-Isms

Sayre's law:  "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."  See also:  "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low."  See also Hutchin's Law:  "The reason the politics of poetry are so vicious is that the stakes are so low."

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    We laugh when we think of the New England theater critic who allowed that Shakespeare wasn't awful, adding "I doubt we have six of his ilk in all of Boston!"

    We stop laughing when we think that there may have been six poets of Shakespeare's ilk somewhere in the anglophone world who weren't recognized because of their class, gender, ethnicity, religion, color, nationality, location, age, or politics.  Economic elitism, sexism, racism, nationalism, regionalism, cronyism, and ageism are only a few of the extraneous factors ("-isms") standing between merit and hype, between art and fad.

    Optimists, including me, argue that the democratizing Internet will eventually ameliorate, if not eliminate, these -isms.  For now, the septuagenarian son of a coal baron can still get any dreck published, even if it trivializes a tragedy (as all indolent writing does).  Yes, even if it is to prose-qua-poetry what "The Tay Bridge Disaster" was to verse. 

    "Which -ism is operating there?" you ask.

     In this case, a better question might be:  "Which one isn't?"

     In my experience, the "New Yorker" poem marks a point of no return.  That is, I cannot cite one worthwhile poem produced by a poet or editor after abandoning merit as the sole criterion for art.  Instead, there only -isms to choose from.  As for the public, why should readers take poetry seriously if writers and publishers don't?

     Arguably the most insidious and virulent -isms are those relating to geography.  Many who vehemently oppose sexism and racism will rally around a neighbor over any outlander.  This favoritism is easily institutionalised.  Because Nobody Reads Poetry, verse often relies on government funding.  At the civic level, the town's Art Council will ensure that all contracts go to local residents.  National organizations can be downright protectionist.  Flags become blindfolds.  It doesn't help when a well-known Content Regent explicitly endorses this myopia, going so far as to recommend 20 compatriots' poems based entirely on their--you guessed it--subject matter and polemics.

     As an aside, when did confirmation bias become an aesthetic?  How long before England is the only country still teaching Shakespeare to high schoolers?  Or has that boat already sailed?

     Something more basic is at work here.  The three best poets of our time are female but only the American one is recognized.  What gives?  If chauvinism is so pervasive why aren't the other two celebrated in their countries?  Granted, sexism could explain all three, since A.E. Stallings had to use her initials before editors would publish her work, but all three nations have promoted inferior poets of the same gender.  Modesty?  The other two were, indeed, pathologically shy but that doesn't explain why periodicals refused to publish Maz's obituary.  No.  Pare away the distractions.  Only one suspect remains, one that is at the heart of all prejudice.

     Stupidity.

     Worse yet, we're not talking about the run-of-the-mill idiocy we see on Faux Snooze.  We're talking about the two strains that infest and infect the pseudo-intellectual community:  disingenuousness and wilful¹ ignorance.  It is the blithe non sequitur, "Everyone is writing poetry!", parroted by sycophants when informed of poetry's demise.   It is the insipidity of editors not caring to learn the elements of poetry.  It is the spectacle of an "expert" who didn't know "Beans" was an iambic pentameter acrostic, let alone who it was about, but tells us what poems children should be learning based on, of all things, his interpretive ability.  It is like the inanity of racists and homophobes watching voting rights and marriage equality sweep the United States, oblivious to the fact that the world is changing for the better.

     The good news comes in the irony that, by definition, progress permits no bystanders.  It benefits everyone, including, if not especially, those who opposed it.

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Footnotes:

¹ - ...similar to the kind that makes some think "wilful" is misspelled.  Incidentally, the etymology of the word "misspelled" dates back to 1645-1655, making it among the first words that could be misspelled.  Before that, without the Gutenberg press (1450) or dictionaries (1604?  1755?), "standard spelling" was an oxymoron.

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The Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Reviewed

Earl's sister:  Pearl the Squirrel

    Before you read this, please take a moment to jot down the names of your 10 favorite contemporary poets.  Just humor me. 

    Earl is neck deep in sports magazines, preparing for his 2013 NFL Fantasy Football drafts.  This leaves me, his sister, Pearl, with the onerous task of analyzing the two most significant recent verse-related lists:  Earl's "Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Today" and Seth Abramson's "The Top 200 Advocates for American Poetry (2013)", posted here and to the Huffington Post, respectively, on the same day.  Quite a coincidence:  Seth authored one article and was mentioned in the other!

