My e-Reader and Me

It's no longer poetry month but the juices continue to flow. I want to share one more with you all today, composed in the wee hours while I was on a break from work, so roughly five a. m. I preface by stating that Diane and I both love our Kindle Reader, and that I also am delighted to have Kindle as a source for publishing my own work. There will be more, even if just to salve my own ego. I am sllloooowwwwwwly working on self-promotion, which is the hardest thing about writing. I am no good at it and have no idea how to go about it. What I have learned is that the Field of Dreams mantra does not work: if you write it, they will read. No. You have to spend money to make money, and when you don't have any to spare, publicizing is not going to happen. There are other ways, and I am just learning about them, but the good old fashioned get a publisher to do all the work idea is still relegated to the handful of authors good enough and lucky enough to build their audience and get nice contracts. The fact is that the publishing industry has seen a boon in self-publishing. I think something like three quarters of a million books were published on Kindle in 2012. Like poetry -- more people write it than read it now. With that in mind, here's my poem for the day. By the way, the name in the poem is an esoteric reference to a character from Season One of the Original Star Trek. //e-Reader /Dinosaurs with broken spines, /Smelling ancient but alive, /Wander down the corridors /Spirited by steadfast hands, /Awaited by eager eyes, /Weighty, solid, full. /The arts are dying, /Kept only as remembrances /Within Samuel T. Cogley’s /Traveling library show. /I can hold a thousand books /In one hand, or just one single volume, /A treasure of pain and sweat /And cooperation, /A wormhole to ideas undreamed /Yet dreamed and dreamed /And poured upon the page, /Ink grown dark on tinted wood pulp. /I can push a forward button /Or flip a stone carved slab /But one thing on my e-reader /I haven’t learned to do /Is jump from page 157 /Back to page 42.