Sacrilegious as it sounds, Dickinson's poetry is so well known that most of you are probably trying out a stanza right now to either of those tunes. These days Dickinson's poetry is known throughout the world, but only a few poems made it to the press in her lifetime. Poets have always had difficulty getting their work to the public. It hasn't changed much since Dickinson's time.
Poets still face an uphill battle.
At Powell's Bookstore in Portland, Oregon, Clare and Jim Nail are trying out a different kind of gumball machine. If I only had a Brain. That doesn't happen very often. Except where there's a gumball poetry machine. Two years ago, Ben Parzybok and Laura Moulton were living in Taiwan teaching English and starving for poetry.