember them better than if they are ordinary. For example, after reading this article, you may forget what exactly I said in the article, but because I started it with a poem, you'll remember that it was "that one with the poem in the beginning." One memorizing trick is to associate words with nonassociable concepts...try thinking about bananas coming out of your nose because you need to buy bananas and the next time your nose itches at the store you'll remember to buy bananas.--rhyming is easier to remember because it's not normal to think in rhymes.

The real "bard" or "cleric" of the our day is the marketer and the entertainer. He or she will use language to sell a product, some of this language is written, most of it is visual, but there are a lot of other senses utilized in marketing. The entertainer--the musician, the actor, the director, and so on and so forth--uses language to entertain people--lots of people. In the first week of release, Eminem, the famous white rapper without a high school education, sold 379,000 copies of his single "Not Afraid." There are a little over 800 words in that song, and it costs $1.29 on iTunes. That means in the first week Eminem garnered $488,000 for his 800 words, or $610/word. Who's name or religion did he spread around for that price? His own--his own recovery and how he's the "king of [his] world."

But truthfully, poetry is only a small part of what the marketer will do in writing an ad in a magazine or the musician will do in creating a song. They put countless hours into not just the words, but every other aspect of the piece, such as the rhythm, the beat, the tone, the speed, the emotion, the energy, the marketing, the devotion of their life, &c. Music takes a lot of time to make for a product that only lasts 3.5min. It also requires a lot of expensive equipment--much more than just a pen and paper.

The point I'm getting at is three fold: 1) Real talent lies in writing consistently, purposefully, and for a very long time--go write a novel comparable to war and peace. 2) If you want to be a real poet, go work in marketing or learn music composition. 3) The modern English major shouldn't be learning about poetry, because English is so much more than written words, just like music is more than words sung or marketing is more than printed words next to pictures.

More on this later...