Dear fellow Substackers and subscribers to Potter Poems, one and all:
A few of you have kindly forked over some dollars to support my effort here. (Thank you, thank you, thank you!) I’ve tried to give a nod to your kindness by offering a little extra exclusively for y’all. In doing this, I’ve never taken anything away from the lovely unpaid subscribers (whom I love as well, even if they are too broke and/or miserly to pay a poor poet his due).
No, rather than depriving anyone of anything I was doing prior to accepting payments, I instead actually redoubled my efforts and worked harder to provide extra poetry above and beyond what I had been producing.
I realize that in these times of information overload (and even poetry overload) my constant posting and then extra posting was not necessarily felt by everyone as a good thing, but more like: “Jesus Christ, another Potter Poem to deal with.” You’d prefer I post less-frequent and more-better poems. I totally understand that, and I don’t blame anyone for scrolling past—half the time or even 9 times out of 10.
I sort of think of this Substack as if I were a painter with a little studio right on the main street of our little town, next to a tavern, an antique shop, a candy store, a toy store, etc., where my policy is that if I’m in here working (“Poetry in Process”), anyone can pop in and have a look around or just take a quick glance—or walk by on the other side of the street and avoid me altogether.
The select few paying customers can venture into my secret room containing the same sort of stuff—not better or worse—but set aside just for kicks and, yes, with the sneaky idea of enticing folks to join the exclusive club of paying customers and patrons of the poet, and so increase my reserves of beer money and cover my child support payments….
I wonder if anyone has read this far. If you have—or if you’ve wisely skipped to the end—we now come to the crux of the matter. I’m about to go into the guts of the Potter Poems subscriber settings and grant everyone a month of paid status. For you paying folks, that means you’ll get an extra month for free. For you lovely freeloaders, you get a month of access to even more Potter poetry than you probably really want. But on the other hand, maybe you’ve been a little curious about what you’ve been missing. (
Bartender, drinks all around! (And by drinks, I mean poems, of course!)
& happy 4/20 to u, too!!
Hello my name is Stan and I’m an alcoholic. I am strangely addicted to the consumption of all forms of Potter poetry in hopes that by trying to analyze these amazing gems that I will unlock the secrets that will make me a better poet.