Poetic production (Supply) is in pretty good shape. I would say we're likely to start seeing more and more heart-stoppingly good work, especially as the country slides further into venality and barbarism.

Distribution's never been better either, actually. SPD got rid of their unnecessary launch page, bringing us a click closer to more fifteen-dollar increments of new perfect bound non-standard usage. Bookfinder makes the ideal bookshelf possible. (And remember: buying a book through Amazon is to make a contribution to the giant maw of hell that when it gets done eating Iraq will surely come looking for you.)

The challenge, it seems to me, is to scare up demand. We know about seasonal efforts from booksellers (Barnes & Noble not so bad!) such as National Poetry Month, and of course the well-meaning poetry-in-public-places initiatives that from time to time causeth not the unconverted to cringe.

This, it seems to me, is what EZ-Pound had in mind when he said that poetry "must be as well written as prose." The unwritten implication: "If it is not written as well as prose, it will not be read as well." I for one have spent enough time quarrelling whether it's possible to say whether there's any such thing as well-written prose. The psi-wars of the 70s, the attack on the ideology of clarity, what did it get us? Rumsfeld. Endowed chairs.

Demand is desire. Maybe the picture of what we desire, what we want to happen, doesn't have to be clear, perfect, bar-raising, language-changing, humanity-rescuing, etc. Maybe we just have to make it overlap in some small way with what people already know, while folding out on what we know is around the corners, under the floorboards, in the air, inside time. Daniel is saying something real when he talks about poets and gods.

Even in this ridonculous time.