Sherry Chandler

Best?

Several days ago, Laurie MacKellar sent me a link to this article by David Alpaugh in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In many ways, “The New Math of Poetry” can be read as just one more diatribe against MFA programs, small magazine publishing, and the glut of mediocre poets that keep the truly brilliant out of print. I’m not much interested in that point of view. For one thing, though I don’t have an MFA, I’ve often in my life been one of the poets advised to stop writing and get a good job. Not, however, in academics. Academia kicked me to the side of the road many years ago. It was a blow that hurt for a long time but I did get over it.

But I see the other side of the argument that poets should have “real” jobs, not cushy academic “professional poet” jobs. I’m here to tell you that a “real” job takes a lot of time and energy and training. It is not easy to be a poet when you have a 40-hour-a-week job. Not, mind you, that college writing teachers have it all roses either.

So I figure that any poet, MFA trained or not, who thinks, as Alpaugh argues

that writing and performing “poetry” is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame

will soon be disabused.

Dave Bonta calls Alpaugh’s article rubbish, saved only by the refutations in the comments (of which there are, at this wriitng, 53). He points, in particular, to comment 22 which refutes this statement:

You can’t pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a “chapbook” for sale. The new math of poetry is driven not by reader demand for great or even good poetry but by the demand of myriads of aspiring poets to experience the thrill of “publication.”

by pointing out that anybody who owns a guitar and knows maybe three chords can play at an open mike any time they want to but nobody’s gonna invite them to Lincoln Center. In short, comparing any open mike to a performance at Lincoln Center is just bad logic. The kind of thing I would have failed in freshman comp. Open mikes are open, whether you be a violinist or a poet. Or should that be Alpaugh’s usage, “poet.”

On the other hand, as one who has judged a fair number of local contests and read for local small publications, I’m here to tell you that there is, indeed, a lot of mediocre poetry to plow through. And a friend I have who shall remain nameless is wont to say that, while bad fiction is unfortunate, bad poetry is deadly.

This argument goes on. It’s not going to be settled by one definitive article in The Chronicle. And I have poetry to write. So, as I said, big yawn.

What does interest me, though, about Alpaugh’s article are statements such as this:

For those who protest that most of these thousands of journals can be dismissed as marginal—that we need pay attention to only a handful of “prestigious” ones, like Poetry and The New Yorker—may I suggest that there could be a few Blakes or Dickinsons swimming with the guppies in that wide prosodic sea? If a truly titanic poet were to appear, wouldn’t one of the less visible but more adventuresome journals—Retort Magazine, say (“we favor the cutting edge over the blunt of the handle, the avant-garde over backward walking”)—be more likely to be his or her publisher than would status-conscious professional journals like Ploughshares and American Poetry Review?

or this one:

Such “anthologies” are less harmful, however, than those that actually pretend to select the “best.” David Lehman and the guest editors of Scribner’s Best American Poetry (hereafter known as BAP) have been protesting for years that they are just trying to publish a bunch of decent poems. Yet year after year, their title continues to make its glittering promise, with a cynical wink at sales.

The notion that a guest editor or team of screeners would read 100,000 poems is absurd. A look at the journals BAP routinely draws from gives a good clue as to methodology. In BAP 2008, for example, just 10 of the 2,000-plus journals and magazines available for consideration accounted for 37 of the 75 poems selected—49 percent. As in past issues, BAP 2008 privileged Poetry, American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, and a dozen or so other recurring publications. The probability that such a sliver of journals would continue to yield the lion’s share of the “best” American poetry year after year were objectivity in play is unlikely.

I am not much interested in the relative merits of poetry by Ted Kooser or John Ashbery (see comment 26 on elitism).

What I read here is that the old gatekeepers are no longer in control. That maybe, in some sense, there no longer are any gatekeepers. The game preserve is wide open.

For some people this concept, with its implication of chaos, is frightening. It leads them to conclude, as Alpaugh does:

Every now and then someone asks me, “Who are the best poets writing today?” My answer? “I have no idea.” Nor do I believe that anyone else does. I do have an uneasy feeling that a Blake and a Dickinson may be buried in the overgrowth, and I fear that neither current nor future readers may get to enjoy their art. That would be the most devastating result of the new math of poetry. The loss would be incalculable.

This statement strikes me as somewhat naive in its belief that in the past the best poets have always been saved. I always have to wonder, for every Dickinson saved, how many were lost?. Maybe my point of view is skewed by my feminism and the lack, until recent years, of women’s names in those great anthologies of the past that Alpaugh mentioned.

On my desk is a worn college anthology titled Seventeenth Century Poetry and Prose. Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Jonson, Marvell, Milton—all of the great poets of that century, and all of the minor ones (as well as some now considered unreadable) are represented there.

