A POETICS OF GOING POSTAL

So today, I mailed out the last set -- nine copies -- of my Dusie chap to poets who live in the U.S. I had tried but failed to mail them all out last week in order to avoid the rise in postal rates.

So, a copy of my chap sent within the U.S. under the old postal rate was $1.35. Under the new rate, it cost $1.81. When you multiply the difference by, say, 60 (the number this year of U.S.-residing poets in the Dusie kollektiv), that's a difference of $27.60 that I was trying to save. Since 9 chaps slipped past the increase in postal rates, I saved $23.46 by busting my ass these past few weeks trying to finish these chaps, each of which is hand-made, mind you.

But what I realized today is that, given the rise of gasoline costs, I probably spent more than $23.46 with the extra trips to the post office -- rather than if I had mailed them all at once after finishing all of them.

And that's the story of money in poetry, Peeps. Obviously, it sucks.

Speaking of money, $100 million and the Poetry Foundation can't hire a good headline-writer?! (I've written headlines during my first career as a journalist so I'm not just hoo-haa-ing here). I refer to Shanna Compton's article on poetry blogging HERE. Apparently, Shanna first titled her article "Hacking the Template: Poets as Open-Source Artists", which Poetry Foundation Editor(s) then rewrote to be "Just Get the Poems Out There".

Just Get the Poems Out There -- tell me, does that make you rush to read the article? I'd have bypassed it for sounding banal were I not alerted previously to what the article contained. At least there's a frisson in Shanna's title -- a little zing that tempts the curiosity,

C'mon Poetry Foundation: I appreciate you commissioning the article and running it. But how's about some imagination for a topic called "poetry"?

And next time, Bling-ridden People, send me your hundred million, Kapisch?