eBooks and poetry?

Rachel Dacus has been looking into ways the eBook revolution has changed our poetry reading habits. Short answer. Don’t look to eBooks for poetry:

I paged through the Kindle bookstore and was aghast to find they don’t even have a CATEGORY for Poetry. Some eBook revolution. Finally I located a few titles with the word “poetry” in them, and a few public domain classics like Leaves of Grass which they at least sell for only 99 cents (free elsewhere on the Internet, I might add).

Then I tried the Sony eBook reader and was happily surprised to discover that Sony at least has actually heard of university presses and carries some poetry books by actual living recognized poets, such as Yusef Komunyakaa, Amy Gerstler, Charles Bernstein. However, only 32 poetry collections appear in their whole catalog!

Then I tried poetry anthologies. At both Amazon and Sony, most anthologies were either of 19th century poets or had titles like “How to Survive the Worst Day of Your Life by Writing a Poem About It”.

Apparently, small press publishing isn’t even a blip on the radar in this new publishing paradigm. I guess it’s still all about the money and bestsellers. What a surprise.

Rachel also includes a link to the next generation in eBooks, one that lets you flip the pages.

Color me luddite.

Possibly related posts:

Poetry vs ideology

Beginning National Poetry Month

Top 100 poetry blogs

First Annual Ruth Redel Poetry Prize

Helen Losse, Poetry Editor

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