(See all the women included? Aphra Behn?)

Or naive in its implication that somehow if there were fewer people — more courtiers maybe? — writing poetry, they’d be writing better poetry.

I’ll admit to being old enough myself to wonder whether I can ever break through the chatter and find readers.

But in fact I do have readers. And oddly enough I have influence, in a limited sphere. As Dave Bonta is fond of pointing out, he gets more readers posting his poetry on his blog than he would get were he published in many prestigious print magazines.

And just this morning, a commenter told my friend Mark Brown how grateful they were that he posted one of his poems, “Kissing the Ugly,” on Facebook. The commenter said:

Years ago when we met at a . . . reading I asked you for a copy of it, which I kept in my wallet until the paper fell apart. Now I can print it out again for my bulletin board.

Small fame, yes. And I’m sure we’d all dance like Snoopy to get into a volume of Best American Poetry. (Well, maybe not Dave.) But even BAP is no guarantee of immortality. Do we write for some mythological future or for the now?

What some of us may see as a breakdown of standards, a loss of the old gatekeepers, others of us may hear as the tinkling of the glass ceiling as it shatters.

(Yes, I mixed my metaphors but I didn’t compaire open mike at Al’s Bar to the stage at Lincoln Center.)

(No offense meant to Al’s Bar. I’ll read at their open mike.)

I’ll leave you with this quote, which as far as I’m concerned, redeems Alpaugh’s whole article:

BAP editors recognize the need to throw in a maverick journal or obscure poet or two each year to make it look like they are fulfilling the grand promise of their title. Although Scribner wants readers to believe that they are purchasing the “best,” David Orr, in The New York Times Book Review, could be describing the entire series when he writes that the poems selected for 2004 “run the usual gamut from very good to slightly dull to what-were-you-thinking.” Pinning the word “best” on such a “gamut” could win an award for Best Chutzpah.

Neuroesthetics?

Who knew?

From Tim Parks at the NY Review of Books Blog, a report on Neuroesthetics: When Art and the Brain Collide, a workshop conference at IULM University Milan, wherein Semir Zeki was the star speaker:

What Zeki was trying to demonstrate was the brain’s response to ambiguity, a major element in most aesthetic experience. He showed slides of the Rubin vase, the Kanizsa cube and triangle, and Isia Leviant’s “Enigma.” In the case of the vase and the cube, the brain could only see only one of the two alternatives at a time, but it could never shake off the other and would keep switching back and forth, without resolving the issue, a characteristic that Salvador Dali had exploited in his “paranoiac critical” paintings. He went on to show slides of which parts of the brain were activated when responding to such stimuli.

“If you tell me,” responded Ron Chrisley, “which circuits of a computer are active when its chess program moves knight to queen’s bishop three, you haven’t told me much, have you?”

It was that kind of conference.

. . .

What was most disturbing was the rather crude notion of “aesthetic experience” that the scientists seemed to entertain. The word “beauty” was used as if we knew what it meant.

. . .

When I remarked in the closing discussion that none of the speaker’s experiments had tackled the word, the poem, the novel, or more generally the aesthetic of narrative, a voice behind me cried out, “Thank God!”

__________

Maurice Manning says he can’t talk about metaphor without using metaphor. Maybe we can’t define beauty without just showing the world something beautiful.

Today, we might begin with Temptations of Solitude, an ekphrastic collaboration by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Dave Bonta.

Dave explains the collaboration here.

More items

Via Negative posting Honduran poetry here.

The Reluctant Poet Laureate

The Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature presents an opportunity to focus on the fine literature the state of Kentucky has produced, bringing it to the nation’s attention. Sarabande will publish one book annually of short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, a novella(s), or short novel. (Must be postmarked in July.)

Call for Submissions to Motes Books Motif 2 with the theme of “Chance.” Deadline September 1.

First Annual Ruth Redel Poetry Prize

Items

A big shout-out to my Scrabble-playing buddy Ruth Bavetta, whose visual poem “The End and the Aim,” made the top fifteen most view poems on Rattle.com

Why Do Poets Say “O”? Dave Bonta wants to know.

There’s some hate speech going on in Chicago poetry circles. Turf wars are not uncommon in poetry circles, but I’d say you’re losing if you have to stoop to calling your opponent fat. “They don’t really like you better than me, they just feel sorry for you.” Convincing argument, huh?

Via Poetry Hut Blog and then via Modern Americans, check out American Poetry in the Age of Whitman and Dickinson

Via Silliman’s Blog, Billy Collins thinks people don’t read poetry because we have no good poets. My question, is the ability to make Patrick Moynihan cry the mark of a good poet?