    There may never be two lists on the same topic (i.e. poetry, in this case) that have less in common, reflecting in sharp focus the contrast between the established Print and the emerging Pixel worlds.  The key is the explicit stipulation in "The 10" presupposing that poetry would succeed in finding a public audience before 2030.  Seth's article shows no interest in poetry's repopularization.  Rather, "The Top 200" concentrates on practical, professional considerations, the realpolitik of indifference.  As always, Mr. Abramson speaks eloquently for the academic/PoBiz (the "AcaPoBiz"?) group aesthetic.

Seth Abramson

    Reactions to "The Top 10" were positive, criticism limited to a typo correction, AcaPoBizzers unfamiliar with the online world and a few suggested additions from those who missed the part about unread producers.  One Internetter remarked:  "The future isn't now but it is here."  With actual and potential careers at stake, reactions to Seth's "Top 200" were more mixed, often more visceral.  One commenter, referring to the lack of audience, said:  "It's like a beauty contest in the land of the blind."

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #37

    The most obvious disparity between compilations is their size:  10 versus 200.  Idealistic onliners tend to work on regaining viewers, including non-poets, with audience-oriented verse.  This puts them in a minority which may be adequately represented by ten or twenty figures.  The more careerist Page community is represented by 200+ people, adding more each day, lest an omission diminish anyone's prospects.   As for aesthetic diversity, more than 95% of the poets listed are, by the objective standards of my "Prosody Evaluation And Report Logger", prosers.  200+, though?  Well, there is an old saying among us squirrels:  "When someone gives you six reasons the real one is the seventh."  If there are 200 sources of influence in such a tiny, homogenous group there really isn't much discernible influencing going on, is there?  Why not find the few people responsible for this conformity and credit them?

     The Top 200 list could only be written by and for people untouched by the modern cyberzeitgeist.  This was evident in the first phrase of the introduction:

    "With more than 75,000 poets in the United States alone..."

     Ahem.  Let me put this in perspective, using one of my brother's favorite examples.  Francis Ford Coppola--you know, the one who gave us "Patton" and "The Godfather"--launched Zoetrope on June 21, 2000.  It began as a critical forum for screenwriters but soon branched out to embrace playwrights, novelists and poetry writers.  Over time, poets--most of them American--have dominated the membership, traffic and contributions.  Of the online poetry subforums that have survived for all or most of the last decade Zoetrope is, by far, the most obscure.  Most onliners either don't know what it is or refer to it dismissively as "Zoetripe".¹

     Zoetrope alone has more than 75,000 American poets as members. 

     How many American poets are there in total?  It's hard to say but, extrapolating from online, slam and other contest participation, one million American poets would seem an extremely conservative estimate.  Earl's best guess is that 2,000,000 Americans consider themselves poets, serious or not.  Does that sound like a lot to you?  Well, it's about .5% of the total U.S. demographic.  That may be the all-time high those using raw numbers boast about but, as a percentage, it might also be a historic low in any human population.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #43

     The second oddity to Internauts accustomed to dealing with anglophones from all over the world is the focus on American poetry.  Why not left-handed poets?  Or coastal versus mountain or flatland poets?  Do audiences today really care whether a writer is American, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Canadian, South African, East or West Indian, Kiwi, Australian, or Outer Mongolian?  If so, why?  Yes, I know this doesn't raise eyebrows among Print Worlders but within the cybercommunity of the past, present and future this is bound to appear strange--perhaps even antiquated or unhealthy!

     If none of the ten favorite contemporary poets you wrote down earlier are from foreign shores your chances of being a Page rather than a Pixel poet skyrocket.

     For the most part, the Top 200 was a list of underrated poets, many of them unfamiliar even to others in the Print World.  This is a reflection of that milieu's segmentation;  one doesn't produce iconic efforts by selling 200 copies of a book or by publishing in poetry magazines with, at the very most, 30,000 subscribers.  By contrast, Earl restricted himself to people well known to everyone within the established Internet community.

     All of this said, "The 200" is also remarkably expansive.  In addition to poets and publishers, it includes, as one cynical Kris Kristoffson fan commented, "songwriters, politicians, activists, organizers, scholars, essayists, critics, one troll, two semiliterates, 'an electric eye, two big dogs and a minefield'".



     No one is surprised by the aesthetic bias.  By my count, only one Nemerov winner or judge was listed in the 200.  Even multiple winners who have spent decades in open fora providing free expert critique to developing poets were overlooked.  By contrast, the Top 10ers, including the late Steve Sabol, all understood basic verse technique and its value.

