With regards to process (or method or less charitably gimmick) keeping mum may not be such a bad idea. Once it's out there, it's very easy to criticize, without referring whatsoever to the work it governs or engendered. Some people just can't seem to help themselves.
But (sometimes) that's like criticizing a garden hose. Oh my god, it's too green. It's too rubbery. It's coils stupidly against the side of the house.
OK, yeah. But look at the garden.
Even if the garden sucks, that's the place for the study to be focused.
Showing posts with label evolving post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evolving post. Show all posts
Monday, September 10, 2007
Friday, December 15, 2006
On community
Set: All poets
Subset: American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY and are women
Or
Set: All poets
Subset: American poets
Subset: Poets in the North East
Subset: Poets in New York City
Subset: Slam poets in New York City
Subset: Male slam poets in New York City
Subset: White male slam poets of the Bowery Poetry Club scene
Etc. Just examples.
It's true that just being a poet (writing poems and/or reading them in public and/or publishing them in any of several different "places") does not include you in a community. It includes you in an avocation, I guess. That's a society (the dictionary overlaps community with society in the top-level, but deeper down we use them differently).
It's in the smaller subsets, and where overlap of interests and activities happens that communities are formed, and the meaningfulness/functionalities of communities increase as their size decreases or shared purpose/intensity is focused. Sometimes communities can be hundreds (one listserv I'm on would qualify, at least for me), or a dozen, or fewer. Two? Yeah, I've been in communties of two (most obviously, my marriage).
Does the definition of community exclude competition? Nuh uh. (Shared resources get divided, so who gets what?) But as it's generally defined, a community does emphasize exchange of ideas, symbiotic inspiration, and mutual aid among members who are in pursuit of a common goal, over competition.
The mutuality/symbiosis/exchanges between members of communities are highly fluxible [sic], tho. Certainly some give more and others take more. (And bullies are dysfunctional--most research has shown that tho they act as they want to be apart, what they really want is to be part, but for various reasons feel unworthy/unaccepted. A community's most effective response is social shaming, including shunning. Other tactics are only effective for individuals in close and/or authoritative relationships with the bully.)
Participating in a community is a choice. One becomes part of a community by participating. One participates at a depth one chooses for onself.
Just as one can opt out by choosing not to participate in that way.
And to get back to that for me above: it's also possible to act in a communal fashion toward opt-out individuals and still receive some of the benefits of community. Or burn out.
So, like, two people go on a trip, and they come back, and they run into a mutual friend. And that friend asks "how was your trip?" And their answers will be different. One says the weather was great, it was a lot of fun, we had a great dinner, etc. The other says it wasn't as restful as I thought it would be, I didn't like the hotel, my favorite part was the day it rained.
They didn't go on two different trips.
Or did they?
Community is self-defined. If you (one, anybody, me) are not getting what you expect "in return," either change your expectations (particularly about returns) or change your group. Or the size of your group. Or how much attention you pay to the whole of it. Because it's just not the case that the more involved you are the more you get out of it, and sometimes the opposite is true, when your self-defined community is plagued with too many thugs or mooches.
Subset: American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY
Subset: "Experimental" American poets with poetry blogs who DIY and are women
Or
Set: All poets
Subset: American poets
Subset: Poets in the North East
Subset: Poets in New York City
Subset: Slam poets in New York City
Subset: Male slam poets in New York City
Subset: White male slam poets of the Bowery Poetry Club scene
Etc. Just examples.
It's true that just being a poet (writing poems and/or reading them in public and/or publishing them in any of several different "places") does not include you in a community. It includes you in an avocation, I guess. That's a society (the dictionary overlaps community with society in the top-level, but deeper down we use them differently).
It's in the smaller subsets, and where overlap of interests and activities happens that communities are formed, and the meaningfulness/functionalities of communities increase as their size decreases or shared purpose/intensity is focused. Sometimes communities can be hundreds (one listserv I'm on would qualify, at least for me), or a dozen, or fewer. Two? Yeah, I've been in communties of two (most obviously, my marriage).
Does the definition of community exclude competition? Nuh uh. (Shared resources get divided, so who gets what?) But as it's generally defined, a community does emphasize exchange of ideas, symbiotic inspiration, and mutual aid among members who are in pursuit of a common goal, over competition.
The mutuality/symbiosis/exchanges between members of communities are highly fluxible [sic], tho. Certainly some give more and others take more. (And bullies are dysfunctional--most research has shown that tho they act as they want to be apart, what they really want is to be part, but for various reasons feel unworthy/unaccepted. A community's most effective response is social shaming, including shunning. Other tactics are only effective for individuals in close and/or authoritative relationships with the bully.)
