Commercial Poetry: August 2013

Monday, August 26, 2013

Ten Vital Issues Poets Ignore

Studies will show that in large families the lower that children are in the birth order the more likely they are to appreciate verse. Why do you suppose that would be?

There are always certain subjects best avoided. In polite company, sex, politics and religion qualify. Bringing up Superbowl XL won't make you friends in Seattle. Canadians would rather forget the terrible summer beer strikes of 1982, despite the crucial role they played in their nation's sovereignty. Don't jinx things by mentioning power outages along the U.S. eastern seaboard.

Among poets there are many taboo subjects. These include, in ascending order of seriousness, the following, many of which overlap:

10. Multimedia

Long before web browsers had video support, one of my favorite human beings wrote a book in HTML and posted it online for free public consumption. When readers got to the part depicting a chanteuse singing in a nightclub users could click on the lyrics and hear someone play the song in the background. As crude as it was, Internet multimedia was born!

Since then, and despite amazing advances in technology and software, poetry's use of multimedia has been disappointing, amounting to little more than videtaped slams or, worse, readings.¹ Perhaps in another decade, with all of this science, poetry will finally be as visually stimulating and entertaining as it was in prehistoric caves.

9. Copyright

Copyright infringement, if not outright plagiarism and piracy, is the order of the day on the Internet as it was among people when poetry was at its height. How can we promote something we aren't even allowed to perform without tracking down the copyright holder and getting specific permission? We can't see a dance band without hearing covers of popular songs. Other than Poetry Out Loud, when was the last time you saw anyone perform¹ a contemporary poem they didn't write?

For now, poets would do well to concentrate on writing something worth reading. Once they accomplish that they might work on writing something worth stealing.

8. Performance

     Speaking of "Poetry Out Loud", why is it for kids only? What message does this send?

     Answer: That adults don't perform poetry. And, sure enough, they don't! Not even authors¹!

     Now imagine how popular songs or plays would be if they were never performed.

     Why would younger siblings appreciate verse more than their older brothers and sisters? Because Mommy and Daddy read Dr. Seuss to the elder children. They recited it to the youngest. Such is the difference performance can make.

7. Anti-aesthetics

     Prosody may be humankind's oldest science, predating astronomy and medicine. Nevertheless, its collected wisdom is rejected by neophytes who then, in a best case scenario, spend years reinventing what they refuse to learn. Little, if anything, comes of this hubris but, if something did, it would be added to the knowledge base and ignored by the next generation.

     Perhaps this is a charming aspect of youth.

     It is far less endearing in their educated elders.

6. Overproduction

The proliferation of Creative Writing and MFA courses, often at the expense of English ones, is only one explanation for the explosion in production. There are thousands of vanity--sorry, "showcase"--sites online, including many Facebook groups. Slam continues to thrive. Those responsible for this overproduction actually boast about this emphasis on quantity rather than quality. "There is more poetry being written and published today...blah, blah, blah..."

That little of this is actually poetry by any coherent definition doesn't matter. The devolution from free verse to prose poetry to lineated prose feeds into this effort as poetry becomes a strictly participation sport. It's more like yoga than an art form competing for an audience. Try bringing up this topic in a room where 99% of the occupants are enablers or perpetrators. At the very least, we are reminded that, while we can't have demand without supply (barring prohibition or people demanding the impossible), we can certainly have supply without demand.

5. The Watermelon Problem

     With one wave of my magic wand I just made you Editor-in-Chief of the largest poetry venue in the world. Your excitement wanes as you read through the brain droppings that people submit, knowing you'll have to select a few dozen of these for your next edition. This goes on for fifty years. You begin to wonder if you shouldn't have taken that job at your uncle's mortuary. More lulz.

     Out of the blue, a once-in-a-lifetime brilliancy arrives!

     What do you do? If you stop and think how this will make the rest of your offerings appear you might refuse to publish it. After all, do you really want to hear your subscribers whine about why all poetry can't be like this?² Do you treat it like every other poem you publish, none of which have ever been quoted or performed? That is, do you bury it in the dirt you've had to publish for half a century? Or do you highlight it? If so, how? Do you cancel all other poems and publish that verse, filling in the rest of the edition with discussions of the masterpiece?

     If a top periodical cannot promote the best poem of its time what hope is there for lesser works? Or for poetry's revival?

4. Content Regency

Attend any class. Read any review or scholarly criticism written in the last few decades. Spend some time on the blogosphere. What is the focus of conversation? Style? Form? Rhythm? Sonics? Or is it subject matter? We giggle when non-poets reveal that they prefer verse about bunnies to poems about clouds, yet this is exactly what we find in most literary commentary. Only the language is different. Artless lineated prose is praised if it is about philosophy, psychology or literature itself. The world yawns. When it dares to demand [gasp!] poetry in its poetry the expressions "unsophisticated" and "anti-intellectual" loom. If 90+% of the poems written today were sonnets about cats would those who complain be accused of ailoraphobia?

