Reb Livingston is a one woman poetry wonder. She’s the author of Your Ten Favorite Words and Pterodactyls Soar Again, among others, and the editor of No Tell Motel and No Tell Books. You may already have been lucky enough to run into her work online or read her blog. She was nice enough to take some time out and talk to us about the future of poetry publishing. And, just as we were hoping, she gets all mouthy.

As a poet, editor, and publisher, you must read a lot of poetry. How do you prefer to consume poetry? Poem by poem? A chapbook-size portion? A whole book? What about eBooks and the Kindle? What new ways of consuming poetry might we have to look forward to?

I’m not sure it’s what I prefer or if it’s just what fits best into my lifestyle, but I read a lot of poems online.  Online magazines are easily available and there’s plenty now that are well designed and publish the types of poetry I like.  They regularly introduce me to a broad range of styles and poets I likely wouldn’t come across if I limited myself to what I find in print. Online chapbooks are growing on me.  But I also read a lot of print books and chapbooks.   I haven’t used a Kindle yet, but imagine it or something like it will be in my future.  I have to admit that I read fewer print magazine these days than I did, say 10 years ago.  That’s not to say there aren’t wonderful print magazines, there certainly are and I have a couple subscriptions and often people send them to me.  But I have space issues in my house, especially bookshelf space issues.  I already have an entire bookcase dedicated to print journals and honestly, what little space I have left I want to dedicate to books.  It’s a personal value decision.  If I ever got a bigger house, perhaps that would change.  It was much easier (practically natural) for me to make the transition online with magazines, I’ve done it with every other publication aspect, from reading news to general interest articles.  I don’t subscribe to newspapers or other print media.  Unless I’m working of a messy craft project with my son, the free local papers don’t even make it into my house.  They go from my driveway straight to my recycling bin.  Touching newspapers kind of grosses me out and now it seems completely wasteful and unnecessary.  I feel personally more connected to printed books, so I suspect that transition will be more difficult.

I think print will continue to exist for a while, in various forms.  I see two main routes, the book as artifact route, beautiful, but expensive to produce books and more print-on-demand titles, which already has become indistinguishable to traditionally printed books for most readers.  I love both.

People my age and older will likely be partial to printed books.  People in their 50’s and older seem incredibly attached to newspapers and other print media.   Yes, people do adjust to change, some more enthusiastically than others.  But I really believe the biggest changes have yet to be discovered and I think that’ll be done by poets much younger than me.  Poets who didn’t grow up with newspapers and magazines in their households.  Poets who don’t need the case for distribution and reaching a wide audience explained to them.  Poets who will have no comprehension of the concept that a “printed” poem is more “legitimate” than a poem published online.  Poets without print envy.  These poets are still children.  So I suspect what I have to look forward to is everything that I know about poetry and publishing being completely antiquated in about 20 years, possibly sooner.  I hope I don’t feel threatened and dismiss what is strange and unknown.  I hope I have the wisdom not to make a curmudgeonly ass of myself.

The latest report from the NEA indicates that poetry reading in American is down to 8.3% of the adult population in 2008. That doesn’t mean those poetry readers are reading wide and deep, but only that they’ve read at least one poem in the last 12 months. By my calculations, that puts us at about 12-15 million at-least-one-poem-per-year readers in the US, about the same size as the audience that tuned in for the season premiere of Lost. Is the audience for poetry disappearing or was it ever really there in the first place? Is a small audience for poetry necessarily a bad thing?

I don’t give two shits what all these inane “poetry is dead” studies and articles keep insisting.  Could they just kill macrame already?  Anyone who grew up in the U.S., with the exception perhaps being children of poets or artists, knows damn well very few people read ANY poetry — and that includes Billy Collins, Maya Angelou or any other “mainstream” poetry superstar.  Every poet coming from a “non-poet” family has endured the “why don’t you write something somebody wants to read discussion?” with a well-meaning relative who wants nothing more than for you to wise up and succeed in life.  Is there a decline?  Or is it a general book reading decline?  I grew up in a house full of books and not one was poetry.  It’s kind of like those reports that state something absurd like 80% of high school boys are having sex compared to only 20% of high school girls.  Are we to believe there are three girls doing the entire school while the rest are chaste?  Of course not. People lie.  The boys want you to think they’re having sex because they really wish they were while the girls don’t want to admit to anything else you might think they’re big fat sluts.  People care less about accuracy than how they’re perceived.  Maybe what all these poetry surveys are really showing is that less people these days feel the need to exaggerate their poetry reading?  There’s other ways to demonstrate you’re a cultured soul.  Maybe poetry isn’t dead?  Maybe it’s just really humiliating?  Maybe people would sooner admit to STDs?

