Portion of a Podcast

Poetry is a pervasive element within the mechanism known as blogging. For all those disgruntled with or oblivious to the concept of professional publishing, blogging allows for an individual to, in essence, circumnavigate the rigors of submission and the sometimes excruciatingly long wait that follows, by simply posting his or her literary work in an open forum for all to see. Of course, there are no particular awards of prestige to be attained by this method, but this aspect, to some, is counterbalanced by the relative ease blogging provides. Also, when a poem is posted to a blog, it can be read by anyone in the general public who has internet access, whereas professional publishing is only read by a certain amount of eclectic followers of that particular literary text. The final aspect of poetic blogging which, to some, may also be the most pertinent is that when an individual posts a poem on his or her blog, he or she has full access to the rights of that poem. Let me reiterate this aspect. When an individual submits a poem to a professional publishing domain, that individual basically forfeits the rights of that poem to the company, who at that point, is legally allowed to change what they deem fit. When an individual posts a poem to his or her blog, the rights of authorship remain with the poet, and the poet can at any time access his or her poems and make changes as they deem necessary. There are, therefore, positive and negative elements in both professionally published works and self posted works that a poet might want to keep in mind before he or she decides to take that next step. Of course, ideally, a poet should attempt to bridge the gaps between both of these mechanisms, and it can be done. What I mean by this is that, when an individual decides he or she would like to submit a poem, one of the prerequisites is that the poem must not have been published before. In essence, publishing companies are constantly searching for new and unique works. Here’s the interesting part, though. Posting to a blog is not technically considered “publishing” in the sense of a reputable source, so an individual who chooses to post a poem on a blog can alternately use that same poem in submission to an online (or other) professional publishing company. Thus, to achieve the best possible outcome, notoriety, an individual would do well to make every sort of concerted effort possible in getting a work noticed.