My friend Nancy Fletcher Cassell pointed me to Karla M. Huston’s Burying the Red Shoes: Conversations with Four Poets at Margie. The four poets are Denise Duhamel, Naomi Shihab Nye, Shara McCallum, and Stellasue Lee.

Annie Finch, who is blogging at Harriet, on Why I Am a Woman Poet

Some recommended reading

I have some off-line reading to do today, so I’ll recommend some links for your online pleasure and enlightenment.

Poem of the week at The Guardian’s Books Blog is Wilfred Owen’s “The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.” I am an Owens fan so I like this one:

The story of how Abraham, in obedience to a direct command from God, almost sacrificed his only son, Isaac, is one of the most perfectly written short narratives in the Old Testament. This is the story that Wilfred Owen retells and revises in this week’s poem, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young.

Owen, you’ll notice, keeps close to the language of the King James Authorised Version. He also restrains himself rhythmically, conforming to the trudge of iambic pentameter. We like our war poetry, whether by Homer or Owen, to convey authenticity and guarantee its integrity by raw images and rough-hewn reportage. Owen can give us raw and rough-hewn, but in this poem he stands back from his subject matter: he is here to preach. And his matter is serious and specific enough to justify that technique.

It’s not until the imagery of “fire and iron” (Abraham’s implements were simply fire, wood and a knife) that we see the parable to be constructed. Owen’s modernising tactics become increasingly clear. The Old Testament Isaac was simply “bound” to the pyre, but here we have “straps and belts”, and then, unmistakably, “parapets and trenches”.

. . .

Owen’s poem chimes for me with Barack Obama’s recent speech in Cairo, in which the command of conscience is to kill the ram of violent extremism. Obama’s fundamental subject, too, I think, is “the pity of War.”

On the subject of health care reform, I recommend this post by Avedon Carol:

Let me put it another way: Bearing in mind that in the time I’ve lived here the value of the dollar to the pound has ranged between about $1.55=�1.00 to $2.00=�1.00, �30K a year is a pretty comfortable salary here. One of the things that makes it so comfortable is that you already have, regardless of who you work for or if you even have a regular job, a completely portable deluxe healthcare plan that doesn’t cost you any extra money when you see your doctor or go to a specialist or get tests or have surgery or endure a hospital stay. You have pretty much full coverage (excepting your glasses and dentistry) for free delivery of healthcare at the point of use, with no argument from some insurance industry hack. If your doctor thinks you need an operation, there’s no arguing with insurance agents about it – your doc just refers you to the hospital specialists, you see them, they do what’s necessary, and no one sends you a bill. No paperwork, no desperate phone calls, no deciding you can’t afford vital treatment.

And why shouldn’t Americans have that kind of care, too? After all, you’re already paying for it – in taxes. Every time you pay taxes, regardless of your own healthcare plan, you also pay for someone else’s healthcare – Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, NIH, SCHIP, whatever – you’re paying for government health services and research (which, by the way, is also a subsidy to the commercial medical industry that makes use of the research and development at bargain rates) – only you’re paying for a lot of it more expensively than you need to because so much waste is involved in servicing the myriad different commercial providers who have their fingers in the pie. And then when you get your own commercial healthcare, you pay extra for the very fact that someone has to ask you to name your insurance company and give them your insurance details. No one ever asks me my insurance details here – they already know them, because they’re the same for everyone.

And A Waiting Room IS a Line by Lance Mannion:

I’m in line right now.

Not sure how many people are in the line with me.

Lots, probably.

We can’t see each other because our places in the line are widely separated.

Some of us are in an actual line at the reception desk at the doctor’s office.

But some of us are in line at home. Some of us are in line at work. Some of us are in line in our cars. Wherever the phone we’re hoping will ring any moment is, that’s where our place in line is.

We’re all in line, waiting to hear back from our insurance company.

Eventually, assuming the insurance company gives us permission to have the operation or the procedure or the test we need, we’ll all get into different lines.

We’ll wait in other virtual or actual lines to make an appointment to see the doctor or the specialist or the technician.

After we get out of that line, we’ll wait in another line for the day to come when we can go to the office or hospital or the lab where we will then wait in another line to see the doctor or the specialist or the technician who will perform the operation or the procedure or the test we need.

And after we’re finally out of those lines, there are still other lines—at the pharmacy, back at our doctor’s office for the follow up, by the phone again to argue with the insurance company because somebody’s decided that the operation or the procedure or the test we were told was covered isn’t covered.

Of all the objections to national health insurance, the silliest and most baffling to me is that it will mean we’ll all have to wait in lines to see the doctor.

Helen Losse and Dave Bonta have poems up today that I would definitely recommend you read.