Participating in a community is a choice. One becomes part of a community by participating. One participates at a depth one chooses for onself.
Just as one can opt out by choosing not to participate in that way.
And to get back to that for me above: it's also possible to act in a communal fashion toward opt-out individuals and still receive some of the benefits of community. Or burn out.
So, like, two people go on a trip, and they come back, and they run into a mutual friend. And that friend asks "how was your trip?" And their answers will be different. One says the weather was great, it was a lot of fun, we had a great dinner, etc. The other says it wasn't as restful as I thought it would be, I didn't like the hotel, my favorite part was the day it rained.
They didn't go on two different trips.
Or did they?
Community is self-defined. If you (one, anybody, me) are not getting what you expect "in return," either change your expectations (particularly about returns) or change your group. Or the size of your group. Or how much attention you pay to the whole of it. Because it's just not the case that the more involved you are the more you get out of it, and sometimes the opposite is true, when your self-defined community is plagued with too many thugs or mooches.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Attention (& value)
[This is an evolving post. Moved up from Saturday.]
Uh huh. We've even got the verb right: to pay.
But also, value is differently assigned to/created for public vs. private attention. Depending on who you ask. (& whether you ask them in front of anybody or not.)
Which is more intimate, the public or private paying of attention?
And then, what value does one place on intimacy?
As in a money-economy, people do various things & have various goals & philosophies concerning how best to spend their limited currency. Some are virtuously thrifty. Others make a flashy show of overtipping. Others can't seem to save even enough to scrape by. Some are sanctimonious about it. Some feel better when they whine about it (& we want them to feel better). Some just enjoy being boisterous, because it is their favorite subject & they consider themselves expert. &, sadly, others run around like bankrobbers sticking everybody else up for it.
To return to value (because that's really something): value is most certainly personal & intimate. It becomes insitutional only by bringing enough individuals around to its side. "You" & "I" value some things alike & some things different. Also, I may not value what you value, but I feel an imperative to value that you do. I'm just like that: interested in you. Possibly even nosy.
The currency of our attention is private & individual. Or it's public & institutional. Or it's some fluid combo. Or god how blatant it is. Or look, there's goes a really cute dog!
--
[Update: (Tuesday, 9/26) I'd put this verbiage below in the comment box (thus the nocaps style) as a kind of footnote first, but I'm moving up here. I did have Jordan's post in mind, but also some things some others of you have said.)]
--
less of a response than a riff on similar, really.
more, perhaps: the attention i give to a poem/book/something else in private is different in quality than the attention i direct to it by making my private attention public. in other words: by pointing. i value the private kind more, in the way people cherish things they keep private but still like things they show around. it's a reader's type vs. a reviewer's type.
some kind of reverse-alchemical change seems to happen when private attention becomes public pointing. i am thinking about the reasons for this. since pointing can be a gift, it is subject to motive (on a scale from genuine excitement to mere flattery on the positive end, to ridicule/humiliation/cruelty on the negative end).
when the object of attention is not object but human i cannot help but anticipate that person's reaction to my attention. that impacts/informs/reveals my action, and my motives include this awareness.
i am speaking from a payer's POV, not a (what?) payee's. there are several reasons (along another similar but differently appointed scale) one might/does want to draw attention to oneself (or the objects one creates; "the work"). just as there are many modes (another scale) in which to do it: "i have made/done this and am proud of this and you might be interested in this." vs. "hey, everybody look at me. i don't care why!" ...stilll thinking.
because...positive pointing (the public paying of positive attention) can be "pure" of motive (conveying genuine excitement or enthusiasm) OR impure of motive, say self-aggrandizing or expert-positioning.
the paying of negative attention is sometimes pure (say, in the case of a bad but fairly argued book review, for instance) OR impure (pointing with the intention to shame/humiliate etc.).
i am just thinking.
i wasn't talking about marketing (and don't care except insofar as it is relied on to sell the books necessary to allow the books to exist, and remembering i have worked as a publicist). that line of thinking (whether self-marketing or the marketing of/for others) is loaded with motive and ends me where many do: i wish there were no such thing as money. (hated the job, liked the results, you know?)
anyway, uh, thanks for pointing.
Uh huh. We've even got the verb right: to pay.
But also, value is differently assigned to/created for public vs. private attention. Depending on who you ask. (& whether you ask them in front of anybody or not.)
Which is more intimate, the public or private paying of attention?
And then, what value does one place on intimacy?
