MORE ON THAT MORONIC OXYMORON: "POETRY ECONOMICS"

Meritage Press (MP), as indicated by its Mission Statement (though it's outdated), is open to publishing not just poetry publications. Well, it did so for just the second time in late 2007 with STAGE PRESENCE (I founded MP in 2001).

At its book launch, in that one afternoon, STAGE PRESENCE sold more than the entire 2007 sales that MP's poetry books got through Amazon.com.

Just pausing amidst doing taxes to share that with you....

If I wanted to look on the bright side, I could report that 2007's Amazon sales grew by 59% from the prior year's. But since I know what those dollars are in real terms, to make happy hay from this percentage increase would be to suspend disbelief in the real meaning of those numbers.

Oh, wait. That's what a poet does, right? Suspend disbelief. No wonder I'm a poetry publisher!

And I love me the poetry books I publish and feel you should buy them, too, for your own soul-making good! HERE and HERE, Peeps! the barker directs....(even as I am glad some of you are listening as I sit here drooling over an inventory restocking order from SPD for about 200 copies of Garrett Caples' COMPLICATIONS and PINOY POETICS for textbook porpoises....)

Gads...sometimes it is just exhausting HUSTLING for Poetry.