In case you’ve not heard, Border’s is having financial woes. You may not care since they turned into a big-box store, but I always had a soft spot for the place since it started out as an indie shop in Ann Arbor oh-so-long ago.
A few of the reasons they are having trouble: Costco, Target, Wal-Mart and Amazon. Just the other day, I perused the book area at Target and was surprised to find Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. His writing jumped into the mainstream Main Street rather quickly. I ended up buying The Glass Castle, which I’ll be returning. I read part of it, and thought maybe I am done with memoirs if I have to read another I-grew-up-with-a-hard-life-and-we-did-wacky-things-with-thanksgiving-turkeys stories. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion is my favorite memoir, because she writes in a low-key way about some of the worst life experiences possible.
But, I digress.
Costco becoming a bookseller shocked me only a bit. However, Ken Burns and Bill Clinton having book signings at Costco surprised me.
Naturally, I wonder how all of this affects poets. We already have a snowball’s chance to appear in large bookstores. I really can’t imagine a poetry book being sold in Costco unless it’s by Maya Angelou, Jimmy Carter, or Mattie Stepanek.
Of course, that thinking leads me back to thinking about poetry distribution. Maybe we poets need to do a better job of writing with an audience in mind?
Do you write poems with a specific audience in mind?
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Hi Deb,
Good thoughts.
As for the audience question– no I do not write for a certain audience. I do believe my reader is smarter than I am and well-read, but I don’t think of him/her when I write. I’ve joked that I write for smart women like myself, but honestly, I don’t think about the reader when I’m writing because I’m mostly thinking about the poem. (This could be a good or bad thing, I’ve debated with poets about this subject and have taken either side at any given time.)
I think more it comes back to distribution, for poets to have a way to showcase our work and I think the internet could help with this.
I’m always surprised more people don’t read poetry, esp. because people are so busy now, they could feel satisfied and well-read to boot! You can read a poem on the bus or the subway. With all the ADD and short attention spans, maybe we just need to market our books to intellects on the go.
Anyway, Joan D’s memoir was my favorite and I just returned the Glass Castle to the library for the second time without finishing it.
Good post. You made me think.
best,
Kelli
The notion of poetry working in consonance with our ADD culture is a radical concept that merits further discussion.
Maybe the world of poetry could use a more radical/mischievous, “activist” Jenny Holzer cultural shit-stirrer mindset? Is that an energy that would be welcome? Do such figures exist in the world of modern poetry?
I’m just thinking out loud here… I’m an avid reader of this blog, but I am not a poet and, as such, I’m sure I’m out of my depth.
– c
I was in a Borders here in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty empty. They had done away with most of their CDs and movies and the books seemed wildly overpriced in compared to…you guessed it…Amazon. I try to support several our local indies here in Atlanta — Outwrite and Wordsmiths Books — but I do use Amazon to orders films, esp. from other countries.
Hi Kelli,
When I write poems, I don’t write for a certain audience either. I write for myself and it’s a bonus if other people like it. That process never struck me as odd until recently. In all other writing, I tend to write for a specific audience — letters, this blog, websites.
That’s a good point about the ADD and poetry. Perhaps we need to offer poems with Ritalin prescriptions?
Chad,
Thanks for posting a comment. You’re close enough as far as being in your element. Your presence makes me wonder about musicians and if the subject of “writing for an audience” comes up. Does it?
Collin,
Oh, wow, I did not realize some of the stores were empty. The one near us was stacked to the gills. I could not help but think their poetry section needed some serious additions. Maybe they try to be too much to too many people.
Good question.
The problem with writing for an audience in mind is that poetry audiences are fairly diverse. I mean, at any given time a poem could be read by anyone from any walk of life and either be liked or not. Who’d have ever thought that an insurance company executive would have made top billing as one of the most liked poets of the 20th century? How do you account for the fact that Bukowski has increased his readership beyond anything imaginable even after his death when most academics would not have given him the time of day when he was alive?