As in a money-economy, people do various things & have various goals & philosophies concerning how best to spend their limited currency. Some are virtuously thrifty. Others make a flashy show of overtipping. Others can't seem to save even enough to scrape by. Some are sanctimonious about it. Some feel better when they whine about it (& we want them to feel better). Some just enjoy being boisterous, because it is their favorite subject & they consider themselves expert. &, sadly, others run around like bankrobbers sticking everybody else up for it.
To return to value (because that's really something): value is most certainly personal & intimate. It becomes insitutional only by bringing enough individuals around to its side. "You" & "I" value some things alike & some things different. Also, I may not value what you value, but I feel an imperative to value that you do. I'm just like that: interested in you. Possibly even nosy.
The currency of our attention is private & individual. Or it's public & institutional. Or it's some fluid combo. Or god how blatant it is. Or look, there's goes a really cute dog!
--
[Update: (Tuesday, 9/26) I'd put this verbiage below in the comment box (thus the nocaps style) as a kind of footnote first, but I'm moving up here. I did have Jordan's post in mind, but also some things some others of you have said.)]
--
less of a response than a riff on similar, really.
more, perhaps: the attention i give to a poem/book/something else in private is different in quality than the attention i direct to it by making my private attention public. in other words: by pointing. i value the private kind more, in the way people cherish things they keep private but still like things they show around. it's a reader's type vs. a reviewer's type.
some kind of reverse-alchemical change seems to happen when private attention becomes public pointing. i am thinking about the reasons for this. since pointing can be a gift, it is subject to motive (on a scale from genuine excitement to mere flattery on the positive end, to ridicule/humiliation/cruelty on the negative end).
when the object of attention is not object but human i cannot help but anticipate that person's reaction to my attention. that impacts/informs/reveals my action, and my motives include this awareness.
i am speaking from a payer's POV, not a (what?) payee's. there are several reasons (along another similar but differently appointed scale) one might/does want to draw attention to oneself (or the objects one creates; "the work"). just as there are many modes (another scale) in which to do it: "i have made/done this and am proud of this and you might be interested in this." vs. "hey, everybody look at me. i don't care why!" ...stilll thinking.
because...positive pointing (the public paying of positive attention) can be "pure" of motive (conveying genuine excitement or enthusiasm) OR impure of motive, say self-aggrandizing or expert-positioning.
the paying of negative attention is sometimes pure (say, in the case of a bad but fairly argued book review, for instance) OR impure (pointing with the intention to shame/humiliate etc.).
i am just thinking.
i wasn't talking about marketing (and don't care except insofar as it is relied on to sell the books necessary to allow the books to exist, and remembering i have worked as a publicist). that line of thinking (whether self-marketing or the marketing of/for others) is loaded with motive and ends me where many do: i wish there were no such thing as money. (hated the job, liked the results, you know?)
anyway, uh, thanks for pointing.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Testing. Testing.
[An evolving post, moving up front again.]
Process is ir/relevant in the following sense*:
If a poetry were a garment, the poem would be what is known as the right side.
The process would be the construction details hidden on the seam side.
The right side requires a seam side. Sometimes a garment's construction is part of its right side. For instance, raw-edge detailing, frayed or distressed effects, an "authentic" patch, or decoratively serged or otherwise exposed (displayed) seams.
The right side and the seam side can be the same side, in this sense. But in that case the right/seam side is constructed by virtue of an additional undisplayed seam side.
From the point of view of the sewistseamstress [sorry for the built-in lady, but tailor won't do], the seam side is not irrelevant. The seam side is the right side. The right side and the seam side are mutually dependent & equally essential.
From the point of view of wearer--the garment's user--is the seam side, those details that are not displayed right-side, relevant? (*Maybe relevancy is the wrong attribute, unless we talk about users & makers.)
Does the wearer ever need to acknowledge/examine details without a decorative right-side function? The garment still hangs together & fits if she does not. Might she be interested to know how the garment works? Will that make it a better garment?
And I misspoke before about process = construction details. Or rather I contradicted myself right away. Process does not equal construction details. Construction details, as we have seen, can be displayed right-side, concealed seam-side, or both. All activities that go into the garment's construction are process. Process is obviously relevant in an existential sense.
Many times you will meet something in denim that has been "broken-in for authenticity." Sometimes right-side construction details perform the same kind of function.
The first example I come up with as a work that might show most of its construction details on its right side would be Under Albany. Just one iteration.
Google-assisted Flarf might be one example of some construction details being displayed on the right side. A poem in a traditional form (like sestina or metered sonnet) might also be displaying construction details; but we'd need to talk more about functional vs. decorative seaming, and to what degree the formal elements are either or both.
