Cosmopoetica

[CC licensed image by draggin] 

Despite suffering from a lack of focus (or an essential pointlessness… take your pick), false analogies, and that old-man odor and monochromatic hue that comes with too much time inside the “Golden Age” fallacy, David Alpaugh’s article “The New Math of Poetry” is worth a few quick minutes of any poetry reader’s or writer’s time.

For the poetry reader, Alpaugh’s article represents a common paradox: he at once bemoans the lack of gatekeepers that we had in the good old days while bewailing the efforts of those very kind of gatekeepers in the modern, leaden era. It seems to me that Alpaugh’s thesis of a sea of mediocrity is belied by a bit of simple browsing. It’s not hard to find good writing… and not that much harder to find great writing.

Sure, it’s easy at the library—or even the stacks of your nearest chain bookstore—to find great writing from the past, because the effects of time and limits on shelf space have contributed to a winnowing that has resulted in the small set we see on the shelves. If Alpaugh thinks the filtering through publishing was effective X number of years ago, he ought to visit a library or collection that truly reflects what was published and shared in that time… I’ll bet dollars to donuts that he’ll find then, as now, that Sturgeon’s Law was true and reflected clearly in what was published.

For the poetry writer—actually for one who wants to publish, since the two activities aren’t absolutely intertwined—it’s a common (but I think easily solved) dilemma. We can mourn the passing of artificially, extremely limited channels of publication… or we can undertake to participate in a new model based on a culture of abundance. The latter demands that we first question what the point of publishing is: to reach readers or for some kind of cachet, whether cultural or academic? Do you want readers, or do you want entries on your vitae? Do you want to write or simply be known as a writer?

If the answer is to reach readers, then (the first steps of) the solution are obvious: stop trying to publish within the new mechanism as if one is inside the old. Stop “publishing” with the idea in mind of one-off, static publications that appear slowly and disappear quickly. Think instead of participating in your publication, allowing for (and responding to) comments, creating anthologies and remixes, and publishing and promoting the work of others alongside your own. If you publish in traditional outlets, ask for the right to publish to the web using a Creative Commons license—simultaneously or later. Create a presence through social networks and social media to get the word out about your work and, more importantly, to facilitate (mostly incidental) promotion of your work by others. It’s not rocket science, it’s diligence.

There’s no question that there’s a lot of bad writing out there. The proportion of bad writing to good writing is arguably the same; the sheer volume is inarguably greater. But Alpaugh doesn’t seem to recognize that filtering systems have also evolved. When I say that it’s easy to find good poetry with a bit of browsing, I’m not referring to searching Google for the word poetry. I’m talking about being a participant in the vibrant and constantly growing poetry “infosphere,” which sets into motion mechanisms of reputation and referral not unlike what is still the most reliable way to discover great poetry: word of mouth. I can find good poetry any time by seeing what poems are being touted and Twittered and what publications are being fondled and Facebooked. A web feed reader allows me to quickly identify the work that is being loved and linked within a vast network of blogs of all kinds (those of writers, those of readers, those of collectors) by people interested in poetry from the ancient to the avant garde. The key in this new world is participation, not continuing a tradition of passivity.

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I just discovered that Carmine Starnino, who wrote the “Lazy Bastardism” notebook entry I referred to yesterday, blogs via the véhicule press blog. Go check it out!

Apparently Starnino has even linked here before (w/r/t Jason Guriel). I missed that too.

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Amy King has another longish post on “The Weenie Roast” (aka the Publishers Weekly Top 10, which I posted about twice before). I recommend reading both of Amy’s posts and considering the issue for yourself.

In her most recent entry, Amy gets at the heart of my disagreement. Funny thing is, I essentially agree with her on the basic notion that the PW list is suspect. But I can’t agree with two important points:

1) I won’t condemn the authors on the PW list or hyper-focus on their gender because of their inclusion in the list. Victor Lavalle’s novel Big Machine is a great read, male protagonist or no. Blake Bailey’s biography of John Cheever is entertaining and– judging from the lack of complaints– relatively accurate… a welcome entry even if it is, as Amy King so eloquently puts it, “all about a man.”

2) I don’t believe that authors of fiction have a single, required mission/responsibility as Amy King does. She writes:

“I dare say that very few of those books on the list will bear the responsibility I see writers as having:  to be critics of the usual, old dominant ideals and to expose those ideals rather than simply transmitting them yet again.  That involves telling stories unheard and bearing witness to injustices as well as ways of being that debunk these tireless violent notions of conquering lands and peoples or just the world in our immediate vicinities.  Because frankly, those kinds of stories have been over-told and lead down a worn-out road far too often taken.”

