on the poet's social position in society


The unknown poet


He composes seriously and has something to say,
masters all the genres
but is constantly refused,
year in and year out,
work after work of whatever kind,
decade after decade by any publisher,
who always only uses empty formulas to turn him down
without comment, without encouragement,
without acknowledgement, without any personal word
or even any confirmation, that his work has been read at all.
One asks, what the publishers possibly could gain
by constantly turning a poet down,
refusing to give him even the slightest chance,
regardless of quality, productivity
interesting stuff and impeccable language?
He is directed to the suicidal darkness of the bottom drawer
or to the web, where he has to pay to prostitute himself.
Never before in history has the poet been in the position
that he has to pay to appear,
which is quite unique to our age and society.
Without outcome or income
he gets caught in the poverty trap of anonymity
and can't break out of the vicious circle
and is logically driven into the corner of suicide,
disappearing willingly, since he was not wanted,
from the beginning excluded from society,
like Plato exiled Homer from his 'ideal' society
of only academic correctness,
while fantasy, creativity and freedom were excluded
for their disturbing licence.
Does it have to be so bad?
The poet has no desire to become negative or bitter,
he wanted just to write constructively and creatively,
he only wanted to tell good stories,
but the slow suffocation in a society
where culture is excepted as too high-brow
and stamped with a taboo for standing out
from being popular and marketable,
forced him down where he did not want to go
into the corner of isolation, bitterness and despicability,
which was not acceptable,
so he voluntarily disappeared
with all his poems, plays and novels,
biographies, essays and travel accounts,
which all were deleted from the web
since he no longer could pay the hire for his sites.
We'll never even know the name of him or her
since he acted logically to his refusal by society
and took away with him his whole identity.

And the publishers keep shut up and cutting down
blaming the production costs
and that books are too expensive to handle,
which is why they allow a minimum only,
perhaps one out of thousand, to get published,
why the business of refusing gets nastier
and real manuscripts end up ion shredders
But isn't this worse even than the Nazis,
when they openly burnt books at bonfires,
while here and nowadays books are being destroyed
even before they even had the chance
of ever getting published?
And how can any writer evermore have any faith
in any publisher, when all that publishers can do for you
is to destroy your manuscript?






Poetry by Christian Lanciai The PoetBay support member heart!
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Written on 2008-02-10 at 10:55

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Leovinus
Remarkably insightful.

Society nowadays seems to endorse mediocrity.

Lady Gaga is the poet of our times.

Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can weareat
Sae let the iTunes be thankit
2011-08-08



Sorry dear friend but I am putting this on my favourite list.
2008-02-10