I have several arguments with this, but I cant disagree with the central tenant (and url), and it makes for an interesting and important discussion. Okay, fine, here are my arguments: There is an unavoidable, functional economic reason for the fact that most poetry markets dont pay. Every consumer of poetry is also a producer. Thats just the state of reality. If you want to be paid for poetry, youre going to have to find an audience that doesnt also want to be paid for their poetry, too. And that non-writing audience for poetry doesnt exist. Its not even a complaint about the state of poetry—in fact, this happens because poetrys so awesome that people who like reading it eventually want to write it, too. Its a two-way street, its a dialogue with the masters, etc. Because all the readers are writers, this discussion inevitably becomes one of supporting poetry—as Jessica herself says in the initial post, In other words, do I put in as much as I expect to get out? I try. But it’s probably not enough. Or it becomes a question of submission fees going to writers—which is just another form of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Poetry is a rewarding, enriching, entertaining, empowering form of art, but economically its a zero sum game—so zero sums is inevitable, as nice as it would be for poetry to make you rich. Thats argument #1. Argument #2 is that, even when youre not getting paid, youre receiving value added, by an editor who is working hard to build an audience, present a curated collection that people will read, and so on. Even when no money changes hands, theres an exchange of work, the writers time for the editors time. That said, anyone who can find a way to pay contributors should be commended, for sure. poetryhasvalue/
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 23:44:00 +0000
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