self promotion?

I have been reading A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinzie. It is a very technical book, for people dedicated to the study and writing of poetry. I must admit some of it is quite beyond me.

However, I can’t help but feel the passion Ms. Kinzie has for her subject. This endorsement on the cover says it well:

“Mary Kinzie’s A Poet’s Guide to Poetry is an exacting, thorough and loving book about the excitements and technical intimacies of poetry. I don’t know any other book that speaks so lucidly and says so much about the formal life of poetry and how poetry lives that life inside us.” W. S. Di Pietro.

Yesterday I googled Ms. Kinzie and came across this fascinating essay (or whatever – this writing seems, in a way, almost a collage of prose poems) by her. In the paragraph below, she puts into words something I’ve felt in my gut for a while now about the self-promotion one must supposedly do in order to be noticed, read, bought and considered successful as a writer:

“The surer I became about the mystery of words in time, the more intricate the disdain of the professionals around me. This was a world in which there was a constant encouragement to promote onself, to mention every little mention of oneself. To be your own entrepreneur. Deadly to art. I tried not to play, but did just a little – enough so that I neither made a good showing among them nor kept my heart pure. Caving in “just a little” is the hateful side of humiliation, for one is driven by fear of going under, by doing nothing. This anxiety doesn’t end with a small cowardice. It is a world based on worry, because they themselves are always heartily, greedily worrying, scratching the sand of their little plots of earth.”

In contrast, I think of the words of Jesus in Matthew 6, where He concludes:

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear.’(or ‘Will I get read and published? Will people buy my book?) For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:31-33

This surely goes against the common wisdom to relentlessly self-promote often dispensed on blogs like this one. But somehow, I can’t help but think it’s the way God wants us to live and work. If what we write is to the advantage of His kingdom and His glory, He will see to its promotion in ways we never dreamed.