Congratulations Dog Poet!

Poetry doesn’t have a tremendously large readership in general.  Many poetry chapbooks and collections actually receive more submissions than they print copies of the chapbook itself, and these chapbooks and collections rarely sell out a printing.

The key seems to be finding a niche and serving it as much as possible.  Maybe your niche will be angry black lesbians who work office jobs and feel frustrated and isolated by the world around them.  This would be a good niche to pick, and many’s the successful poet who has played on this niche.  Maybe you could write Russian-style tone poems about living under an oppressive government and feeling as if your life is constantly threatened.  This might have a smaller audience, but it can still work if you play it right.

Or you can find a completely unserved audience for poetry: dogs.

That’s what you do.  You’re a poet who writes dog poems.  We don’t mean you write poems made up of woofs, barks, bow-wows and arfs.  No, that’s bullshit.  That’s the equivalent of dog blackface.  What you do is write poems that dogs can read, understand and enjoy.

Mostly this consists of small amounts of posturing and presenting really distinct odors to your readership.  You’ll smear shit, grass, people’s clothing, and an array of delicious meats on the page. Every printing you manage to publish will run out in weeks.  You’ll be one of a handful of poets to warrant second, even third printings. Your Bacon Book will be especially popular.

But criticism will follow your success.  Reviewers, none of whom are dogs, will pan your poems for their lack of authentic dog cultural markers.  Reviewers will claim that a real dog poet would make poems where he barks and sniffles and howls at the moon, never mind that dogs almost never do that last bit.

It’ll be frustrating, but today a dog is going to run up to you and rub his head into your leg while holding a copy of your book in his mouth.  You’ll pat him on the head and tell him how good a boy he is.  His tail will wag and the two of you will stare deeply into one another’s eyes for five whole minutes before he runs back to his bewildered owner.

It’ll be moments like that one that make it all worthwhile.

Congratulations Dog Poet!