Writing Problems: Getting Published

Plath, Ponsot, Morrison, Levine, Kumin, Niedecker, Coleman, Knott, Kunitz

In these newsletters, I’ve seemingly taken two contradictory positions about publishing: “Don’t worry about getting published” and “We all want to be published.” This is a basic contradiction inherent to the act of writing: poems are written in solitude, but they are intended for readers. A poet must embrace, or at least tolerate, this contradiction, an…