Remember when people used to say that poety is not about what you say but how you say it? That is sacrilege now.

3. Education and The Inspiration Myth

In 2013 the average English or MFA graduate knows less about the elements of poetry than the average grade six graduate in 1913. We have Creative Writing professors who don't know whether "Prufrock" is free verse or metrical. We wonder what students are being taught, only to discover that the focus is on content (see above) and inspiration, inverting the truism about 99% perspiration versus 1% inspiration.

Isn't there something perverse about encouraging people to do something they don't know how to do? Wouldn't it make sense to show them the fundamentals first so that they have a skill to practice?

2. Convenient Poetics

Anything that refers to poetry's failure to find an audience is either ignored or denied, along with the audience itself. As recently as today, August 26th, 2013, in "The Bibliophilic Blogger", British poet Nicholas Murray asked "Do People Still Buy Poetry?" He made some good points (e.g. "we lack proper criticism") but, along the way, he used the failure of an obscure book in 1929--a few years after poetry received its fatal wound from music on the radio--to demonstrate that "there never has been a golden age". So, there was never a time when poets were rock stars, when poetry outsold prose, when poetry appeared in almost every newspaper and magazine, or when Robert Service made $500,000 from one poem? That's quite the history rewrite!

Without a hint of irony he concludes: "If poets themselves don't buy each other in numbers then we are in trouble." Substitute any other practitioners for "poets" (e.g. novelists, playwrights, magicians, car manufacturers, etc.) and you'll see the problem. A potential audience consisting of more than 99% of the population is ignored/denied.

1. Audience

Any one of the above could prevent a resurgence of interest in poetry. Nevertheless, they all disappear if poetry regains its audience. Multimedia explodes with productions featuring poetry, as it recently did for rap. The sheer number of these would make copyright issues moot. Open mics and slams would need larger venues, if not larger media. Prosody's case against anti-aesthetics and in favor of education would make itself. Content Regency shrivels in the face of a multiplicity of poems on the same subject--just pick the best one! Production and demand would come closer to balancing. The Watermelon problem disappears on Facebook. Convenient Poetics withers in the face of what its advocates fear most: a resurgence of interest in poetry. People learning iambs from trochees as early as elementary school wouldn't need anyone to tell them what is and what isn't poetry. Rather, they would tell us.

As it should be.

Footnotes:

¹ - It is rare enough to hear someone reading someone else's contempory poem, let alone performing one.

While they wait patiently and clap politely, attendees at most poetry readings look like they're filming an ExLax commercial. That's on a good day. On a bad day it looks like someone is re-running the Milner experiment.

² - This may explain why the greatest metrical poem of this century remains unpublished.

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Thursday, August 22, 2013

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?"

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.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Great time to be a poet?

     In a thread entitled "Great time to be a poet?" one of our favorite humans, Dr. James Wilk, answered at length:

    "Well, in terms of the availability to disseminate one's work, there has never been a time with more venues for publication, thanks to the internet and the proliferation of on-line journals and so forth.

     "In terms of the availability of low-residency MFA programs to matriculate into or the ability to communicate with and workshop with fellow poets, there have never been more opportunities.

     "But with the rise of MFA programs and the increasing number of working poets in and out of academia, the competition for book contracts, grants & awards, placement in the top journals and bookings to read one's work has never been fiercer.

     "It's just as tough as ever to get a full-length manuscript published or to win major prizes or to appear in the top journals."

     Another replied more succinctly and provocatively:

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

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.

My apologies to the many whom I have omitted.

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.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Nexus

There is remarkably little overlap or interaction among Pixel, Page and Stage poets. The NEA and Poetry Foundation bring us the brilliant Poetry Out Loud initiative but, beyond that, PoBiz types exhibit little or no interest in performance...with one significant exception.

Our local open microphone is one of the many that is organized by a writers group. That organization provides a different Guest Reader at each monthly gathering of performers. Picture the scene:

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #28

     An academic, usually one with a recent publication from a university press, arrives at the venue at 7:00, foolishly thinking that these things start within a half hour of the announced starting time. He (we'll say it's a male not because about 2/3 of them are but because I flipped a coin and it landed heads) expects to be greeted by a crowd of angry villagers with torches. And he is, if you consider 30 souls who don't bother to look up from their laptops to be an "angry crowd" and the dim bulbs of the cafe/bookstore to be "torches" when actual torches would be more illuminating. (As the Great One said, we "live in available light.")