__________
P.S. Here’s another Mannion missive to the world you might like to read:

[Louis] Menand [in the New Yorker] is reviewing a book by Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing , a literary survey of the last seventy or so years that attempts to trace the effects of creative writing programs on the shape, direction, fads, and styles of American fiction. Menand, though, seems more interested in the questions, can people be taught how to write and if not (the answer he leans towards) what good are workshops?

. . .

Students at creative writing programs are learning from each other all the time. But what are they learning?

According to Menand, they aren’t learning to write well. They are learning to write what is fashionable well. This is what McGurl’s looks at in The Program Era, what has been fashionable and how fiction writing programs have responded to and shaped those fashions.

I went off to Iowa full up to my eyeballs with the works of Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Herman Melville, only to find that just about every other fiction writer there was only interested in what was in the New Yorker that week. . . .
Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason were the literary heroes of the day.

Minimalism was the fashion.

You’ll notice that among my literary heroes of the time there’s nobody who could be by any stretch described as a minimalist.

The upshot of this was that one of the lessons I learned at Iowa was that Raymond Carver and Bobbie Ann Mason were my mortal enemies.

Page or pixel?

Via Morning Porch, Sandra Beasley’s article in Poets & Writers, From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals:

. . .the technology has evolved. In the heyday of Yahoo, Web sites were indexed by category. Search for “poetry magazine” and a journal came up only if the editor had taken the time to seed the appropriate HTML meta tags. Now search engines catalogue the entire verbiage of a page—if someone Googles your name, up pops your poem or story or essay. For every reader who tracks down the Kenyon Review in his local bookstore, there are ten who don’t have access, don’t have money, or need a medium they can surreptitiously read at their office desks.

In other words, modern writers are increasingly defined by the work they have available online. Those serious about developing a career have to think about managing that virtual dimension. And the most powerful, direct way to do so is to engage the medium—read online journals, evaluate them, and send them work you’re proud to have associated with your name.

If you’re not convinced, don’t believe the hype; believe the numbers. Since Bruce Covey launched his online magazine, Coconut, in 2005, he has monitored visitor traffic. “A new issue of Coconut gets about ten thousand unique page views in its first two weeks,” he reported recently. “Readership has increased with every issue. We have readers in Japan, Korea, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, the Philippines, Qatar—all over the world.”

Today’s best online journals offer innovation as well as visibility. Linebreak pairs each poem with an audio file—the poem as read by another poet. Drunken Boat bills itself as a multimedia journal that curates sound and video alongside poetry and prose. No Tell Motel features a new poem five days out of every week; Anti- includes twenty “feature poets” beyond its biannual publishing schedule. Even journals that mimic the conventions of a print format—such as Memorious, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Mezzo Cammin—use their Web sites to provide easily accessed, well-organized archives. Slate has even created the Fray, a virtual space where readers can publicly respond to poems and essays.

. . .I’ve started to appreciate that publishing online isn’t just an issue of picking sides within the industry. It’s an opportunity to grow your readership on a grassroots level, to reach people who have never bought a small press book or a literary journal in their life

The central question:

When I mention this phenomenon to Birkerts [editor of Agni], he pauses. “Philosophically,” he says, “I’m of two minds about this. Proliferation is what every author is after. Yet too much proliferation undermines the authority and prestige of the printed material, as the poem becomes part of a flow—a generalized cultural avalanche.”

The Internet as avalanche. Do we run for dear life? Or do we catch a ride down the side of the mountain? “

When I was young, I loved amusement park rides but now I am too old and stiff. I would like to think, though, that I’m still spry enough to ride the backwater waves of the web.

And anyway, I sort of thought this argument was moot. Web magazines are here, they are innovative, and they are a force to be reckoned with.

Beasley’s article is good at point out the most mainstream of the web zines, and I’d advise you, first, as always, to read her entire article, and secondly, to click through to some of her links and take a look around.

I’d like to point out a few personal favorites that you might like to check out also: Umbrella, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, qarrtsiluni, nth position, and The Pedestal.

Minglewood

Getting my bearings

I am constantly inspired and amused by what goes on over at Via Negativa. For one thing, he has lots of pictures and I like pictures.

Here is Dave’s latest video, entitled Bearings.

Bearings from Dave Bonta on Vimeo.

Dave is also exploring the interface between poetry and video over here at Moving Poems.

an on-going compendium of the best video poetry from around the web. Video interpretations of poems are the main focus, but poetry readings, spoken word performances, and interviews with poets are also eligible for inclusion.

Be sure to check it out. The site is only 4 days old and already it goes from Emily Dickinson to Billy Collins. The Sylvia Plath is good.