or POETRY PULSE
by David D. Horowitz
“Give me poetry or give me death!”
“I have not yet begun to sell poetry!”
“I regret that I have but one life to live for poetry.”
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to publish a ridiculously underrated, overlooked poet—do it!”
As the founder and manager of Rose Alley Press, I have often silently screamed such bowdlerized famous declamations. Publish books featuring rhymed metrical poetry? You’ll need ten dragons’ worth of fire in your belly to survive the readings to which five or six flock; a store’s sale of one copy of your books every few months; staying up until two a.m. sending e-mail messages promoting readings and books, then waking at 5:45 a.m. for your day job; the page-thin margins of financial survival, and the massive discounting through middle-men that prompts survivors to sell through local independents, at book fairs, and directly to friends and supporters. Publishing?—glorious and brutal, like life itself. But I embrace the challenge! Like John Dryden surviving a brutal attack in Rose Alley on December 18, 1679, I will endure, respond, and prevail. Give me poetry or give me death!
I have literary friends, to be sure—poets whose work I published; bookstore events coordinators who schedule readings and the occasional journalist who publicizes them; audiences for our work, which, yes, can number twenty, thirty, forty, or more per event—as well as the occasional two or four or five. And my other friends—the great dead poets! Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare (“Shakes-without-a-peer”), Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, my mentor William Dunlop and his favorite, Philip Larkin (“Bill and Phil”). My friends, teachers, prods, and sometimes obstacles—I cherish them all. There are also my international favorites: Homer, Martial, Ovid, Tu Fu, Gongora, Heine, and others. Such lively companions!
So I continue to live in a one-room apartment, amidst my myriad boxes of books, notebooks, and scrawled-on napkins. I continue to cultivate seeds of poems that yield a bud, a blossom, a flower that I need to draw in words. These seeds, for me, often rhyme and are iambic. I love the power of pattern in poetry—not the negative stereotype of “true/blue, moon/June” metronomic cliché-mongering, but subtly tuneful music that reflects how words carom off and complement each other. If I can ignite an occasional heart to share that passion, I feel I’ve succeeded as a publisher. To date the thirteen titles of Rose Alley Press have sold slightly over 4,500 copies, or roughly 350 copies per title. Hardly blockbusters—but, given my day job, enough to sustain Rose Alley Press. Since its founding in November 1995, I have organized, sponsored, and participated in hundreds of featured readings and open mic performances. I expend much energy—but absorb much back from the work, the tradition, and the audiences, who, like me, need the music of poetry in their pulse.