That's too large a swatch--to say "Google-assisted flarf"--but I mean some of the poems that are up-front about containing sampled language, such as those in Deer Head Nation. Others may sound sampled, but not really be sampled--and those might be "broken-in for authenticity." It may be impossible to know in some cases if a poem is (partially or wholly) sampled or not, authentic or "authentic." (I'm concerned about this word authentic because I don't mean the opposite would be fake & I don't mean it as a value judgment. A frayed hem is a frayed hem; what we're concerned with is whether it frayed through wear over time, or if it was assisted by some applied technique.)
Jenny Boully's The Body might be another example of "authentic" detailing I meant earlier, in that its footnotes refer to an absent right side, which probably never existed. But I'm not really sure yet, and it's been a couple of yrs since I read the book. I'll have to think more about that.
Kasey remarks on "the seamy side of life" and I also recognize that "seamless" is an approbation, butlet's try not to read seams with those connotations in mind for now [inserted:] reading seams with those connotations in mind may also be interesting.
What is process without tools or object? That has been one person's (Lbehrendt at the Limetree comment thread) quibble with this metaphor. I don't think I understand pure process in that way. (The action of making is where I derive the greatest pleasure in my own writing--but I also derive pleasure from the end result, & also from the pleasure others take in the end result: the made object. Yes, I am privileging pleasure. You don't have to.)
I am still playing around with the sewist metaphor and might not like it myself when I am through. We'll see. I happened to be sewing when this occurred to me a few days ago. Here's a set of statements characteristic of this blog at mynamedotcom: I am becoming more aware of the constructedness of my poems, & I'm moving toward a greater emphasis on constructedness in my poems, & I am drawn less than I was in the past to smoothing them or making them appear seamless. I am not only interested in their construction; I am simultaneously interested in displaying their constructedness. More generally speaking, I like displays of constructedness--what I am calling seaminess--in others' poems because as Thomas Basbøll said at Limetree, thinking about how a poem works is part of reading it. Or it is for me.
--
I'm wanting to back off the examples I've given now, a little (thus, the tiny type). I need to think more about this before I try to apply it.
--
Patrick Durgin (at Kasey's comment thread) asks about the class structure of this model:
I am thinking of a wholly different kind of sewist, certainly not sweatshop labor. (I do work in the fashion industry tangentially, as a copywriter). I am thinking of the kind my grandmother was; she "took in" sewing for individuals, as well as making most of the clothing for her family. She also worked in a shoe & boot repair shop mending & stitching tooled leather goods. The sweatshop model (or even if we supposed an ethically responsible factory model) is too large for my purposes. Poems are not mass produced. There's no roomful (or razor-wired fenced enclosureful) of sewists turning out multiple copies of the same thing. The economy of the sweatshop model is a wholly different one. But I'm glad Patrick brought this up, so I could clarify that. (Maybe tailor would have been a better word than seamstress/sewist to begin with, as a way of brushing aside the exploited-labor connotation.)
I don't consider the seam side "the underbelly" or read "right" in "right side" quite the way Patrick has been, as superior to the seam side. As I (eventually) worded it above, the sides are mutually dependent and equally essential. "Right side" is a sewing term that simply means the side that is presented, worn on the outside of the finished garment. The messier construction details are generally concealed in a garment, & I've spooled my way around to talking about the decision to reveal (or not conceal in the first place) some of those details.
"Right side" can also refer to the printed side of a fabric, as opposed to the unprinted reverse (which is usually called the "wrong side," but I don't want to introduce "wrong" as the reverse of "right" here). The right sight of a garment and the right side of a fabric do not have to coincide. I made a dress in high school once using the reverse of a printed fabric because I liked the way the weave was accented over the pattern. (I actually wore this dress in my senior picture. Maybe I'll post it, if it's not too embarrassing.) I made the wrong side the right side simply by choosing to display it.
To approach Patrick's question from another angle: is concealing a poem's seams an ruling-class/elitist behavior? I don't know. I guess it could be a gesture of condescension in cases. If conventional [revised from "mainstream"] lyrics tend to conceal their process seams in favor of a smooth, neat right side, maybe so. But I am imagining readers who prefer poems with right sides like this appreciate the neatening. It seems that some readers argue that a neat right side is best, and some that a messy or process-revealing right side is best.** (We're back at taste (fashion sense), but the metaphor's still holding up OK for me.)
