Poetry is perhaps the most intimate art form when it comes to feelings expressed, why is it the lowest genre in writing?

It's pretty much understood that if you want to publish a book, and you send a manuscript of poetry to a major publishing house, it is going at the bottom of the pile. Why is poetry the lowest genre in writing in your opinion? And more importantly, should it be?

Asked by Chasevon 49 months ago Similar Questions: Poetry intimate art form feelings expressed lowest genre writing Recent Questions About: Poetry intimate art form feelings expressed lowest genre writing Arts > Books.

Similar Questions: Poetry intimate art form feelings expressed lowest genre writing Recent Questions About: Poetry intimate art form feelings expressed lowest genre writing.

Money, I'm afraid - publishers don't care so much about 'good lists' nowadays. With rare exceptions, poetry doesn't sell well (especially in book format, and especially when the author is alive), and it takes a new writer much longer to become established than it would in fiction. In the old days, when publishing houses really were headed up by whoever had their name on the colophon (like Jonathan Cape or Victor Gollancz, who were hands-on managers - I'm sorry I don't have US examples) you'd find that (i) they wanted to have a 'good list,' which meant a certain amount of balance and covering the whole field as appropriate, and (ii) they were content to nurse a particular author through two or three loss-makers if they spotted a talent there.

Nowadays most of the small publishing houses have been taken over by one of the big players, and each book is judged on its commercial potential - and, as I said earlier, the poetry of authors who are alive, sane, and young isn't commercial. (The same arguments apply to most major chains of bookshops). So you get the situation we have now: where poetry is published by niche publishers who don't have the capacity to get to the large bookstores, or it's self-published - in book form or online.

(I tried to stop the Iraq war with poetry; it didn't work, but I think it still lives at wordsforiraq.com). What does seem to be happening - although my experience is limited - is that there are more modern popular songs whose lyrics are close to being true poetry. Leonard Cohen is a poet first, of course, but I've been listening to more of the genre and it seems to be that the words are becoming as important as the music.

Anyway, them's me sentiments - hope they strike a chord.

Good question! Of course it shouldn't be that way and that may well be why poetry (in my opinion) is now going through a pretty dry spell. But who knows how many terrific unpublished young poets there are out there if nobody gets an opportunity to read them.

Maybe the internet can change all that. And it may be "lowest-paid" but certainly is NOT the lowest genre in writing! .

It is the most intimate but... it's also the most difficult to understand and it takes more than a minute to read. Poetry is meant to be lingered over and savored. In addition, good poetry is hard to find on one's own.

Intimate, personal and intricate forms of writing often require other people (professors, friends) with whom you can discuss themes and meanings. Many songs are poetic expressions set to music - the artists' rendition of them makes the emotions and thoughts easier to understand. There's a saying that music calms the wild beast.

Maybe the poetry of music calms us as human beings. Good Question! .

I used to edit a fanzine and the poetry submissions... I received were some of the worst collections of words I'd ever read. I would still receive poetry submissions years after I stopped publishing that 'zine. One thing about poetry, it you don't get it, that is, if you can't see the subject matter the author is trying to portray, then you won't care too much for it.

I think love poetry is way overdone, and very few people have the skill to really put into words how they feel. They go for an 'easy' rhyme, instead of really trying to figure out what they want to say. I've read poetry so bad that I was ready to assume all poetry sucked.

But I like poetry, and some of the best poetry is oftentimes written by newbies. Poetry, in my opinion, written by people who've won awards writing poetry isn't always that great. I've read poems by newbies that brought a tear to my eye in its simplicity, and I've read poetry by established writers that left me saying "Wha..?" Poetry is one of those things that is either hit or miss.

My favorites are usually humorous, but that's just me. The reason I think that poetry is so hard to get published is because there is such a glut of horrible poetry and it is everywhere. It might be easier to sell a book of dirty limericks.

:-) Major publishing houses receive so many manuscripts that they have a hard time getting through them all, and I think they just assume the poetry is abysmal, rather than reading it to find out. And a lot of the poetry out there is abysmal, and the people who write it should promise to never try to rhyme again. Sources: my experience reading/editing poetry evelyns_cockroach's Recommendations 3024 Dirty Limericks Amazon List Price: $2.99 Used from: $17.57 The World's Best Dirty Limericks Used from: $0.38 Dirty and Dirtier Little Limericks Used from: $0.39 seems someone already had the dirty limerick book idea.

Oh well.

1 Good poetry is when someone bleeds their words onto the page, cries out tears of meter and turns themselves inside out on paper. These people are rare. However, anyone can string a handful of emo words together with oh so much pretention and then barf them on to a sheet.

These are about 97% of the poets I have read. When you get a random slush pile of poetry, and you know that 97% of it is going to be pure dreck, wouldn't you want to save that sorting "experience" for later, too? Plus, more people read Danielle Seele or Michael Clancy.

I bet there's not much money in poetry, either. So yeah, imagine that dreck pile again, only when you finally manage to pick out the top 3% that should be seen by anyone outside of a teenager's journal, and then you know that when you publish it, it won't exactly fly off of the shelves, it makes it even less of a priority.

Good poetry is when someone bleeds their words onto the page, cries out tears of meter and turns themselves inside out on paper. These people are rare. However, anyone can string a handful of emo words together with oh so much pretention and then barf them on to a sheet.

These are about 97% of the poets I have read. When you get a random slush pile of poetry, and you know that 97% of it is going to be pure dreck, wouldn't you want to save that sorting "experience" for later, too? Plus, more people read Danielle Seele or Michael Clancy.

I bet there's not much money in poetry, either. So yeah, imagine that dreck pile again, only when you finally manage to pick out the top 3% that should be seen by anyone outside of a teenager's journal, and then you know that when you publish it, it won't exactly fly off of the shelves, it makes it even less of a priority.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.