Sound & Sense: An Open Thread
The fifth of our recurring opportunities — currently, every other Thursday — to learn what your fellow subscribers are reading and writing and thinking about
Not “till the autocrats among us can be / ‘literalists of / the imagination’ — above / insolence and triviality,” shall we see poetry, Marianne Moore wrote in 1919. When they “can present / for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them,” then “shall we have / it.”
I have an allergy to all grand definitions of poetry. The closest I’ve come myself is when I wrote, “Poetry is what all language wants to be when it grows up.” And even that attempt at comedy makes me sneeze. Still, the phrase Moore uses, “literalists of the imagination” (paraphrasing something Yeats said about Blake), sticks in the mind, as does the instantiation she gave it in the description of “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”
We may not be able to do better than this gestural kind of anti-definitional definition. We want our definitions to reflect genus and difference: A triangle is a plane figure (genus) formed with three bounding sides (difference from other species in the genus). And poetry doesn’t exactly resist this kind of definition. It’s just that it always squeezes under the fence, like a dog that won’t stay in the yard. The dog doesn’t mean to violate the rules, but the world beyond the fence is just too filled with things to smell, expanses to run, and people to meet.
Ah, well. What are you reading, writing, thinking about? Please let us and your fellow subscribers know in this open-mic thread.
Meanwhile, Sally Thomas and I are thinking about the fact that Poems Ancient and Modern now has 2,000 subscribers who have only the free subscription. Help us noodle through the mechanics, if you get a chance to add a comment to this thread.
The current paid-subscription price is $60 a year. Does that seem too high for a poem and commentary five days a week? What is the price point at which you think people would pay? Currently, all material is free. If we started locking some of that content for paid subscribers only, what percentage should be locked? What reward would make paying for this newsletter worth the cost?
I proffer this definition: Poetry is that which is lost in translation.
Enjoying your poem-a-day! It strikes me that $60 is the same cost as a yearly sub for a high-quality print publication. (The ones that I noodle with subscribing to on and off and that catch my mind are The Lamp and Verily; Plough may even be less?) WRMom for a year membership is $50; includes many audio materials and various hard copy items.
In spite of the fact that your content is so high quality and *daily* I would venture that a lower price point combined with restricted content part of the time AND bonus privileges would likely be more convincing. Possibly $30?
For me, the most convincing bonus material that always ALMOST pulls me in is the opportunity to participate in live ZOOM content discussions of a particular work.
Like if you are a paid member, you get to come talk to Sally this month about ____ poem or poet for an hour. (Keep it low key so not too much work for you both- the live appeal does enough!)
My two cents :)