     This stranger in a strange land, looking like a hog at a luau, seeks out the comfort and safety of the organizers. They aren't hard to spot, being the only ones who seem to care who comes through the door. These greetings attract some attention from the villagers, who realize that this must be the bearer of the 15-minute commercial message that forms the preamble and price of their participation. Shrugs all around.

     The event finally begins with the Master of Ceremonies telling the crowd that they about to witness the second coming of William Shakespeare. Little does anyone suspect the reference is to the William Shakespeare who played halfback for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25

For the next eon or two the guest talks about having grown up somewhere. No trauma, no drama, no events, no point, just the fact that he grew up. Somewhere. Poetry technique? You're joking, right? From time to time the guy switches between looking at the crowd and at the book in his hand. There is no other way to distinguish his banter from his "poetry". The audience sits, impassive and expressionless. Think terra cota warriors here. When the guest stops speaking the statues stir to life, clapping politely.

Whereas the readers are cloned (i.e. bookworms presenting lineated journal writing) in some local laboratory, the open mikers range from slammers and street poets busting [gasp!] rhymes to droners, corazoners, dramatists, and formalists of all levels of sophistication. By the time the compère ends the proceedings something has become obvious: the two groups are caught in different eddies.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #68

     The PoBizzer is trapped in a causation spiral: he can't perform and, therefore, makes no effort to incorporate peformanance value in his writing. This, in turn, discourages him from learning how to perform. We would think that breaking out of this would be easy: just attend more open mics. Absorb the skills one sees there--by osmosis, if necessary.

     Care to guess how many of the 50 Guest Readers I've seen in the last 5 years return? How many have shown any interest in developing the most basic skill in their craft? 40 out of 50? 25? 10? A mere 5?

   How about zero? That's right. None. Some are so afraid of actually learning something that they leave before the open mic finishes. Not surprisingly, they continue producing and recommending stuff that has no audience appeal. One wonders why someone with no interest in poetry, least of all his own, wastes so much time trying to write and promote it.

    In "Star Trek Generations", the villain, Doctor Tolian Soran, played by Malcolm McDowell, is dislodged from the "Nexus"--a timeless, addictive pleasure zone--and wants to go back.

    Unlike any Guest Reader, the open mikers have--however briefly--held audiences enraptured. They have been to the Nexus.

    And want to go back.

Sunday, August 4, 2013

Wordshopping

No, we're not talking about buying dictionaries. Rather, it's about the next craze in poetry, combining the elements of a workshop with those of a spoken word open microphone (hence the alternative term: "shopmiking"). As you may know, most open mikes are organized by writers groups. Many of these involve a guest speaker, followed by time-limited (typically, 3-minutes long) performances by anyone who cares/dares to sign up and step onstage. End of event.

The wordshop involves a 5-10 minute "tip" (they assiduously avoid the term "lesson") from an experienced poet. Then there are performances: usually an open mike but it may be a slam (if only to show members how one operates) or a themed recital (e.g. perform your favorite poem by someone else). At the end of the evening one of the participants volunteers to be "The Guinea Pig". This involves performing their piece again, this time with on-the-fly advice from an acting coach.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #66

     "Stop! Try that again, but slower."

   "Not so loud, let the microphone do it's job."

   "Talk to us, not at us."

   "We need more gesture here."

     Because the purpose is educational, the wordshop is usually organized by a university or an unusually energetic geek. Because many attendees may be underaged students, venues tend to be unlicensed. Book store restaurants are popular choices. Budgets can be as low as $0 if enough volunteers can be gathered.

     With permissions, the tip and the performances could be videotaped and posted on YouTube.   In theory at least, the project involves all corners of the poetry world: technicians and academics can do the initial advice/tip phase, the students participate in the open mic, the slammers and performance crowd can be the coaches, and the Internet crowd can, if it chooses, contribute in response to the YouTube recordings.

   My favorite human being is involved in organizing one of these. His tip themes were, in chronological order starting with the first month's:

Definition of poetry

Verbatim. Memorable speech. Seems like a sensible place to start.

Performance

Techniques common to any poetry performance.

Diaeresis

"WTF?" I think they were trying to show how obscure some techniques are and how these little things add up.

Slam

Rules and expectations peculiar to slams.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #62

Organizing a wordshop is easy once you have a site and, hey, what restaurant wouldn't want to be filled to capacity at 7:00 P.M. once a month? If you can't find volunteers willing to render tips do a little research and you'll have a topic in no time. Once you have these things in place pick a date, put the word out in a few high schools and colleges, tell the existing open mike and writers community, and you're ready to go.

Expect a crowd.

Earl Gray