#pobusiness

So what’s up with this?  I get that poetry might not have the same readership. But if pay is for work, prose and poetry are totally comparable in terms of time and energy put into a piece (at least for me, as a writer who works in both fields.) And in the grand scheme, sure, Fancypants Magazine has way better subscriptions than, say, College Lit Mag X*. But subscribers of both magazines get to read my poem, right?  I mean, the particular issue of Fancypants that I was in SOLD OUT and now goes for stupid prices on eBay, much to the chagrin of my grandmother who missed her apparently tiny window to get a copy at Books-A-Million.

I have no words for how this feels. No words. Only obscene gestures.

I’m sure Fancypants Magazine isn’t the only magazine that has this pay discrepancy between poetry and prose. In fact, you just have to take a peek at Duotrope.com’s definition of “semi-pro” rates for poetry (US $5-$49 per poem) vs. prose (US 1-4.9 cents per word or more).

Pause for indignant rage: Seriously? $5 for a poem is semi-pro? Seriously?

Anyway, you may also find, after surfing around for a bit, that there are tons of mags that pay pro rates for prose but semi-pro or token rates for poetry. 

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. And I hardly think we should be taking money away from the hard-working short story and essay writers publishing in these excellent magazines. But, as you might have seen when you clicked this link, poetry has value. And I want to see this value respected by the magazines that publish poets. Is that too much to ask?

*Magazine names have been changed to protect the stingy keep the author from being blacklisted.

In short, my frustration with not being paid didn’t stem from not getting paid. In fact, in 2014 I got paid enough through book sales and contributions to journals and anthologies that I had to pay what I call the “poetry tax.” This is probably some kind of honor, but I suspect the taxes I paid went into bombs or torture and not feeding hungry children, so that pisses me off. 

My frustration with poets not being paid stems from poets, and the modern attitudes of being so very honored to be published. I mean, it is an honor to be published, but please remember that the true honor is the publisher’s. Without our work, poetry journals would be empty. 

However, I want to share a story. An acquaintance of mine went to AWP last year. She paid for her entire trip out of pocket. She hustled up and down the halls and bought people drinks for the chance to talk to them. She kissed so much ass her nose is permanently stained. She told countless editors-in-chief of blogspots how very much she loved their work, their magazine, their editorial prowess. She spent a lot of money and time and effort networking, and as a result, was published quite a bit in 2014. 

She wasn’t paid for any of it. That amount of effort, and resulting success, in nearly any other industry would likely have resulted in at least a few free drinks. 

Frustrated by this dear soul, one day I tweeted something quite like this: “Poets be like: I am deeply honored and humbled to have kissed a whole lot of ass and to have given four of my very best poems away for free to the trendy tumblr of the month." 

I realized after tweeting that this is me, too, and I am over it. I may never see my work published again, but I am over it. 

Each poet is an individual. Not everyone needs to be over it. If the idea of our work being selected is payment enough, fine. If the feeling of supporting a magazine’s  unfunded efforts to bring more poetry to the public is payment enough, okay. If being read is enough, fine. I have been motivated by those things, too. I am a poet who works outside the bounds of poetry’s establishment. I am a college dropout, and I quit writing poems for ten years in the middle of my life because adulthood was too overwhelming for my delicate soul. I only started trying to be published about eight years ago, and only because a couple of editors who saw my work on my blog asked me to submit. I am very regional. I hate going to conferences and I don’t like to take classes. I don’t do this the way successful people do it. To that end, I don’t expect to be successful by the standards of the successful, but I do want to get paid. 

I hear musicians and photographers complaining about being asked to work for free. I never hear poets complain of the same. 

I make most of my income writing things that are not poetry, but my poet’s skill set certainly make me good at writing other things. However, it makes me best at writing poetry.