Read before you write

I have said on more than one occasion that more people write poetry than read poetry. That may be an overstatement, but not by much.

How many people have tried their hand at writing a poem or two? Most literate people have probably done so, at least in their youth. I wrote a few poems myself when I was in college. Fortunately for both me and the world, I chose journalism, not poetry.

Gabriel Zaid

Gabriel Zaid goes even further in So Many Books. He opines that many people write books, or at least think about writing a book or talk about writing a book, without actually reading a book, or without reading very many books. With the ease of self-publishing today, virtually anyone can publish a book. I could very easily assemble my blog posts into a book. I can't imagine anyone actually paying money to buy such a book, however, so I don't go to the trouble. But many other people do something similar. It's so easy. You can write that novel you've been thinking about for years or assemble letters or your sermons or your memoirs or all those poems you wrote in your youth and very quickly have a book with your name on it. How cool would that be?

Zaid puts the thinking of many people into words: "Don't ask me to pay attention to you; pay attention to me. I don't have the time or the money or the desire to read what you've written; I want your time, your money, your desire. Never mind your concerns; what about mine?"

Those words convict me, too. I write a blog, but I rarely read other people's blogs. The same may be true of people who have podcasts or who have accounts on YouTube, or TikTok  or whatever. It is even true in conversations. We want to be heard. Never mind about other people might have to say. Instead of listening, we think about what we will say when it is our turn.

Poet Judson Jerome suggested that writers of little-read books, like poetry, should place a five-dollar bill in each new copy. That way readers would be encouraged ... and rewarded. It's a bad idea — writers of little-read books usually don't have spare cash and it would be too easy to snatch the money without reading the book — but it at least addresses the problem.

Zaid has another idea. He suggests a National Regulatory Board of Supply and Demand that would require that you read so many poems before you could publish one poem or so many books before you could publish your own book. Again, it's a bad idea. Do we really want government telling us when we can write something or monitoring what we read? Those barely literate celebrities who hire ghost writers to tell their story would really be stymied.

Yet it is something we should be thinking about. If we want other people to read what we're writing — or hear what we're saying — perhaps we should be more willing to do the same for them.