In the past week, I have clicked on two links that led me to items related to poetry (or writing more generally) and publicity. In both cases, I found the links via social media.
The first link, a T Magazine article about "24-year-old M.F.A. dropout" Steve Roggenbuck, was embedded in a tweet by the poet Alex Estes, to whose tweets I subscribe. The intro to the link reads, "Oh, you haven't heard, twitter and tumblr are going to save poetry. We can all relax."
Click on the link, and you'll see Roggenbuck pictured wearing "Ethletic Fair Trade, Ethically Produced shoes, $54." T Magazine says, "He reaches an audience that dwarfs those of traditional journals." And also: "Some in the establishment say he’s not a poet." What or who The New York Times blogger, Jacob Brown, considers to be "traditional" or "establishment" is not defined.
The other link, an interview of Dinty Moore in Mandala Magazine, was in my Facebook feed, posted by Dinty Moore himself, to whose posts I subscribe. The interview was to promote his new book, The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life. In the interview, Moore says:
...so often we lose track of why we are writing and become badly distracted by career, rejection slips, praise, sometimes money. There is nothing wrong with wanting a career, some recognition, a steady salary, and, most importantly perhaps, the access to a wider readership that comes with success, but it is necessary to be mindful of how all of this interacts with the writing process, and how it too often sabotages the writing.
I'll let the juxtaposition speak for itself, if only because I can't tease out the implications very neatly. Especially in this forum, where--mea culpa--I am probably, at least in part, promoting myself.