Alternatively, some poems could be so simply constructed--a straightforward lyric meditation that moves as one developed thought, or a brief epiphanic narrative with a single metaphor, for example--that there's not many messy seams to conceal/minimize/decorate in the first place.
If seamy poems have a less seamy/smoother seam side by virtue of some of their seams being displayed on the right side, does this mean smoother poems have seamier seam sides. Uh, not necessarily. Metaphor breaks down there. Ah well.
&, if some smooth poems do have intricately seamed seam sides, does this mean that seamy poems have smooth poems as their reverse? This is a little too binary a construction for me, that every poem has two possible right sides, a seamy and a smooth.
[**More, probably, later.]
Process is ir/relevant in the following sense*:
If a poetry were a garment, the poem would be what is known as the right side.
The process would be the construction details hidden on the seam side.
The right side requires a seam side. Sometimes a garment's construction is part of its right side. For instance, raw-edge detailing, frayed or distressed effects, an "authentic" patch, or decoratively serged or otherwise exposed (displayed) seams.
The right side and the seam side can be the same side, in this sense. But in that case the right/seam side is constructed by virtue of an additional undisplayed seam side.
From the point of view of the sewist
From the point of view of wearer--the garment's user--is the seam side, those details that are not displayed right-side, relevant? (*Maybe relevancy is the wrong attribute, unless we talk about users & makers.)
Does the wearer ever need to acknowledge/examine details without a decorative right-side function? The garment still hangs together & fits if she does not. Might she be interested to know how the garment works? Will that make it a better garment?
And I misspoke before about process = construction details. Or rather I contradicted myself right away. Process does not equal construction details. Construction details, as we have seen, can be displayed right-side, concealed seam-side, or both. All activities that go into the garment's construction are process. Process is obviously relevant in an existential sense.
Many times you will meet something in denim that has been "broken-in for authenticity." Sometimes right-side construction details perform the same kind of function.
The first example I come up with as a work that might show most of its construction details on its right side would be Under Albany. Just one iteration.
Google-assisted Flarf might be one example of some construction details being displayed on the right side. A poem in a traditional form (like sestina or metered sonnet) might also be displaying construction details; but we'd need to talk more about functional vs. decorative seaming, and to what degree the formal elements are either or both.
That's too large a swatch--to say "Google-assisted flarf"--but I mean some of the poems that are up-front about containing sampled language, such as those in Deer Head Nation. Others may sound sampled, but not really be sampled--and those might be "broken-in for authenticity." It may be impossible to know in some cases if a poem is (partially or wholly) sampled or not, authentic or "authentic." (I'm concerned about this word authentic because I don't mean the opposite would be fake & I don't mean it as a value judgment. A frayed hem is a frayed hem; what we're concerned with is whether it frayed through wear over time, or if it was assisted by some applied technique.)
Jenny Boully's The Body might be another example of "authentic" detailing I meant earlier, in that its footnotes refer to an absent right side, which probably never existed. But I'm not really sure yet, and it's been a couple of yrs since I read the book. I'll have to think more about that.
Kasey remarks on "the seamy side of life" and I also recognize that "seamless" is an approbation, but
What is process without tools or object? That has been one person's (Lbehrendt at the Limetree comment thread) quibble with this metaphor. I don't think I understand pure process in that way. (The action of making is where I derive the greatest pleasure in my own writing--but I also derive pleasure from the end result, & also from the pleasure others take in the end result: the made object. Yes, I am privileging pleasure. You don't have to.)
I am still playing around with the sewist metaphor and might not like it myself when I am through. We'll see. I happened to be sewing when this occurred to me a few days ago. Here's a set of statements characteristic of this blog at mynamedotcom: I am becoming more aware of the constructedness of my poems, & I'm moving toward a greater emphasis on constructedness in my poems, & I am drawn less than I was in the past to smoothing them or making them appear seamless. I am not only interested in their construction; I am simultaneously interested in displaying their constructedness. More generally speaking, I like displays of constructedness--what I am calling seaminess--in others' poems because as Thomas Basbøll said at Limetree, thinking about how a poem works is part of reading it. Or it is for me.
--
I'm wanting to back off the examples I've given now, a little (thus, the tiny type). I need to think more about this before I try to apply it.
--
Patrick Durgin (at Kasey's comment thread) asks about the class structure of this model:
The seamy underbelly of stable, lyric subjectivity is structurally too similar to sweatshop-style exploitation to ignore, don't you think? I mean, what are we hiding--and why are we hiding it, for whom, in whose interest--when we deem the gleaming surface the "right side"?
