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 Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show

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lin
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lin


Number of posts : 2753
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Location : Mexico

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PostSubject: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyWed Oct 29, 2008 9:00 am

Apparently the TV show "Mad Men" mentioned the poetry book "Meditations In An Emergency" by Frank O'Hara in a season premiere show and included a verse as voice-over narration.

The results were pretty startling for a book of verse in the modern United States (especially one by a very minor poet from the fifties): the book shot up to Number One on Google's "Hot Trends" list and amazon.com sold out of it within hours.

So what? I point to two conclusions from this:

1) The more obvious one, media attention can sell your book. Being a "best selling book" isn't some intrinsic quality, it's a matter of presence in the public mind.

2) The oft-culturally maligned American public actually DOES like poetry and not only WILL read it, but will seek it out enthusiastically. They are kind of waiting to hear about something they like. They are not willing to wade through the jungle of ingroupish, self-indulgents, precious little tomes out there, and not willing to accept the word of teachers and pundits of what is "good". But exposed to something they can relate to, they will buy it with the ready appetite that made people like Browning and Lindsay and Service and Frost household names and as recently as the sixties made Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran best sellers.


So. Aside from what this says about the inbred, overly academized, trivialize state of poetry and its failure to connect to the reading public, and the denigrated potential of an accessible, wise poetry book to gain a major audience, there's this:

You could take this as a metaphor for the current wave of self-published and small press books. It's not that people won't buy them. It's not that they don't trust things that don't have an editor's stamp of approval on them. It's that there is the vast jungle of stuff out there and they don't have the time or inclination to navigate it. If your POD book from lulu.com gets mentioned on Oprah or American Idol next month, it will suddenly be a best-selling book for those famous fifteen minutes. And provide a platform for further sales.

This is NOT saying, Rush out there and try to get your book "As Seen On TV!". What I'm talking about is that the market value of a book is totally relative and exposure-subjective, and that nobody should assume that any given book is not in the "seller class". And to think accordingly.
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Shelagh
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Shelagh


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PostSubject: Re: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyWed Oct 29, 2008 9:35 am

I think the poetry book falls into the "must-have" category and isn't indicative of how popluar or unpopular poetry is at any one time.

The same thing happens in the music industry. The Da Vinci Code is another example of a "must have" item.
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lin
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PostSubject: Re: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyWed Oct 29, 2008 1:15 pm

This all happened in like 24 hours. Not time for a "must have" trend to spread around.

People like poetry. They just aren't being shown poetry they like. When somebody does, they buy it.

A reply to this on another forum mentioned relatives that say "I can't stand poetry", but when she shows them poems she thinks they will like, they always respond very strongly to them.
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Shelagh
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PostSubject: Re: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyWed Oct 29, 2008 2:22 pm

According to Bryan Appleyard in the Times, people feel a great need to be told what they should read. He says also that to understand anything, you have to start at a young age. When people say "I can't stand poetry" it is a defence mechanism because they think there is something to understand about poetry that will be beyond them. When they hear something that makes sense to them and realise that poetry can be easily understood, they embrace it. The full article, Poetry gets a better rap: Our supreme national art is being brought back to life by the BBC’s Daisy Goodwin — and Eminem by Bryan Appleyard, can be read here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/article852335.ece
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lin
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PostSubject: Re: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyWed Oct 29, 2008 3:43 pm

Appleyard is a professor and critic. They like to think that people need to be told what they should read.

I don't think the "don't like poetry" is a defense mechanism: I think it's a lot simpler than that. People are being shown what is called poetry and think it sucks.

The contemporary mainstream is pretty much deliberately designed not to be accesible to the average reader. Revels in it and is quick to dismiss anything that the public takes to their heart.

It's a damn shame. Poetry was orignally the voice of the people. Now it's an elite luxury locked up in an ivorty tower for inititates.
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jjbreunig3
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PostSubject: Re: Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show   Poetry best seller due to Mad Men show EmptyFri Mar 06, 2009 8:28 am

Thanks for sharing this thoughtful article. People can identify quality when they see it; unfortunately there is so much poorly written stuff called "poetry" that it takes a while for the general population to find the good stuff. --Joe
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