buying poetry; a thorny topic. (a rosy topic). though my intention is not too get too general about poetry, poetry criticism, but to keep focus on the book (duty, at present) - the question of book sales is one that brought reading revival into existence. the common complaint is lots of poets - why arent there more book sales? i am encouraging book sales through the site, &, i know that ive succeeded in selling a small number of copies. what are the factors involved? i buy poetry books quite often, but i didnt when i first started writing. money. poets are often poor. when i started writing poetry seriously i was on the dole. i didnt have much money of course, but i bought cds & went to movies. i bought interesting secondhand books. this wasnt purely about pleasure, but about meaning. the australian poetry scene was relatively invisible to me. its not that different from being gay if you dont know where the clubs are & dont have any gay friends.

it was a very gradual process. somehow i found out about & went to open readings. i slowly made occasional connections with someone i saw reading & their poems in an anthology. i learned about the existence of the melbourne writers festival (i came from country nsw via canberra). i went to book launches. i still wasnt buying new books. though i spent quite a bit on secondhand ones and was reading more poetry from the library. i read early to midcentury american poets: plath, lowell, ginsberg, berryman, cummings. i read their bios. in a sense these were metaphors or movies of the real thing. which did exist right here. but i couldnt get into it. i hadnt studied poetry since high school - the only modern was eliot; noone contemporary. i read frank o'hara & ashbery - but did anyone else have their humour & warmth? i was interested in lowell, but it was a bit of a duty; ditto williams - but easier. wallace stevens was a new adventure in pleasure, emily dickinson. (ok im getting off the path of buying factors here perhaps into a fairly generic sounding reading trajectory - i wont go on about how i went down the path of stein -- langpo -- ). i published a few poems, i read the other poems in the journals. i read a few anthologies. i am slow to learn most things. plaths collected is probably one of the first new poetry books i bought. i got to know some poets. generally they didnt have books. i read john forbes library copies. gig ryan. secondhand pam brown. (one factor is i didnt see the poets i was becoming interested in 2nd hand).

i am trying to remember what got me buying new poetry. finding collected works bookshop. cant remember how. part of the pleasure of a bookshop is buying; i did/do feel guilty if i go in too often without buying anything. i bought books as presents: wallace stevens, robert adamson. a vague constellation of aust. po. was forming in my head. i submitted mss to publishers. i was included in an anthology. i got a job (this was earlier); my pay went up; i went part-time: it went down. i got a grant. i was attracted to more avantgarde books: surrealist books, novels etc. things that werent in the library. books with inviting covers (oh dear). i started to know the people whose launches i went to. there was an element of obligation in buying - if i had the cash - tho i still felt guilty if i didnt. poetry gradually meant more to me than other forms or writing. i was becoming interested in new australian poetry (i still knew little about colonial or pre-1960s poetry). i felt desire when a new book by someone i knew came out (poetry publishing is so slow - or has been since the 90s - that it can seem static - books were always already published). i began to think about reviewing. i bought chapbooks (cheaper). i think part of it was there was little publishing by poets in their twenties - the way there had been in the 70s - so it was harder to get a handle on the poets' culture(s). even now i find the culture of many poets a million miles from mine - but im more interested, able to find meaning in their language use, their tone, how they keep it all together.

what im trying to do is to find the block that i had about buying poetry to see if it will help others with their blocks... its hard to break habits - even negative ones: like the habit of not buying things we arent already familiar with .. i used to buy cds based on nme reviews - a rating of 7+ out of ten was enough. john peel said when asked what his favourite music was said he was always more excited by the records in the boot of his car (that he hadnt listened to). im trying to make a habit out of not behaving habitually. does duty seem strange? are the writers mckenzie mentioned: niedecker, berstein, oppen, celan, strange? the whole world was strange when we were born. do we feel locked out of the culture? it sounds like a capitalist cliche to say we become part of the culture by consuming it .. but poetrys not coke. do you want poetry to continue: 'always' like coke? this is not a moral question, nor a rhetorical one. are u ambitious or unambitious for your own poetry? (if you dont write poetry & have read this far -- i salute you!). readers are the vital element of poetry culture (obviously) - give yourself credit as a reader. read strange things. why be comforted all the time? you can always sell them secondhand if you hate them. what books do you buy? are they the kind easily accessible in libraries? you can lend your new poetry books to friends: more value for money. you can buy them as presents now youve read them & can be confident theyre good. you know whats going on right now - this is the other side of going to readings or reading magazines - those poems can be fresher than those in books - but heres an art to poetry in books thats separate .. if you dont read individual volumes you wont get to learn this pleasure. the entering a world, the breathing in of a poets work. it opens to you - in your space - in a way no other form of poetry does: in the book, the new book.

tell me your own stories relating to mine ...