     Speaking of Mr. Sabol, there is a parallel between the NFL and the poetry worlds.  Playing the AcaPoBiz role is the players' union:  The National Football League Players Association ("NFLPA").  Unlike a guild, it concentrates on its members' welfare without regard to performance.  Criticism of other members is actively discouraged.  Both the league and Players Association have a conduct code and rules encouraging uniformity--literally!--and respect when appearing in the public eye (i.e. playing onfield or being interviewed). 

     The more purist onliners are like the NFL Network, a television channel that grew out of Steve Sabol's NFL Films (which is similar to Stage poets, dealing with the more dramatic and amusing).  The NFL Network unabashedly promotes football as its raison d'être, often featuring technical discussions (something never found in literary periodicals anymore), form[ation]s, crowd-pleasing² highlights, humor, news, drama, and, of all things, poetry!

     Mr. Abramson has provided us a useful directory of those whose influence has brought U.S. poetry to where it is today.  Whether this is to their credit or not is another question entirely.  It is time again for me to quote Kristofferson:

    "Who's to bless and who's to blame?"

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Footnotes:

¹ - To be fair, Zoetrope poets have created no less than two of the top 10 poems of this century:  "There are Sunflowers in Italy" by Didi Menendez and "Specimen #31, Adult Female" by Sharon Hurlbut.

² - As opposed to performances of interest only to other participants.

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The Ten Most Influential People in Poetry Today

     The current fad is lists of the most influential people in poetry.  My particular spin presumes a successful future for our art form.  The question becomes:

    "Who will be most responsible if poetry regains an audience before 2030?"

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #69

     Most such lists will be dominated by authors, publishers or editors of poetry books.  This begs the question about people reading poetry.  They don't.  That is the problem.

     The role of teachers will figure prominently on other lists but, for our purpose, this would have to be confined to famous instructors who teach techniques, technologies, performance and forms that will appeal to non-poets.  As far as I know, that list is empty.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #52

    Far more important are the administrators and critiquers who mold that verse, the organizers and performers who bring it to the public's attention in open mics and slams, the videographers who post it on venues like YouTube, the bloggers and reviewers who filter out the shite and, finally, the editors of successful [web and maga] 'zines--especially non-literary ones (where and once they exist)--that bring poetry to the public.

     At the risk of stating the obvious, in this Internet Age the most influential people¹ will be those with a long and strong online presence.  That some of these individuals may be unknown to you says more about the transitional state of the endeavor than its participants. 

Peter John Ross

     Almost everything you have learned online about poetry fundamentals or the workshop ethos in the last twenty years can be attributed directly or indirectly to PJR.  He is the grandfather of successful 21st century poetry.

John Boddie

    "Whether or not critique is constructive depends on how the author uses it, not on the manner in which it’s phrased."

     If you don't know who John Boddie is then you have never encountered serious poetry critique.

Margaret Ann Griffiths

     That Maz was the Critic's Choice as best poet of our time and that the first two editions of her posthumous collection were oversubscribed will not be what puts her on this list.  As a mentor, commenter and, most importantly, as a role model she simply had no equal.

Marc Smith

     Any list of influential contributors to poetry's future that does not include the inventor of the slam cannot be taken seriously.

Nic Sebastian

     Nic's attention to presentation puts her decades ahead of anyone else in imagining the successful poetry [performances] of the future.

Christine Klocek-Lim

     Chrissie twice rescued one of the world's largest poetry forums.  In its day, her "Autumn Sky Poetry" was among the top three webzines;  despite being on hiatus for more than a year people still deep link to its particulars.  Recently, she has started a poem-a-day version, "Autumn Sky Poetry Daily".  Ms. Klocek-Lim's gentle style doesn't create waves but, if influence can be measured by the loyalty an organizer inspires, Christine's name must be recognized.  If the poetry world had a dozen more people as effective and level-headed as Chrissie we would not be having this discussion.

Seth Abramson

     Famous blogger Seth Abramson's frequent and exhaustive analyses of PoBiz and academic practices make him the Noam Chomsky of the poetry world.

Michael Burch

     Say what you will about his mixing poetry with politics or religion but Mr. Burch's "The HyperTexts" remains the single greatest source of contemporary poetry.  If nothing else, this is a tremendous convenience for those wanting to cite a great contemporary poem.

Tim Green

     If the Print world survives it will be because of the innovative approaches pioneered or perfected by Rattle magazine's editor, Tim Green.

