[Quiet Man Cometh]

So where does this leave poetry? There is certainly no shortage of magazines that accept poetry, but the majority of those are donation based with volunteer staff.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

To me, it seems like those are just another kind of poetic community. It's honestly one of the reasons I never submit poetry to magazines -- it feels kind of disingenuous to me when I've never even looked at their material before. You have bigger publications, true, but... I don't know, poetry compilations/anthologies have the effect on me of blending all the material together. The idea behind publication would seem to be standing out or making your mark as a poet, but it just seems impossible to me in the postmodern age. It keeps coming back, for me, to the vanity aspect. It's almost as though we have nothing to say anymore and poetry has only become about hearing ourselves -- even when we're reading others' work.

And that certainly sounds nostalgic. I'm certain, but I do think this wasn't as much of a problem the farther you go back in history. For many of the reasons you mentioned above.

[Quiet Man Cometh]

I find that problem too, when reading a poetry collection. I find that, especially when I need to read a poem or set of poems for school or something, that I rush through it or lump things together. I find I'm more impatient to get through them all that even forcing myself to take a break and apsorb what I just read becomes more frustrating than helpful. Times like that I might be better off just reading through the whole lot anyway and seeing what sticks to mind after it's done.

When I read poetry now, I often open a book to a random page and read a random poem on it and then do it again. Breaking up the linear fashion helps to focus on the piece in question. Maybe I'm just too accustomed to think like chapters that one reads through in a clunk to be able to read a poem on it's own, especially when it is part of a section in a book of poem that may as well function as a chapter in a novel.