I have a lot of novel writing friends.  If their novels sell, they have a chance at making some real money.  So they’re consumed with the idea of marketability.  They have to be, else they won’t land an agent to land them a big publisher to rake in all that $$ and fame.  As a poet, I don’t have to worry about any of that.  I don’t have to make the decision between success and literary quality.  I can write what I want.  I never start or finish a poem and ask myself “who’s my target audience?” or “Is this topic last year’s flavor?”  That’s what I like best about being a poet.  That’s why I don’t call myself a “writer.”  I want to be in that small, disconnected, overlooked, under-appreciated and misunderstood realm because that is how I feel every day of my life.  That is my element.  That is my calling.  I long gave up the fantasy of being universally adored and admired.  Does that mean I have disdain for a readership?  Absolutely not.  I want an audience for my poems. But I want a willing and engaged audience who come to my poems for what they are, not because I tailored them to suit a mass audience — something I’m pretty sure isn’t even possible in poetry anyhow.  I accept that will always be a small number, no matter how “successful” I might become.  I embrace that because I prefer the freedom of obscurity.  If I ever felt otherwise, I’ll start writing something people wanted to read.  I promise.

What about Copyright? It seems like you can find work by almost any poet online, if not any poem you might be looking for. Should this be more strictly controlled? If not, what alternatives do we have? What about Creative Commons licenses for poets?

Poems are copyright protected just like any other intellectual property.  Sure, we all know of instances where somebody posted a poem without permission.  It’s really easy to do these days.  I don’t know of any cases where somebody financially profited from this — or any proof that a poet lost money from such a violation.  I suppose the Plath estate has legitimate concerns, but I think they’ve been incredibly short-sighted.  They were so concerned about controlling the reprint of a recently discovered poem, raining hellfire on anyone who posted it, that they limited this new poem’s audience, which in the end limited a possible resurgence of interest in her and her work, which may have resulted in a bigger boost of book sales.  Did they have the right to do this?  Sure.

If somebody prints a poem of yours without your permission, you have legal recourse. It’ll cost money to hire a lawyer, but you do have that recourse.  Often you can contact the offender’s service provider with evidence of a copyright violation and they’ll remove it.  I don’t know how much stricter this can be controlled other than making it a criminal matter.  Somebody posts your poem without permission, so you call the cops?  A court of law granting you the right to publicly bukakki the copyright violator?  Um, I’ll take my chances in a civil court.

Creative Commons is a great idea for poets who want to allow others to use their work (on various levels).  It won’t stop anyone intent on taking your work for their own nefarious purposes, but it does open doors for those who both respect your intellectual property and wish to incorporate it into something of their own.

I personally don’t care if someone posts my poems on their blogs or in forums — as long as the work is attributed to me.  That’s flattering — and as your previous “decline in readership” question shows, I should be damn grateful anyone at all would be interested enough in my poems to share them.  Please, spread the word about how wonderful my poems are . . . PLEASE.  I don’t hoard my poems.  I would be ticked if a magazine or book used my work without my permission.  I’d cause a big, dirty scene and rain shame on them.  If some money-making venture was profiting off of my work, I’d get my ass a lawyer and collect my $$$ under current copyright laws and live POET LARGE.

Poetry has always had a community. Back in the day, the great debates took place in the pages of prestigious literary journals and in more personal letters between writers. How have the ways we hold conversations about poetry changed? And how has that changed the conversation?

Thanks god the way poetry is discussed has changed.  Those pages of prestigious literary journals were run by 10 people, from 3 Ivy League schools, with insanely similar cultural backgrounds.  Who knows the number of outstanding poems that poetry readers never had a chance of coming across.  How many voices had absolutely no outlet?  I’m much less offended by the idea of gatekeepers than I am to there being only one entrance to the garden party.  Or one party for that matter.

I have no problem navigating the poetry scene, it’s not difficult for me to disregard something that’s not my cup of tea or even something I consider a cup of pee.  In another question (that I chose not to answer) you mentioned Flarf.  I don’t really have a strong opinion one way or another on Flarf (which is why I skipped the question).  I like some Flarf poems and poets and some I don’t.  I think it’s good that some poets and readers find a lot of value in it.  I don’t understand the rage or energy some poets spend trying to discredit it, but I’m not really bothered by that either.  I think that’s good too.  So Flarf gets to exist and be discussed by those who find giving such a thing attention to be important and worthwhile.  It also gets to be pretty easily bypassed by those who don’t feel much of a connection to it, pro or con.  That’s wonderful.  More groups have the ability to join the conversation, while the ability for a single group or a select few to dominate the discussion of poetry is seriously diminished.  Does that mean more assholes get to play in the poetry box?  Sure.  But statistically, the percentage holds steady.  Assholes are not an internet phenomena.  Or limited to poetry for that matter.

As for personal letters between writers, I write lengthy correspondences with other poets on an almost daily basis via e-mail, on blogs and listservs.  I think this is pretty common.  More of these correspondences are archived and public.  Future literary scholars are going to have it easy.