What's Poetry Worth? [tm]: Jeff Clark's MUSIC AND SUICIDE

Welcome back: today let's discuss Jeff Clark's slickly-packaged Music and Suicide now available in paperback from FSG. The hardcover was released during National Poetry Month 2004. The paperback a year later. Our shopper, Slappy, found this unread paperback copy for $4.50.

At the asslord online book company it's still available in hardcover (with 33 new and used copies also available) for $4.72 and up. That's basically what it will cost you in online shipping. That's the hardcover. The paperback, realeased not quite a year ago, is available for $3.02 (although has a worse sales rank: hardcovers make better presents, it seems).

I remember like it was an episode of "Lost" how a certain blogger declared how this book was being used to discredit all books by young poets or somesuch. How's that working out? Although bullshit terms like "post-avant" don't actually represent any group of writers I know about, I don't know that Jeff Clark's little book represented anything new other than the FSG imprint on the spine (If there are poets out there that are saying, Why yes! I am post-avant! raise your hand. It is a term used by old people to talk about young people. Nothing smarter than that. The way some people still talk about "rap". i.e. I just don't like all that "rap". I'm more into Jim Croce.). It is a book that, like most books of poetry, finds a place on a few bookselves and gets forgotten.

Clark's not even in Legitimate Dangers, everyone's favorite lame-ass anthology. Did he have *too* many books? Was he *too* successful? Some people had the good sense to hang up on the editors when they called, maybe that was it. Clark's better known than 99% of the poets in that anthology, and still when poetry meets the real world the real world doesn't buy it.

Thanks for playing our game.