Thanks for comming!

Hi folks:  I hope you enjoyed K. D. Jospe's posts last week as much as I did! She did a fantasic job as guest poet and I want to say thank you again! Some of you may be new to this blog and may not know it's mission so let me take a moment and explain myself. for those of you more familiar with it feel free to jump ahead but you may want to read id anyway becausein the nearly three years I've had this blog up and running I'm not entirly sure if I ever mentioned it before. For those of you who don't know my name is Lawrence R. Berger and I'm also known in some circles as  "Laughing" Larry Berger. for the past 17 years now I've been making my living promoting poets and poetry across the US and I've recentlyopened markets for myself and my clients in India, Europe and Asia.  Before I started in poetry I spent 30 years as a salesman dealing with varring produtcs ranging from Tonerto Toothpaste and Apple Sauce to Oil Wells.  I decied on poetry because I saw that while a lot of poets go to readings and try to sell chapbooks and CD's and such the prevaling wisdome is that there is no money in it. so I did some reasearch and foundthat while the average poet only sold 50-100 copies of a chapbook per title there were so many peole doing it that the US market alone was a wopping $ 1.3 Billion (Yes I said Billion with a B.)  with the internet that market has obviously expanded world wide. Upon further investgation I found five other "markets" for poetry and  like I said I've been suporting myself in the industry for 17 years now.

When I started I found that you got credibility from you own succses so I aprecenticed my self for three years under the guidance of the Los Angeles Poetry Community( Artist including: James "Bommer" Maverick, Rafael FJ Alvarado, S. A. Griffin Etc.) L.A. got to expensive to maintain so I moved back to my home town of Rochester, NY six years ago I soon found that there were a lot fewer readings in rochester than thier were in LA soI had to change and evolve but It's here that I learned forms and started actualy studying the craft of poetry and developed my own form. I've taught for the University and  last December I released the third edition of my collection Instant Poetry (Just Add Words !) to the world wide market.  About for years ago I tried setting up a web site. I had it up for a year and advertisted it but it never got a single hit. so I started this blog, within a month I had 100 hits  so I've kept it going and it now gest about 1,000 hits a week .

Whew, Well that's the history lesson for this week.

here's a list of some readings I'l be at in the near future. if your around, come check em out!:

1. 8th Annual National Poetry Month celebration at Lift Bridge Books  
4/17/11 1-5 P. M. Sunday 45 Main ST. Brockport, NY visit http://www.liftbridgebooks.com/ for more details.

2. 4/26/11 8-11 P.M. Tuesday The Tango Cafe