My Philosophy on Poetry and Publishing

Given that many "ordinary" people learned to hate and distrust poetry through their exposure to it in school, it's a bit of an irony that poetry remains pretty much shackled to the ivy tower: poets writing for other poets, MFA programs churning out official poetry-writing credentials, and the Academy owning most of the presses that publish poetry because (in fairness to the academic presses) "commercial" publishers and literary agents don't believe they can sell poetry books to ordinary readers.


I took this photo because I was so enchanted by that play of light through Gothic windows as it framed the door on the opposite wall. (Photo © Peggy Whiteneck.)

For years, I tried to break into the iron ranks of this "po' biz" - the business of making and managing the contacts and connections that will get a poet noticed and published by the "gatekeepers" of the contemporary poetry scene. I had been doing it uncritically, accepting it as the price one has to pay to get one's poetry into the hands of readers.

It was only when I started questioning that underlying premise that I began to think more creatively about how to get my work "out there." "Maybe breaking in means breaking out," I thought. So I made a conscious decision: I want my work to be relevant and accessible to ordinary folks. When they're faced with one of life's serial traumas, I want them to reach for a poem - any poem, whether it's mine or someone else's - at least as quickly as they'd reach for pills or bottle of booze. That this vision sounds so Quixotic is, I believe, a measure of the depths of human irrelevancy to which poetry as a genre has descended in our culture.

This doesn't mean I haven't found contemporary poets with academic affiliations whom I believe have managed to slip the irons. Among my own favorites are the late William Matthews, the late Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins, Kim Addonizio, Mary Oliver....

There are all sorts of ways to help poetry break its cultural shackles. For me, it's been choosing non-traditional publishing venues for my poems (which, yes, have included national periodicals even if very few of them have been Academy-based literary magazines). And, of course, the Web is a quintessentially populist medium - which is why I've included these poetry pages on my web site (see poem links below).

Strike a Blow for Poetry's Freedom: Buy a Book!

-Peggy Whiteneck