I am thinking of a wholly different kind of sewist, certainly not sweatshop labor. (I do work in the fashion industry tangentially, as a copywriter). I am thinking of the kind my grandmother was; she "took in" sewing for individuals, as well as making most of the clothing for her family. She also worked in a shoe & boot repair shop mending & stitching tooled leather goods. The sweatshop model (or even if we supposed an ethically responsible factory model) is too large for my purposes. Poems are not mass produced. There's no roomful (or razor-wired fenced enclosureful) of sewists turning out multiple copies of the same thing. The economy of the sweatshop model is a wholly different one. But I'm glad Patrick brought this up, so I could clarify that. (Maybe tailor would have been a better word than seamstress/sewist to begin with, as a way of brushing aside the exploited-labor connotation.)
I don't consider the seam side "the underbelly" or read "right" in "right side" quite the way Patrick has been, as superior to the seam side. As I (eventually) worded it above, the sides are mutually dependent and equally essential. "Right side" is a sewing term that simply means the side that is presented, worn on the outside of the finished garment. The messier construction details are generally concealed in a garment, & I've spooled my way around to talking about the decision to reveal (or not conceal in the first place) some of those details.
"Right side" can also refer to the printed side of a fabric, as opposed to the unprinted reverse (which is usually called the "wrong side," but I don't want to introduce "wrong" as the reverse of "right" here). The right sight of a garment and the right side of a fabric do not have to coincide. I made a dress in high school once using the reverse of a printed fabric because I liked the way the weave was accented over the pattern. (I actually wore this dress in my senior picture. Maybe I'll post it, if it's not too embarrassing.) I made the wrong side the right side simply by choosing to display it.
To approach Patrick's question from another angle: is concealing a poem's seams an ruling-class/elitist behavior? I don't know. I guess it could be a gesture of condescension in cases. If conventional [revised from "mainstream"] lyrics tend to conceal their process seams in favor of a smooth, neat right side, maybe so. But I am imagining readers who prefer poems with right sides like this appreciate the neatening. It seems that some readers argue that a neat right side is best, and some that a messy or process-revealing right side is best.** (We're back at taste (fashion sense), but the metaphor's still holding up OK for me.)
Alternatively, some poems could be so simply constructed--a straightforward lyric meditation that moves as one developed thought, or a brief epiphanic narrative with a single metaphor, for example--that there's not many messy seams to conceal/minimize/decorate in the first place.
If seamy poems have a less seamy/smoother seam side by virtue of some of their seams being displayed on the right side, does this mean smoother poems have seamier seam sides. Uh, not necessarily. Metaphor breaks down there. Ah well.
&, if some smooth poems do have intricately seamed seam sides, does this mean that seamy poems have smooth poems as their reverse? This is a little too binary a construction for me, that every poem has two possible right sides, a seamy and a smooth.
[**More, probably, later.]
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
This was a comment, but is too long to dangle.
And my comment service is still acting up. So I moved it up from here, where Jordan and I have been picking each others' brains.
I don't understand that last comment [that the model of the last 70 years might not work the same as it did the last 70 years if it's online.] Are you saying things are no different for poetry publishers and individual poets than they were 70 yrs ago? That can't be what you're saying. And you're saying the Sunday book review sections are part of the solution, not part of the problem?
The industry of crapmaking that passes for trade publishing is a lot grosser and more dominant than it used to be, and the book retail business is too. It's all profit margins and volume discounts. It's not about art. You wanna make a place for poetry in that sphere? Knock yrselves out, peoples, & best of luck. I think the entire book industry, reviewing, media & chain retail outlets included, best supports commercially viable mass-market crappola. Its ultimate goal for the publisher is money. Its pinnacle for the authors is money, plus a very shallow idea of celebrity with a pseudointellectual gloss. None of the businesses involved are interested in literature as art (though individual editors and writers within that system may be--are. Many are.) The businesses are interested in literature as product. Oops. Most poets I know don't write product. This big-business media clusterfuck is what the last 70 or 150 years did for books. I don't think it's very realistic to continue to pretend poetry (or literary fiction) can make an impact on the same scale or reach readers in the same way as these other books.
I don't think there is anything tragically flawed about the small/micropress way as it currently stands, in theory. The focus on writing's cultural importance, the assertion that poetry is art, that's the right idea, right? (That's a timeless concept, if you ask me.) It's the execution that seems to get stymied. I think there are new, better ways, evolving ways to get books made & offer them to readers. The new ways may look a lot like the old ways, but they are faster, and less expensive, and more available to anybody who has an interest in making poetry, their own or others.
