Thirty generous guides on poetry A Contrary review by Grace Wells 
 Poetry: Reading it, Writing it, Publishing it Edited by Jessie Lendennie Salmon Poetry 2009 Buy this book> Give this excellent little book of concise essays offering all manner of indispensable advice to anyone starting out in poetry and you’re likely to both earn yourself years of gratitude and save the recipient from making the mistakes that litter the poetry world. American Jessie Lendennie, editor of Salmon Press and Doyenne of Irish poetry, has gathered together thirty international, persuasive voices—all generous with their expertise and experience. Each contributor provides a short biography, a personal essay—usually lathered with interesting quotations from other poets—and a selection of recommended reading and/or recommended websites (Contrary included). The book’s different references span continents and centuries and ultimately bring us right up to the very latest developments in poetry publication. Though the essays are corralled into sections on ‘reading’, ‘writing’ and ‘publishing’, most writers, in their enthusiasm, wade into all three areas revealing the book’s boundaries as paper-thin, its demarcations flooded. For the most part this is not a ‘How to’, but rather a collection of poets meditating and informing ‘On’. There are no set writing exercises, nor instructions on how not to write. Likewise, we’re not taught how to read poetry; rather we’re included in a conversation about why poets have to read, have to write. Michael Heffernan informs, “Reading poems is how I show my students how to write them, and sometimes how to live while doing that.” While Susan Millar Du Mars cuts beneath all: “For me the point of poetry is to give me back my life. I’m always losing bits of it—to forgetfulness, to busyness, to cowardice too. When I write a poem I am brave and I am still. And my memory stretches back like thousands of miles of scenic road. When I write a poem I own my life.” The only real ‘How-to’, is the publishing section, where a direct and thorough analysis instructs the beginner what to do, what not to do, and what to expect. Opening with a very instructive essay from Joe Woods, director of Poetry Ireland, it follows with a good number of engaging pieces from international editors of poetry presses and poetry journals, both print and web. It’s hard to walk away from Poetry, Reading it, Writing it, Publishing it, without a thorough grounding in publishing’s harsh realities. Future readers won’t be guilty of John M. Fitzgerald’s moan that, “the thing most poets don’t realize about getting their work published is that they must take an aggressive and active role in the process. Poets must be the foremost marketers of their own work.” The one unsatisfactory note to this otherwise highly commendable tome is the inadmission anywhere in the blurb that most contributors are, or have been, published by Salmon Press. Salmon, with their vast catalogue of interesting writers, and their history of finding and giving space to new voices, have no need for false modesty. Perhaps Lendennie was struck with an insecurity that blazing her contributors as Salmon writers would limit the book’s readership. Maybe she was confounded as to what to do about the few writers included here who she doesn’t publish? Whatever the reasoning, it’s a glitch, sometimes major, sometimes minor, depending on your mood. Some of the poets—and more particularly the publishers—do a nice line in admonitions, which may not go down well with the rebellious young. Todd Swift is not alone in telling us most people who write poetry, “tend not to be interested in how poems are made or shared, nor the value of actually buying poetry books. They don’t realise the only way to get read by others is to read others. This is a sort of poetic golden rule.” Up-coming poets may well be irked by the kind of Ten Commandments, dogmatic tone that runs below the generosity, and dismayed by the note of poetry-world weariness/bitterness audible beneath the chorus harmonising on the joys of writing. But statements like Nessa O’Mahony’s warning that trying to get the best words in the best order, “can turn a sane woman mad”, and David Gardiner’s description of himself and other publishers as, “weasels fighting in a hole”, are balanced throughout by stilling, imperative quotations, like this gem from Grey Gowrie: “the reward is that elusive, extraordinary rightness no other art achieves”. Grace Wells is an English poet living in Ireland. Index of Reviews...>http://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20/detail/0956128750Reviews_2010.htmlhttp://astore.amazon.com/contrary-20/detail/0956128750shapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1

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