Whoring Your Poem

It depends on whether you want anyone to read you poems (and if so who, how many, how and when?) Emily Dickinson didn't and we enjoy her work today rather against her will.

I think there is audience for everything but like veinglory said some audiences are bigger than others. People should write what they like. This may translate into finding only 1 publication that will accept or 100. This could translate into selling 1 book or 1000 books. I don't think anyone should write to please an audience, most people can smell a sell out a mile away. Originality is what sells but again, the degree of what comes natural to you will impact your audience size.

The long answer is No. You should not whore your work but you should be prepared for whatever the result of that is which could translate into smaller acceptance ratio or readership. At the end of the day people WANT good writing no matter what. If it is good, it will get read.

And my point is that you can write exactly want you want and either see if 'they' publish it, send it to non-edited publication, self-publish, put it on the internet or paint it on a subway train. No one is forced to compromise their vision if they don't want to. But if that vision doesn't happen to be commercial, cest la vie.

I think one must be aware that taste in Poetry is cyclical and trust to your own vision even if it means conceding that you won't be discovered or recognized within you own lifetime.

Those who compromise their vision just for immediate responce will NEVER be remembered as anything more than MINOR versifiers.

James R Hoye, (JRH)

... selling out entirely is probably not wise, but making some concessions is not a bad way to go. That said, thank goodness Emily didn't make any herself. That would've been tragic. Her poems are nothing short of great!

Steppe - interesting question. I think when you get to the point of wondering if you're "whoring" your poem, you're contemplating changes that you should reconsider.
For me, I play with poems until I like them - then play with them again, shuffle lines, try them in rhyme, tweak endings, beginnings, let them rest -- and then send them out. I have had some success with publication of my literary poetry - even though I am a fiction writer most days.
Believe me, I've felt the danger of moving too close to editorially-suggested changes that would compromise my work (my novels, actually), but I'm blessed with an agent who doesn't harass me to fix what ain't broke.
Still, do I play with any and almost all suggested changes? Sure I do. I try on shoes that are inappropriate, too. it doesn't mean I have to wear them to church.
As long as you're still feeling the joy in your work, it's all good.
Rambling, sorry... this question is one I come back to again and again as well.

Steppe, have you sent out your poems to publications, poetry journals, poetry contests that publish the kind of subjects your poems deal with, and found that editors want you to change them?

Because I would think that publications dealing with the Pacific Northwest and the West, particularly, would love your writing. Also, any that like rural, country life, or nature poetry would also. Some contests are for entire chapbooks.

Have you been there, done that? If so, then I'm disgusted, because your poetry is so fine.

Steppe said:

I am not complaining here about my own poems. But I am suggesting that poets often write according to the market, rather than their own hearts.

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Such is the dilemma of every artist, everywhere, throughout history. No one owes the artist a hearing, but nor does the artist owe the world a play for pay.

I vote "do what you will".

I have never wrote a single syllable according to a market. I don't consider a market. I write for pleasure. I have never had a poem edited prior to publication. I would just say NO THANKS if an editor asked for a major rewrite of a poem prior to publication. If a few word changes were requested, I would consider it. I have never had a problem placing my poetry...but I wouldn't ever DREAM of writing for a specific market. I write the poem, then I investigate to see if the market already exists...if it doesn't, well, I just wrote a poem for myself.

I don't compromise.

Using other poets as models is nothing new nor is it necessarily wrong if it's done as it was in the past by choosing The Masters as their models, such as Yeats, Frost, Eliot, Browning, Tennyson, Byron, Blake, Housman, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and all their kin.

Moreover, those Models were used only as a starting point, and the poets who used them, and continue to do so, like myself, developed their own voices and made their own mark.

Today's poets,who have rejected those Masters, have a much lower quality of models to choose from, and it shows. and it's high time we changed that by returning to our proven roots.

Think about it.

James R. Hoye, (JRH)

JRH said:

snip . . .it's high time we changed that by returning to our proven roots.

Think about it.

James R. Hoye, (JRH)

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That would be radical!!

It's pretty standard practice, when learning any craft, to study the works of those who have done it successfully before. Whether it's poetry, fiction, music, politics, mathematics, whatever, it's a very useful approach. Picasso, Miles Davis, e.e. cummings - any of them would have understood and mastered their histories before taking their own direction.

There's a vast difference between influence and plagiarism, and there's scarcely anything in this world that isn't influenced by what's gone before.

Yes, we develop our own voices, but we need to master the vocabulary before our grunts become Howls.

Nikki said:

Steppe - interesting question. I think when you get to the point of wondering if you're "whoring" your poem, you're contemplating changes that you should reconsider.

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This. I'm not at all averse to editorial suggestions for changes, and am glad to make them if I think they either help the poem or don't make it worse. Once I even had a request to add an additional stanza, though in that case they did make it clear they're publish the poem whether I did or not.

Would I make a requested change that made it into another poem or changed the message? Maybe.... if the new version was still something I liked and approved of. I'm not one of those who think my own words and visions are sacred and inviolate.

And I do want to connect to people, so for instance if I had a rowing poem for which I had a suggestion to change away from the proper terminology to words non-rowers might find more familiar, I'd probably do it. But if I had written about the glory of being put alone in a tiny boat at sunrise and they wanted me to change it to one that only grumbled about waking up too early, I'd probably withdraw the poem.

Steppe said:

I am not a writer

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Also, I call bullshit on this!