Could anyone be as fortunate as Emily Dickinson today?

http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/  (Click here if you love Emily)

The introduction in my copy of Barnes & Noble Classics “The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson” informs me that her poems were almost never found.  Quite by coincidence Emily’s sister found the poems in a box, gave them to someone who knew someone and 60 years later the rest was history.  Emily was descended from the mighty and renowned Lowell’s of Massachusetts.  You could almost say that to be published and revered was her destiny. 

However, her poetic majesty came about or almost didn’t come about under precarious circumstances.  Thankfully and especially to those of the 50’s and 60’s, mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers carried the weight of poetry and literatures consumption percentage and that they passed those contents (whether we wanted it or not, usually boys) on to us as best as we’d receive them.  Emily became the bar for which American literary feminism was measured for a while.

Enjoying Emily as I do I think about my own poems and about the poems of those poets that neither I nor the rest of the world know.  What if no one finds our poems in a box?  What if they don’t know someone who knows someone?  Or, a scenario that is more and more likely, we are not descended from a literary family? Do you see a dreadful yet real pattern forming here?  Are you sick of the questions? ;O/

It must have been a kinder time for poets.  Huh, yeah right!  When I think how much easier it is for poets and writers today with teaching, editing and writing copy or schlep work.  Not to mention the internet.  There are online communities for writers and poets where we can showcase our talents.  We can obtain Fantasy Fame via blogs, like this one.  Emily Dickinson wrote beautifully intense and emotionally electric poems.  She didn’t have the benefit of Twitter, Facebook, Fictionaut (which I love and support), Wordpress, etc, etc. yet somehow she managed to publish (albeit posthumously) and become royalty. 

So what do the rest of us do?  We don’t seem to be in too different a world when you boil it down.  It still comes down to knowing someone who knows someone if you want to get published.  Unless you are the rare can’t miss and I would really hate to apply that here.  So, let’s not, right?  I don’t know about you but most poets and writers aren’t the hor d’oeuvres and champagne type.  Personally I love a good soiree but I and those like me are an exception.  Outside of the MFA program if one is fortunate enough to get in where will we do our networking?  Online networking has a high degree of creepiness.  I have yet to hear of a poets and writers chamber of commerce and that would be ugly.  Poets and writers shouldn’t hand out business cards while chugging 2 buck chuck and cheese on a Ritz in a joint that’s going to collect half the membership dues for hosting.   

This got me thinking about the Slate article, MFA vs. NYC (http://www.slate.com/id/2275733/ ) and all that other stuff and it sort of depressed me. 

I know that in the end we need to find our own way to get published and share our art with the world.  But the pessimist in me keeps thinking, what if Emily’s sister, dear old inquisitive Lavinia, had thrown the box out?  (Shudder)