Survey Results and Special Offer

Hi Readers, 

At the beginning of June I sent a survey to readers of The Sharpener. Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond.

My goal was to learn more about you: what you like about the newsletter, why you’re a subscriber, and what you want to read about more. Your responses met that goal and more. I’ve got a great list of ideas for future posts, and a strong sense of who we are as a community. And I was able to meet many of you in one-on-one conversations.

I thought you might like to take a look at what other readers had to say.

What do you like about the daily newsletter?

“No matter how stressed it offers me a moment of meditation.”

“I love reading the poems every day, always a moving and inspiring selection. I also really like the discussions of craft.”

“A hit of beauty.”

What in poetry do you want to know more about?

The most important feature of The Sharpener for most of you is discovering poets you didn’t already know. I will include more underrated poets and have a balance of the topics below in future posts.

What do you want to read about in the weekly newsletter?

The purpose of The Sharpener is to sharpen our thinking about poetry. I’ve gathered your comments and will be addressing the questions you raised about poetry.

“You’ll hate this, but biographical info. How did you come to such empathy? I’m very curious about you read and why you choose the poems you do, and why/how you juxtapose them.”

“Actually, I like to be surprised. I like seeing topics I don't typically see or seeing less familiar stances/approaches to more familiar topics.“

“I especially value posts about the process of writing, how writing and becoming a person are interconnected.”

“I appreciate the mix of practical/craft talk/meditations on (substantive, spot-on rants against) the poe-biz/histories of our forms and languages/philosophical and spiritual reflections on the art”

Extended offer for free consultations

Seven of you took up my offer of free 30-minute phone consultations. I was able to help people think through all kinds of questions they had about their manuscripts—how to revise, how to interpret responses from editors, how to get unstuck, how to approach the order of poems in a manuscript.

My purpose of The Sharpener is to help everyone read and write better poetry, and I really loved talking to you about your ideas. So I’m extending my offer of a free 30-minute consultation to talk about anything poetry-related.

Don’t hesitate to reach. I look forward to speaking with more of you.

Thank you

The Sharpener is my labor of love: love for the country we call poetry, and love for all of us who live there. The newsletter is alive thanks to patronage from readers like you. I spend 12 hours every week curating the daily emails and writing the weekly newsletters. It’s a labor of love, and it’s the product of my whole life in poetry. If this labor makes your life more livable, please consider supporting this newsletter with a subscription.

I appreciate your support: it makes all the difference.

Sean Singer