Poetry Hut Blog
Homer

Poetry News:

1. — This month, your task is to carry on with Coleridge’s unfinished masterpiece Kubla Khan —
2. — Was New American Review the Best Literary Magazine Ever? —
3. — Nike Langston Hughes commercial [you tube] —
4. — “An important piece from poet (and good friend) Stacey Brown on an unethical press and its dealings with her and her book.” —
5. — With a fresh, wry voice, Meghan O’Rourke can make the quotidian sound strange, the same way Joseph Cornell could assemble a magical collage —
6. — One of the problems with political poetry, then, is that like all speech, it exists at the mercy of time, history, and other people. —
7. — 50 Greatest Books: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats —
8. — Lansing Community College Professor Dennis Hinrichsen has won the 12th annual FIELD Poetry Prize for his manuscript, “Kurosawa’s Dog.” —
9. — Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will speak about “The State of the Humanities” at Vanderbilt University, on Friday, Sept. 5, at Ingram Hall at the Blair School of Music. —
10. — Virgil, Monteverdi, James Joyce, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ralph Ellison and Derek Walcott are just a few of the artists to have transformed this spellbinding and mysterious epic into powerful works of their own —

Licking Your Wounds: Scientists Isolate Compound In Human Saliva That Speeds Wound Healing

Poetry News:

1. — ‘Book of hours’ has rare female voice —
2. — Avant-garde cockney slammed for slang that doesn’t rhyme —
3. — Suggested blog topic: The Career Poet and How to Make Money & Influence People —
4. — Job: Associate Editor/Staff Writer - St. Louis Cardinals (St. Louis, MO) —
5. — Editor and translator Cor van den Heuvel is a haiku aficionado whose single-image poems capture moments from my own baseball-centered childhood —
6. — North Jersey also gives Kleinzahler his other great subject: American masculinity, the qualities we attribute to tough guys and men —
7. — As Memorial Day nears, James Winn lauds these works of war poetry —
8. — Ancient poem found on wood strip —
9. — So how much Morse, in iambic pentameters or otherwise, is out there? —

Trouble And Honey (I capped the “and” in the title because I thought it looked better, with that font I used haha.) results:

It’s been just over a week since the blog post that announced the availability of my book. There are just under 300 readers of this blog’s feed (296, according to Feedburner) plus 100-200 actual-human-being-visitors per day, so there are about 400 to 500 regular readers of Poetry Hut Blog every day. The blog tends toward the higher traffic when something negative is going on - scandal, death, po-biz in-fighting, etc.

400 people = daily readership (-ish)

83 downloads of free PDF version of Trouble And Honey = about 20% of readership (or the inverse = 80% were uninterested)

5 individuals donated via PayPal = (6% of 83 downloads; 1.25% of readership) This is better than the .06% that was recently referenced in the NYT, though my sample is way smaller. [link found in the techdirt rss feed thank you]

(Glass is half-empty: 98.75% of readership and 94% of downloaders did not donate.)

13 individual *orders* at Lulu.com = 3.25% of readership or 15.6% of downloaders (though some of the orders were for multiple copies — for example, someone bought 5 at once, maybe a sibling — Lulu.com doesn’t specify who the purchasers are BTW)

So there you have it. Check my math (muscle relaxants LOL).

Thank you & also, Americans, have a nice holiday tomorrow. I’ll be thinking about those who took an oath to defend the US Constitution.

Poetry News:

1. — A book with no words wins major literary award in Australia —
2. — Ancient coffin with scenes from Homer’s poems unearthed —
3. — it can pass for basic Olden-speak, the lingua franca of so many fantasy novels these days —
4. — Fran Brearton finds emotional power in Dear Ghosts, a timely collection of poems by Tess Gallagher —
5. — Defending free speech case leads to documentary [and more here] —
6. — Uni sacks literary board —
7. — Found this via my day job —

Sgt Pepper must die!

Poetry News:

1. A scientific discovery on the trail of Homer —
2. But what do such poets actually do, and are arts funders playing fair? —
3. A city, a writer and the murder that made his name —
4. Her Silence Spoke Volumes —
5. ‘Love’ is a great word to sing —
6. Hidden Stories and Unsung Songs, All for $8 —