the literary conversation

i’ve been thinking a lot on the necessity / urgency of submitting a chapbook manuscript or book manuscript or anything given the general lack of readership in poetry and that i live in a literary no-man’s-land, true to stereotypes for the south (though i don’t live so very rural or small-town as i could–there’s nothing literary in the 3rd biggest city in arkansas, though there’s quite a lot going on in the biggest and 2nd biggest). all that to say, despite my misgivings with longer collections, i’ve not really ceased entirely to send out my poetry to literary magazines, which garner even less attention and less remuneration than a book or chapbook poetry might. and why? why do i still send out those poems? i think its the literary conversation. though i’m not in the traditional university setting from which most of modern american poetry springs, i still have a desire for my poems to move among and speak to what is going on in our culture and in poetry in general. i think that my poems are probably more akin to a letter to the editor than a comment in a crowded lecture hall, but the fact that i still want to throw my two cents in means something, and maybe i ought to give second thought to letting those collections out into the world, however noisy it may be.