There's a great deal of difference, for instance, between the mimeographed stapled mag of the 70s that was sold by hand or on consignment through bookstores and a well designed digital short-run perfect-bound book that's distributed via a website. It's not a difference in spirit: both are made in the same (exuberant, hopeful, awesome) spirit. The difference is potential reach. Books (chapbooks, e-books, etc.) like these have a much better chance of finding readers than they did in the mimeograph & staple days. Even if you're into old-school production (which I am; my letterpress class is next month) you can get all new fangled with a website and PayPal. For about the same investment of time, and probably even less money, anybody who wants to publish a book of their own work can do that. Anybody who wants to publish other people's work in book form can do so. Ditto for magazine-style publishing (go read Tony Tost), which can now be done for next to nothing online by a single person, without having to be attached to a university (like the old-school lit journals) or selling advertising to come up with the funds to print it. And the landscape is different for readers too: any reader with internet access can find whatever she's looking for in a short sequence of clicks. These are improvements.
And since I'm typing & repeating myself ad nauseum (my own nausea), when's the last time you went into a bookstore, browsed the poetry section, found exactly what you wanted, and beyond that were introduced to something fantastic you didn't know you needed? I guess it still happens, but is rarer now than it used to be. Most stores are not staffed in such a way to make this happen. And they're not shopped in such a way to make it feasible, even if they did have a poetry enthusiast on the staff. This is the book industry's own fault. They hobbled themselves with rules about retail pricing (can't sell a new book for more than the suggested retail, unlike every other product in the universe) and volume discounts that give a ginormous advantage to chains. Blah blah blah. I get sick of hearing myself talk about it. But the upshot is: the bookstore doesn't function like it used to either. Shelf browsing's out.
Except it's not. The internet's got everything.
Turning back to the Sunday Book Review: who's that aimed at? Legions of bright but clueless readers? Might they all take to poetry like fish to water if some newspaper would just tell them which book to pick up first? I don't know. I guess they might. Maybe they like a major paper or glossy magazine or Oprah or an award committee or a brand name publishing house telling them what they should read, or at least what they should buy. I don't find those kind of recommendations (when they are even endorsements, and more often than not they're tepid or worse) helpful or exciting. And what if the old gray ladies did review small press poetry books? The distribution and retail networks don't work well for them, so the books aren't already sitting in the stores to catch the wave, and we're back to the mythical beast, the potential reader we've got to cajole and beg.
What's really useful to me is what other readers like me think. Check it: I can go online and find out. That's new, ain't it? The crusty old windbags with advertisers to placate can keep telling us all that most contemporary poetry isn't worth reading, and they can keep reviewing books by our deceased forebears, and they can keep pretending they're doing us all a favor with their high-minded guidance, if they want to. I don't particularly care what they think, especially in the "open with a provocative hook, summarize the plot, and add at least one positive/negative point in the second-to-last-paragraph to balance the review on a deadline and here's a coupla bucks and your byline" format.
Unfortunately, I'm not even sure what we're talking about anymore. The Sunday Book Review is probably not in my future, however.
OK, see you back here tomorrow, and I don't have to sell any ads or check with any editors. And you don't have to believe a word that comes outta my mouth because I'm no kind of authority whatsoever.
I don't understand that last comment [that the model of the last 70 years might not work the same as it did the last 70 years if it's online.] Are you saying things are no different for poetry publishers and individual poets than they were 70 yrs ago? That can't be what you're saying. And you're saying the Sunday book review sections are part of the solution, not part of the problem?
The industry of crapmaking that passes for trade publishing is a lot grosser and more dominant than it used to be, and the book retail business is too. It's all profit margins and volume discounts. It's not about art. You wanna make a place for poetry in that sphere? Knock yrselves out, peoples, & best of luck. I think the entire book industry, reviewing, media & chain retail outlets included, best supports commercially viable mass-market crappola. Its ultimate goal for the publisher is money. Its pinnacle for the authors is money, plus a very shallow idea of celebrity with a pseudointellectual gloss. None of the businesses involved are interested in literature as art (though individual editors and writers within that system may be--are. Many are.) The businesses are interested in literature as product. Oops. Most poets I know don't write product. This big-business media clusterfuck is what the last 70 or 150 years did for books. I don't think it's very realistic to continue to pretend poetry (or literary fiction) can make an impact on the same scale or reach readers in the same way as these other books.
