People have their opinions about blogs, lists, self-publishing, poetry communities, etc. But what is the context? Well, part of the context is obviously the revolution in technology which has transformed the publishing media.

In the 90s I labored for what seemed endless hours, trying to help Edwin Honig type, edit, proofread, print & find a publisher for his collected poems from over 50 years. Honig is not a dilettante, but an important American poet who has been involved in innumerable literary projects (translation, scholarship, teaching) along with his poetry. Nevertheless he found it impossible to find a publisher then. We arranged with someone editing an online archive of out-of-print books to include Honig's work, which, because of the sloppy way the site was managed, proved to be a big waste of time. Finally we produced a manuscript which was published by the on-demand publisher XLibris. The book turned out great, and is now easily available and archived in over 60 American libraries. So our years of effort bore some fruit after all, thanks to the new on-demand technology.

By far the most important aspect of this new technological context is the democratization of access to previously unknown or little-known writers. Of course such democratization still has a LONG way to go. Of course it means that suddenly there is a lot of shlock out there. But the real challenge is to our own initiative - the opportunity to pursue our own leads, hunches, and interests in this vast new world.