a review of sorts

the impromptu purchase of my chapbook this weekend by a poet i met this season at the poetry center writes this morning and says he had to keep reading.

he liked my book, essentially.

which is the point, i guess.

i'm not exactly sure what the point is. as i sit here and contemplate another book order because i've nearly gone through the whole first order (total about 36 books), not many, but certaintly not none.

do i want to sell more?

i'm not sure. i certainly like the book. is that reason enough?

why am i selling it any way?

because people ask for my work, is that reason enough?

i don't know.

there is an emily dickinson line about publication being the auction of the mind of man.

that line strikes me. perhaps she was able to keep from being hypocritical about it by not publishing. she didn't auction her mind. the few poems she did publish in her lifetime were heavily altered, so the story goes.

i understand why she would hold them back if they were to be treated so.

but this is not the case for me, i have the freedom to print my lines as i see fit. to write my lines and leave them unedited (as i'm inclined to do).

so it is a different approach all together.

i wonder, if she had the opportunity i have, to write and self-publish, would she?

does it really matter what she'd have done or do now?

not really.

i'm still turning over the same cud in my mind. to publish or not to publish.

that will ever be my question. and while i can do it on my own, by my own terms, i at least feel it is the right way to do it.

one cannot keep a thing hidden that is meant to be for the masses, i believe that. cream rises. someone once said that to me.