No, the books on this list don’t bear that “responsibility” and thank God for that! There are a few straw (sorry) men in this single paragraph, the most relevant and obvious being that if a work of fiction doesn’t take on this social role, the story will be “over-told” and take a “worn-out road.” This simplistic notion is belied by examples of the books themselves, such as Lavalle’s funny, moving, sometimes surreal novel.

Incidental note: WILLA’s list isn’t much of an antidote, being as undifferentiated as it is. I can’t determine what the list is trying to accomplish, but if WILLA is really trying to make a selection of the best books of the year by women, it needs to avoid tokenism of its own, for example Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood, a decidedly mediocre novel by an often outstanding author.

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Following up on my earlier post about the Publishers Weekly controversy, I thought I’d highlight two of the more interesting related items I’ve come across:

• Salon’s Laura Miller has a reasonable and—more importantly—realistic, non-abstract article about the whole kerfluffle.
• WILLA, which posted the press release I linked to before, has a wiki page where readers can contribute titles of books they think could have been on the list.

The WILLA List provides many titles that go beyond the usual suspects… which is good, because the immediate reaction to the list seemed to be to list a number of well-known authors with books out—Atwood, Dove, Kingsolver, Lorrie Moore, etc—that weren’t particularly great even if they were by famous authors with many better books to their credit.

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Amy King shares this press release condemning the Publisher’s Weekly 2009 Best Books list(s). You can read it and judge for yourself, but it is thought-provoking. I have a couple of thoughts:

1. (and Amy King took great offense to this) There’s a mathematical argument being made that is much less interesting than an argument that could be made involving actual books. Saying “there should be X out of 10” (which is wholly problematic for any method of determing “X”) is much less effective than saying “here are books that should have made the list” or “here’s an alternative list—isn’t that better?”
2. Being disproportionate relative to the population doesn’t necessarily mean being biased. We this reality in evidence all the time—look at sports, voting, what have you. That being said, having no male authors on the Top 10 list is more suspicious than having 27 on the Top 100.
3. By a quick reckoning, my reading over the past year or so has been composed of about 40% female authors (more than 1/3, not as much as 1/2). However, the proportion of female poets is much higher than female authors of fiction or non-fiction.
4. Given my experience composing my own “Fine Fifteen” lists, I simply can’t dismiss the possibility that the PW Top 10’s demographic composition isn’t simply happenstance. I don’t think I’m a sexist (but then all sexists would say that). But I’m absolutely sure that artificially balancing my lists would’ve been dishonest.
5. In the end, I don’t care about creating a mathematical balance. I care about quality. Which is why an argument about a list of books that doesn’t involve proposing alternatives ends up being as shadowy and uninteresting (relatively) as an argument about poetry is when compared to an argument about poems.

Read the press-release and consider it for yourself!

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Support your favorite small presses by buying books, broadsides and little magazines today. A few of my favorite small presses:

• Firewheel Editions (home of the fabulous Sentence prose poetry journal)
• Pavement Saw Press
• Ugly Duckling Press
• The Poetry Project
• BlazeVOX (Skip Fox’s book For To is fantastic)

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[photo by thinredjellies]

Despite attacks by Charles Bernstein, Richard Howard, and others, April continues to be National Poetry Month. I understand– but don’t share– their antipathy. Honestly, I find most of the protestation to be rather ridiculous and contrived. What’s left then appears to be mostly a symptom of typical elitism (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in every incarnation) by those who don’t exactly turn against their "oppressors" and the mainstream at every opportunity. I see Howard and Bernstein have appeared multiple times in that most reviled of mainstream publications, Poetry magazine… and they continue to allow their work to appear and be promoted on various mainstream sites, including that of the Academy of American Poets (founders of NaPoMo). One would think that if these kinds of publications and groups are so dangerous to poetry, these in-the-know sophisticates wouldn’t allow themselves to be used so mercilessly by them!

At any rate, readers of poetry will always fall along a continuum with most being mainstreamers in the fat-belly of the statistical curve followed by smaller groups focused primarily on the classics, popular and humorous verse, and the avant/experimentalists. If the most common avant public party line is true, and the mainstream of today represents a respected tradition whose time has passed, then I don’t see the harm in most National Poetry Month activities being geared towards those readers. After all, the vast majority of those reading and writing new poetry came out of the mainstream world. I find it unlikely that NaPoMo drives many readers away from poetry and I have first-hand experience seeing those activities bring new readers in.

Nor is there anything stopping those who desire to move people away from (out of, past… whatever) the mainstream from using the attention brought by NaPoMo to help do so. I’m sure that subversion would be at least one characteristic of arguments from those who proclaim their independence and avant-garde-ness while also taking advantage of the publications put out by and featuring the readers for which they can barely disguise their contempt.