Don Share

     Whether we are talking about dinosaurs, armies or organizations, the larger an entity is the slower it moves.  While "academic" efforts will continue to play a decreasing role in discussions of contemporary verse, Poetry magazine's resources ensure that it will continue to be the elephant in the room.


Honorable Mentions:

Gary Gamble

    "Try to have your writing make sense²."

     More than anyone else, Usenetter and Poetry Free-For-All moderator "GG" can be credited with putting an end to cryptocrap, to say nothing of unearned respect.

Kei Miller, Mary E. Hope, Stephen Bunch, Bob Schechter and Richard Epstein

     These prolific online critiquers, along with many others, have contributed more to the revival of poetic competence than anyone else.

Steve Sabol

Stephen Douglas Sabol (1942-2012)

     I knew I would forget someone!  This oversight was so egregious that it required immediate correction with this post-edit.  As of this writing, the single most successful contributor to poetry's repopularization (a subject that existing producers avoid) is the late, great NFL Films director, Steve Sabol, ably assisted by his predecessor and father, Ed.  He did whole segments on poets and recitations from poems (e.g. "Hurt but not slain, lay down and bleed awhile, then we’ll rise and fight again.").

     In 1974 Steve wrote the closest thing to an iconic poem in the last half century, "The Autumn Wind".  Sports announcer John "The Voice of God" Facenda recited it, reminding us of the value of fine performance and production.

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     My apologies to the many whom I have omitted.

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Footnotes:

¹ - We needn't broaden the discussion to include squirrels and the like.

² - Mr. Gamble's original phrasing was "Try to make your writing make sense."  He arrived at the final wording with the help of a fellow Usenetter.

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Practical Poetry: Markets

    The first rule for marketing poetry is:  "Don't."

    Even in the Golden Age of Poetry it was not usually presented as such.  Shakespeare sold drama, comedy and tragedy that "just happened" to be largely iambic pentameter.  It seems that, to have any public appeal, poetry must be contained within or presented as something else.  It might be described as "entertainment", "stories" or "A Night of Wit and Wisdom with So-And-So".  Poetry being a mode of communication, one would no more describe an offering as "poetry" than one would advertise "Gone with the Wind" as "two hours of phony southern accents". 

    Anyone who accuses you of being a poet should be sued for defamation immediately, as they should if the charge were sex offender, teabagger or Dallas Cowboys fan.  Again, Shakespeare identified himself as a dramatist and, later, a theater owner, not a poet.  Other greats would confess to being priests, bankers, even lawyers and other thieves but never, ever poets.  Today we invent silly euphemisms such as "slammer", "spoken word artist" or, my favorite, "wordist" (WTF?) to avoid that Kiss of Death.  Indeed, the last prominent individual to identify himself primarily as a poet was William McGonagall.  Need I say more?

    Now imagine if movies were packaged as poetry is.  The films would lack any overriding theme or narrative.  They would have no genre:  not drama, humor, romance, or tragedy.  They would lack the commonalities of even the most diverse short story collection.  Even the forms might change.  All titles would be long and precious, having little or nothing to do with the bulk of the opus.  Each collage would be a disjointed autobiography of a nobody, minus any central characters, significant events, chronology or anything else that might make a diary interesting.  In short, if we wasted celluloid like this every theater on the continent would close within a month.

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    After the first installment attendees understand what poetry is (i.e. verbatim), what terminology describes it and how meter works.  They are beginning to understand the differences between the rhythms of singing versus speaking.  Is it too early to discuss markets?  Hardly.  The time to consider the interests of the audience is before and throughout the writing process. 

"Read a lot of poetry."

Jeff Bahr

    For new poets there can be no better advice than this.  There is a twist, though:  they must concentrate on the type of poetry they wish to pursue.  If your interest is in teaching business card poetry you will want to read the kinds of poetry magazines listed in Jeff Bahr's "An Approximate Print Journal Ranking".  As mentioned in "Writing Postmodern Poetry", such work is remarkably easy to produce.  What matters most is your biography, which should include two namedroppings among the braindroppings.  "I studied under Schnevmolnikahauten and partied with Ginsberg" is a typical example.  Don't sweat the fact that Mrs. Schnevmolnikahauten was your high school geography teacher;  it is standard hipster practice to spout obscure names, implying that those who don't recognize them are "out of the loop".  As for Ginsberg, everyone partied with Allen;  you probably did without knowing it.  (For what it's worth, a popular poet's biography details failed relationships, drug addictions, alcoholism and the STD du jour.)

