With all the internet publishing, poets still need to have a book in their hands. It is tangible like a business card, something that you can show others and at times, make a few bucks. It’s not the money, but the feeling that you have received appreciation and recognition. The bottom line is, we want to share our art.
There are still poets who want nothing to do with the internet. They believe in books. They believe in turning the pages with their hands. They believe in carrying the weight on their shoulders. It is not a burden but pleasure.
You are thinking–as the illustration indicates–of a single person with a single book: the individual reading. But that’s a somewhat idealized image. What happens if you multiply the books? There are certain subjects I have researched, and research involved my going to the library to hunt out various books, some of which were useful, others not. I have exited the library with a pile of books which, I assure you, was no pleasure to carry. As a research tool, the internet is vaster (more up to date, more wide-ranging) than the Encyclopedia Britannica. It is better than a thesaurus, a superb dictionary that includes etymologies. A person reading a single book–a novel, a book of poems, etc.–in a chair is in a way a vacation from reading: a vacation from reading as an adventure of ideas; the reader as the intersection point of a multiplicity of minds. The internet recognizes this aspect of reading and allows us to explore it. That it seems to me is its great value. Of course we will need books. There are things you can’t find on the internet which you can find in books–just as there are things you can’t find in books that you can find on the internet. The image of the single person with the single book–whose pages can be touched and turned–has its charm, but we should remember that that image also represents a retreat from the deepest aspects of reading.