Paying particular recognition to something at a particular time doesn’t necessarily mean we aren’t paying enough attention the rest of the time nor is it necessarily an excuse to pay only superficial attention, claiming a dedication that isn’t earned in some approved way. Most of the time, those arguments are ascribing qualities to something that are a projection of the claimant’s agenda. NaPoMo’s an imperfect solution to the "poetry problem." It’s not nearly enough; it focuses mostly on a narrow range of poetries; it’s not a replacement for the very real issues of the way poetry is taught in school, perceived by general readers, etc. But it’s something… and it’s something that’s more good than bad. Why not spend the energy spent protesting and make sure that the writers and poetries you like are represented? And if you already are, throw the NaPoMo label on it and snare a few extra people you might not have reached otherwise.

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Over at One Poet’s Notes, Ed Byrne has a really good idea: the recently rich Poetry Foundation should partner up to keep Parnassus alive as a partner publication for the evolving Poetry magazine. I like the changes in Poetry but there is a limited amount of space to fit an increase the quantity and type of reviews and commentary they publish. This would be a perfect fit…

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Man writes bland article about Paul McCartney for the New Yorker. Blogger comments on article’s blandness. Much unintended hilarity ensues. The funny lesson here is that the “writer” who is upset comes off looking so poorly prepared for his job, while the “blogger who is not a writer by virtue of being a blogger” is in every way more professional and interesting to read.

In an amusing demonstration of irony, John Colapinto– through his own attack on a blogger– turns a blog into a vehicle clearly demonstrating his lack of facility with the medium. It seems unlikely that John intended to proclaim to the world that he is a thin-skinned traditionalist.

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The question being asked by Dana Goodyear (and many, many others) remains: is Ruth Lilly’s 200 million dollar bequest to Poetry good for poetry? Depending on how you look at it this could mean the same thing as asking whether it will make poetry more popular. It might have to do with having the effect of higher quality (better) poems. Both of these could well be in opposition to each other.

What I do know is the gift was generous and quixotic, which I admire, and financially horribly unsound, which is almost inexplicable were it not that these three attributes so often come together. I’m glad Poetry is recognizing Jack Prelutsky– though it should first honor Shel Silverstein, the giant upon whose shoulders Prelutsky wobbles– because his unabashedly childish poems were instrumental in my daughter developing an affinity for poetry. His book A Pizza the Size of the Sun was a nightly read-out-loud for a good span between Good Night, Moon and Silverstein’s books, which eventually led to Emily Dickinson and many other “adult” poets.

But will Poetry expand to put some much needed light on the Post-Avant crew? The flarfists? The New Brutalists? Will it start supporting the truly vital small, micro, and individual press efforts? Not co-opting, but supporting and recognizing them? Many movements are borne of– and necessitate– the conflict of being opposite and other, and that will remain so. But the other beautiful aspect of turning on the light is that shallow and highly temporal movements will also be revealed for what they are. Some will see their 15 minutes end as they rightly should, some will morph into new movements and styles, others will simply dry up and disappear, left in memory as strange entities that were much more interesting and attractive as ideas than in their execution…

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Richard Powers on why he never touches a keyboard unless he has to, speech recognition, and the power and utility of the human voice.

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Bob Holman, Poetry Guide, has posted his selection for the Top 10 books of poetry published in 2006. What are your picks?

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From 1993-2004, the number of books in the poetry/drama category of US trade publications grew almost four times over. I have no numbers, but I imagine that small press and online publications grew at least 100x. The decline of mainstream poetry publication– like the decline of poetry publication in general– is a myth.

We can still argue whether more or less of that poetry is any good (I’ll stick with Sturgeon’s Law, generally, though undoubtedly the newest and most avant-garde work is happening online). We can also still argue whether or not poetry has any real role in most peoples’ lives anymore (unfortunately, I don’t think it does now; I do believe there was a time when it was important to a much higher percentage of people and was much more relevant to our culture). But to maintain that only the small press is publishing poetry is just silly. Even rhetorically it’s non-sensical, otherwise the post-avant crowd wouldn’t be so worked up about the poor quality of– and (ironically) their own exclusion from– the mainstream.

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Eric Rosenfield thinks the short story is dead and then points to a dissection of the Best American Short Stories as proof!? BAS hasn’t been representative of the most vital aspects of the short story for decades (if ever). It, like the Best American Poetry series, is representative of a very narrow, exceedingly mainstream slice of its chosen genre. They are both comprised largely of stories from the biggest magazines and presses byt the Usual Suspects of the moment. If you want to make a judgment, at least open your eyes to the whole range of what is available, not the narrowest, staidest of anthologies. The only thing shown so far is that Best American Short Stories is predictable.
Judging only from Best American Poetry, one would think poetry completely moribund as well… and yet it couldn’t be further from the truth. For better or for worse, we are in the midst of a poetry renaissance. Poetry, like short fiction, has grand days ahead of it, not only because there are remarkable talents, but because everything technological is in their favor: the market shift to the long tail, podcasting, alternative reading devices, microformats and usable small-payment and independent subscription and production systems…

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Being a book reviewer must be fun if only for the occasional chance to sharpen one’s knives on some inane romance writer’s leathery hide.