Michael Burch

   If your interest is in poetry that people might actually want to hear or read it stands to reason that you don't go to places that offer publication credentials instead of entertainment and have so little exposure to the public (i.e. beyond other poets).  In this case, "exposure" translates to "the Internet".  Some of these webzines have more hits in a week than a poetry magazine's entire print run.  Perhaps more important, though, is the type of reader these venues attract.

     Compare "The Hypertexts" to, say, "The Paris Review".  Visitors to the latter are more interested in the index (to see who's "getting ink"), editorials, biographies, and articles that support their particular "aesthetic".  Actually reading the poems would appeal only to those trying to get a sense of the editor's preferences with a view towards submitting work.  Once published there, many won't bother to submit again.  

     By contrast, in addition to being far more numerous, visitors to "The Hypertexts" have no reason to be there other than the poetry;  it's not a place that will help your resumé much, the articles and bios are sparse and the editorials are off-topic and strident.  While I wouldn't want to defend every poem there, "The Hypertexts" is the best source of technically sound, reader-oriented (if not audience-oriented) poetry in the world.  Alternative sources would include "Pedestal Magazine" and two now-defunct journals:  November Sky Poetry and Shit Creek Review.  That said, I'd like to see a source that integrates audio and performance;  we'll address this issue in subsequent installments of this series.

     Do not presume that editors have studied the elements of poetry.  In my experience, most haven't.  I could recount innumerable horror stories but I'll settle for this anecdote:

     The editor of a very popular poetry magazine has confided in me that he doesn't know a lamb from an iamb.  Having read his magazine, this came as no surprise.  My friend judges work based solely on the narrative, making his "poetry" periodical seem like The Reader's Digest with linebreaks.  What amazes me are the long hours he puts into his labor of love--an affection not attended by any interest in the attributes of the beloved.

     Jerry (we'll call him Jerry) contacts me, depressed that his publication isn't winning any awards or critical attention and that he is beginning to suspect that the reason isn't politics.  I can't tell him that he is caught in a Shit Cycle:  he puts out crap, produces guidelines telling submitters to send only that which is similar to what he currently publishes and, lo and behold, they send him...more crap!  Rather, I introduce him to some critically acclaimed unpublished works.  He chooses one based entirely on its storyline.  At year's end it doesn't appear on his "Best Poems of the Year" feature.  Examining the "poems" that did make this list singed my retinas.  For Jerry, the Shit Cycle is clearly the effect, the cause being that he wouldn't recognize a poem if we tattooed it inside his eyelids.

     The harsh truth is that there isn't much to be gleaned from the offerings of those who think AnaDiPlosis is an Italian porn star.  Worse yet, this is something that is apparent in every line they write and every poem they promote. 

The Hitch

John Prine

     We come to a minor inconvenience relating to the poetry market:  it doesn't exist.  To finesse this, we turn to the more inclusive and correct definition of poetry, which includes song lyrics.  We invest time investigating "singability":  our ability to remember and sing some lyrics easier than others.  In technical terms, very roughly, this translates to accentual or, better yet, accentual-syllabic verse where the beats fall strongly on or within important words.  No one writes a more singable song than John Prine, so we look at his early work (i.e. up to and including "Bruised Orange") for examples. Many of those can be viewed on YouTube.    Singability is most evident in songs that have relatively little (e.g. "Hobo Song") or no accompaniment, as with "Diamonds in the Rough":

     "It ain't purty but try getting that damned earworm out of your skull!"

     Having done that, we look at what is required for less singable tunes to succeed, like those of Joni Mitchell.

    Those not musically inclined (i.e. those who "couldn't hold a note in an envelope") can collaborate with a musician;  in some parts of town there is one on every street corner.  With luck, the Practical Poet could be the next Bernie Taupin.  ("Who?" you ask?  Never mind.  You're too damned young.  Suffice it to say he writes lyrics and his checks don't bounce.)

Joni Mitchell

     For the most part, though, Practical Poets will have to create their own markets.  Check out our original blog post, "Commercial Poetry: Definition and Overview", for more on this.

     Above all, the student needs to understand that poetry is nothing more or less than a mode of communication.  It can be put to any purpose and can cover any subject.  It does not need to be profoundly funny, profoundly emotional or profound.  It can be anything.  Anything. 

     Hell, it could be a weather forecast.  We'll save that story for another day, though.

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