I meet religious people who can quote every word of Cummings’ Pretty How Town but can’t remember the words to their favorite Psalm and Beats who idolize Kerouac reciting word for word Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Poetry is so much about playing with words and ideas that only people who appreciate that kind of playing will appreciate it – that pretty much means only other poets or people who like reading what other people don’t. We just have to face the fact that poetry is not mainstream. Most people would rather spend 3 hours watching buildings being blown up and cars crashing than to spend 10 minutes trying to figure the most beautiful trope written in the last 20 years. Where is the audience?
I’ve actually tried to imagine who my audience is, but I can’t. I know who my influences are: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, T.S. Eliot, several lyricists for rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s, and a few contemporary poets that I admire, but what do any of them have in common? I think today you have to create your audience, which means marketing. You have to promote, promote, promote, but first you have to produce, produce, produce. And then let your audience find you.
I would say that artists in every medium have different relationships to the “consider the audience?” question.
I recognize that everyone has a different temperament and poets may not be extroverts by nature, but I don’t know any music of consequence that was made without any consideration of the audience.
In other words, when Miles Davis turned his back on the audience or Bob Dylan scandalized his following by introducing — gasp! — the electric guitar, I think they knew what they were doing. There is a dialogue there; a living dynamic of push and pull. Provocation and gratification in rhythmic measures. This is what great music is all about.
I once had a conversation with Ron Carter, who plays the contrabass (commonly known as “the standup bass”). I worked up the nerve to talk to him after a show. Somehow we got into a conversation about Miles Davis and he blew my mind with the following statement:
“Did you ever think that maybe Miles Davis turned his back on the audience, so he could FACE THE BAND? Maybe he was just trying to get inside the music?…”
Performance is a tricky and complex art, for sure.
Speaking for myself, I’ve been writing a lot of personal music lately. This is because of radical changes in my life that compelled me to focus on fundamental personal issues (mortality, love, etc.). Previous to these changes, I wrote songs in a more diffuse “social” or “public” mode; a kind of surreal “public music” notion that maybe only I understood.
I used to picture a large, blurry, imaginary mass audience. Lately, when I imagine an audience, it is not a mass audience at all. I imagine singing the song to one particular person or a small group of people, in close quarters.
And those people are usually who the song is about…
cheers,
c
Another music person here.
As far as writing for an audience, I use the Andy Kindler joke that my audience is people my age who are me. The joke only goes so far because I do want to be interesting, mysterious, and alluring to others in the way my favorite artists have been to me. In furtherance of that, I tend to write specifically for an actual friend of mine — who happens to be in my band — who has similar sensibilities and a similar sense of humor but is (importantly) not me.
For me, songwriting is actually about the outside world; it has opened me up to other people and created relationships that hopefully last forever. I’m not an extrovert; thus, songwriting works well as an icebreaker. That’s probably why what I do isn’t terribly personal — or at least it has little to do with me and a lot more with what I think is cool or interesting (which is, I guess, ABOUT ME). I’m looking for people who become giddy when faced with melodic 3 minute songs about the study of insect language or spycraft. These will often wind up being good friends — not because they like my songs, but because they’re moved by similar things.
Like Dylan or Miles, we all want to cultivate an audience. Musicians might differ a bit from poets since we arguably depend on the existence of an actual audience in order for our art to survive and have relevance. Doesn’t need to be a large one — you can perform for the soundman and bartender — but there might a bit of a tree falling in the forest nature that doesn’t exist for poets. I’m not a poet, so I don’t really know. Poets seem to me to be poets no matter what, as if they have no say in the matter. I’m probably romanticizing.
The reason Cormac McCarthy moved to Main Street is because that’s the street where Oprah lives–she packed his bags for him and drove the U-Haul.
Dear Deb,
Good question! You know, I wrote quite a few of the poems in Becoming the Villainess with my little brother in mind. You know, video games, comics, his kind of subject matter. I don’t know who I’m writing for now. Crazy people like myself, most likely, who enjoy obscure folk tales and anime and fairy tales.
I fondly remember Borders – living in the suburbs without a lot of independents, it was a mainstay of mine – the manager of our local store (in Redmond, WA) even scheduled a meeting with me to talk about poetry and comic books. It was pretty interesting, and he was a decent sort, although he left the job soon after that. I’m sad to hear it’s struggling, although it is a mighty expensive store.