Why and how  

Shanna Compton has a thoughtful and optimistic response to my (throwaway) comment below about Chris Hamilton-Emery's poetry publishing piece. I think I agree with almost every point she made, which makes me think we just read the article differently. Unlike Shanna, I don't have any experience with the whole apparatus of the poetry business (or with Salt), so maybe as a result I was fixated more on its unapproachability than the possibility of sidestepping it altogether (which for me, as not yet a poet, seems like the default approach, and not the other way around). Let me just state unequivocally -- and this was the point I guess I was trying to make below, albeit elliptically -- that I think there's plenty to get excited about in the world of poetry right now. It's just that to me the excitement is all wrapped up with technology and the rise of an open source/free content ethic on the internet... so, blogs. Poets are using blogs to raise their profiles, reinforce community, even to sell their work -- and all this would seem to come at the expense of traditional poetry publishing operations. No? It's these will wilting business hoops (as described (ironically? but not entirely) by the Salt piece) I found depressing, not the new energy.