Absolutely we can and should do both, traditional and digital, or rather “all of the above” (everything that means) when it comes to getting our poems out into the world. For me, I’m just getting started with what I want to do with Medium as my primary publishing platform and I’m excited to see how it develops. I’m not just saying that as a writer, but also as a reader. Every day Medium helps me find great poems and new (to me) poets. Poetry is very much alive!

It would be amazing to see poets fill stadiums, but this conversation about poetry we are having by writing, reading, responding, sharing, interacting, to me is really where it’s at. As Robert Bly said in his Paris Review interview: “The gist of it is that no one writes alone: one needs a community.” This is what we have here on Medium, community.

P.S. I taught English for close to ten years; teaching is indeed an honorable profession.

P.P.S. The full quote by Robert Bly is worth considering: “Donald Hall and I have been sending poems back and forth twice a week for forty years. At one time, we had a forty-eight-hour rule: the other had to answer within forty-eight hours. My generation did a lot with letters. Galway Kinnell and Louis Simpson and Don and I and James Wright would often send five- and six-page typed letters commenting on and arguing with each others’ poems. I’m amazed we had the time for that. Tranströmer and I exchanged hundreds of letters. The gist of it is that no one writes alone: one needs a community.”