[cosmopoetica reviews jong clitoris nixon]

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I’ve only read a few random Updike novels, though I have enjoyed a lot of his short stories, essays, and critical pieces. Watching a long interview with him on BookTV, it struck me how happy he is. Perpetually grinning, discussing even the most serious topics with a sly twinkle in his eye, Updike is clearly someone who is pretty content with who and what he has become. And why not? He has had a pretty charmed career.

Also interesting was how differently his generation approached being a writer. It must create an entirely different internal landscape to conceive of creative writing of fiction, poetry, and critical essays as a career based fundamentally on craft that one can choose to pursue first in life and that one can expect to be suitably compensated for. Imagine deciding in college to just be a writer as one chooses to be an insurance salesman or a draftsman. Does anyone think that way anymore, at least at the outset?

People make a living through writing in these genres, but their numbers are small and I suspect almost all would admit to their good fortune, such writing being something done in one’s spare time…

[cosmopoetica updike]

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Lone Star Statements, by Matthew Baldwin

“Recently, Time magazine published a list of the 100 best novels. But the praise of professional critics hardly matters to the book-reviewing readers at Amazon.com. A compilation of the best of the worst… about the best.”

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Gleaning from various blog posts and references, I’ve compiled a list of journals and zines that I should be reading (in the area of contemporary, other-than-mainstream, poetry). Many of them are unfamiliar to me and I’ll be ordering most of them. What’s missing?

• 6×6
• 32Poems
• 88
• Carve
• Chain
• Combo
• Crowd
• Fence
• Filling Station
• Good Foot
• Kiosk
• Lipstick Eleven
• Magazine Cypress
• Quid
• Small Town
• Spinning Jenny
• Syllogism
• The Canary
• The Hat
• The Poker
• The Tangent
• The Tiny
• Zazil

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Remember when Alan Sokal published a gibberish paper in Social Text and people around the world proclaimed the death of postmodern literary theory and the exposure of the post-structuralist Emperor’s lack of clothes?

Now that MIT students have done the same thing in a scientific journal, I expect all those pathetic naysayers to join hands and proclaim the death of science the scientific method…

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Brennen Wysong responds to Nathaniel Tarn’s letter to The Poker (if you aren’t a subscriber, you should be). Besides feeling a small shiver of recognition in Brennen’s feelings trying to understand Steven Evans, I too thought that Tarn’s letter got at something important about the way contemporary poets and poetry work.

Tarn’s contention that almost every poet in the world is a creative writing teacher is just a bit of overblown rhetoric, but with a core of truth. A significant number of poets teach. I imagine many more would choose to make their living that way if they could (assuming it must be better than teaching some other subject they care less about, working as a programmer, or whatever they might be doing). However, if you step outside of the circled wagons of the mainstream press and the just-below-the-A-list names who aren’t able to make a living on writing alone, this thesis doesn’t hold true. The obvious reason is right there in Brennen’s post: the methods of production and consumption are radically changing.

The currency that defines OVC poetry might be as much in dollars as it is in sense, but the new poetries that are emerging are directly tied to the micro-publishing and the affordances of technology available to the small press, the micro-publisher, and the writer herself. In some ways, this economy is much more brutal than the economics of book buying and mainstream poetry. There isn’t as much of an imposed tradition to rely on to boost sales, and there aren’t mainstream magazines to hide one’s work in where it will be consumed incidentally. There generally isn’t even the ease of purchasing at the local bookstore through serendipitous rummaging or while perched in front of Amazon.com. Instead you are either interesting and relevant or you’re not. You can keep churning material out (to the boos and hisses of the traditional publishing crowd), but no one’s going to read it, interact with the author, refer back to the work, or maintain the effort of consumption. It’s human nature that people are more critical or demanding of things they receive cheaply or for free than those things they pay for. I don’t claim to be able to explain it.

That being said Tarn’s point is well taken– the primary audience for poetry are poets and aspiring poets themselves, and their peers need their support. I’m flabbergasted that anyone who claims to write, want to write– or write about writing– could possibly buy less than a dozen books of poetry in a year. Amongst the hundreds of books I buy every year are probably three dozen or more books and multiple subscriptions. And I consume in the modern way of consumption: I read blogs, online journals, write notes of appreciation to editors, correspond with writers, participate in comment-box conversations. Not doing so would be like trying to be an author a decade ago without ever reading any books– many people try to work in that kind of vacuum, but most fail miserably.

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