I don't think there is anything tragically flawed about the small/micropress way as it currently stands, in theory. The focus on writing's cultural importance, the assertion that poetry is art, that's the right idea, right? (That's a timeless concept, if you ask me.) It's the execution that seems to get stymied. I think there are new, better ways, evolving ways to get books made & offer them to readers. The new ways may look a lot like the old ways, but they are faster, and less expensive, and more available to anybody who has an interest in making poetry, their own or others.
There's a great deal of difference, for instance, between the mimeographed stapled mag of the 70s that was sold by hand or on consignment through bookstores and a well designed digital short-run perfect-bound book that's distributed via a website. It's not a difference in spirit: both are made in the same (exuberant, hopeful, awesome) spirit. The difference is potential reach. Books (chapbooks, e-books, etc.) like these have a much better chance of finding readers than they did in the mimeograph & staple days. Even if you're into old-school production (which I am; my letterpress class is next month) you can get all new fangled with a website and PayPal. For about the same investment of time, and probably even less money, anybody who wants to publish a book of their own work can do that. Anybody who wants to publish other people's work in book form can do so. Ditto for magazine-style publishing (go read Tony Tost), which can now be done for next to nothing online by a single person, without having to be attached to a university (like the old-school lit journals) or selling advertising to come up with the funds to print it. And the landscape is different for readers too: any reader with internet access can find whatever she's looking for in a short sequence of clicks. These are improvements.
And since I'm typing & repeating myself ad nauseum (my own nausea), when's the last time you went into a bookstore, browsed the poetry section, found exactly what you wanted, and beyond that were introduced to something fantastic you didn't know you needed? I guess it still happens, but is rarer now than it used to be. Most stores are not staffed in such a way to make this happen. And they're not shopped in such a way to make it feasible, even if they did have a poetry enthusiast on the staff. This is the book industry's own fault. They hobbled themselves with rules about retail pricing (can't sell a new book for more than the suggested retail, unlike every other product in the universe) and volume discounts that give a ginormous advantage to chains. Blah blah blah. I get sick of hearing myself talk about it. But the upshot is: the bookstore doesn't function like it used to either. Shelf browsing's out.
Except it's not. The internet's got everything.
Turning back to the Sunday Book Review: who's that aimed at? Legions of bright but clueless readers? Might they all take to poetry like fish to water if some newspaper would just tell them which book to pick up first? I don't know. I guess they might. Maybe they like a major paper or glossy magazine or Oprah or an award committee or a brand name publishing house telling them what they should read, or at least what they should buy. I don't find those kind of recommendations (when they are even endorsements, and more often than not they're tepid or worse) helpful or exciting. And what if the old gray ladies did review small press poetry books? The distribution and retail networks don't work well for them, so the books aren't already sitting in the stores to catch the wave, and we're back to the mythical beast, the potential reader we've got to cajole and beg.
What's really useful to me is what other readers like me think. Check it: I can go online and find out. That's new, ain't it? The crusty old windbags with advertisers to placate can keep telling us all that most contemporary poetry isn't worth reading, and they can keep reviewing books by our deceased forebears, and they can keep pretending they're doing us all a favor with their high-minded guidance, if they want to. I don't particularly care what they think, especially in the "open with a provocative hook, summarize the plot, and add at least one positive/negative point in the second-to-last-paragraph to balance the review on a deadline and here's a coupla bucks and your byline" format.
Unfortunately, I'm not even sure what we're talking about anymore. The Sunday Book Review is probably not in my future, however.
OK, see you back here tomorrow, and I don't have to sell any ads or check with any editors. And you don't have to believe a word that comes outta my mouth because I'm no kind of authority whatsoever.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair*
[Original post removed for depuzzling.]
What I mean is, I am a reader of my own poems. And so are you, dear reader. But we will probably never read them the same way. This is my failing, not yours, if it is a failing. As an experiment, I try to become more like you. I will never be like you.
When I play my reader role I am also playing my writer role, whether I am reading me or you.
I am always playing my reader/writer/editor role, whether I am reading me or you. It is one role.
Reader sez: Look what that poem did. I like or don't like that. How did the writer get that poem to do that?
Writer sez: Look what that poem did. I like or don't like that. How did that poem do that? Did I do that? Can I do it again?
Editor sez: Look what that poem did. I know how the writer got the poem to do that. See how that poem could do that better? Look what else that poem can do if the writer does it this way. These are the poem's own terms and here is how the writer can best achieve success within those terms.
Critic sez: Look what that poem did. I like or don't like that. How does this poem compare to other poems by this poet or other poets? In what ways does it succeed or fail compared to those other poems? What is the context for this poem? Does this poem succeed according to the terms its context expects of it?
But let's hush the critic for now.
*Evolving possibly disappearing post.
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