Commercial Poetry: Seth Abramson

Showing posts with label Seth Abramson. Show all posts

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.

    Your feedback is appreciated!

    Please take a moment to comment or ask questions below or, failing that, mark the post as "funny", "interesting", "silly" or "dull". Also, feel free to expand this conversation by linking to it on Twitter or Facebook. Please let us know if you've included us on your blogroll so that we can reciprocate.

    If you would like to contact us confidentially or blog here as "Gray for a Day" please use the box below, marking your post as "Private" and including your email address; the moderator will bring your post to our attention and prevent it from appearing publicly.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

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.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

"Why is modern poetry so bad?" - Part IV

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #51

The cheerleading in opposition to "Why is modern poetry so bad?" and the underlying Harper's article, "Poetry Slam, or, The Decline of American Verse", has become more exuberant, as evidenced by copious blurbs like Katy Waldman's "Who Are You Calling Opaque?". In fact, even the froth itself is spouting foam, as demonstrated so blatantly in Michael Theune's review, "Critical Alchemy: On Seth Abramson's 'The Golden Age of American Poetry Is Now'". One wonders when this "Golden Age" will produce a single line of verse recognized by a sizeable subset (10%?) of poets, let alone the public.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #35

    At the heart of the "Why is modern poetry so bad?" "debate" is a fundamental flaw in logic. Even if Mark Edmundson could prove that every poet he lists, along with all of those mentioned by his detractors, is the second coming of William McGonagall it still wouldn't touch on the quality of contemporary verse. What does? The fact that no one listens to it. If a team hasn't won a game and the league hasn't sold out a section, let alone a stadium, in fifty years how productive is it to argue about who is the greatest failure? When I say that no contemporary poet or publisher has done what Dylan Thomas and T. S. Eliot did in creating widely recognized verses I'm not talking about degrees; today's poets haven't done it at all. Not one poem. Not one performance gone viral on YouTube.

    All of this luscious fruit is dying on the vine.

    Worse yet, many of the avenues have closed: newspapers (online or print), television, and magazines no longer show much interest in poetry. The circulation of the most successful poetry magazine adds up to about 1/400th of the English language poets in the world. Prospects are remote for us ever being able to discuss an unincluded poem with our friends, as we can a news event, favorite song, movie or television show.

    "Hey, did you see the Red Wedding on 'Game of Thrones'?"

    "Sure did."

     Start of conversation.

    "Hey, did you read "Auditing the Heart" in Rattle or see it on Vimeo or YouTube?"

    "Nope."

     End of conversation.

Auditing The Heart (by Frank Matagrano) from Earl Gray on Vimeo.

    Even stalwarts like humor and nursery rhymes are in decline.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #57

    At this point you are probably thinking that the situation couldn't get worse. After all, nothing could be more devastating than a 0% success rate over half a century, right?

    Not so fast, Kowalski!

    I have news that is substantially more catastrophic than anything you've read so far.

    It isn't just the "Prufrocks", "Red Wheelbarrows" and "In a Station of the Metros" of today that are being ignored (assuming they're being produced). Everyone is also overlooking today's "In Flanders Fields", "High Flight" and "Trees". We have no Edgar Guests. You see, it's all poetry that has died, literary and popular (or, if you must, good and bad).

    Put another way, if the Mary Olivers, Amiri Barakas and Carol Ann Duffys of this world can't give us a broadly recognized poem, good or bad, what chance is there for a Derek Alton Walcott, Seamus Heaney or Margaret Ann Griffiths?

    "It seems the canaries are dead, too."

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Difference an Audience Makes - Part II

Poetry's Revival

In "The Difference an Audience Makes - Part I" we discussed how, without an audience, criticism inevitably comes to mean its opposite, blurbing. That is but one of hundreds of effects, almost all of them deleterious, of not having an audience.

    Just yesterday, July 15th, 2012, in "On the Power of Positive Poetry-Reviewing", one of my poetry heroes (a word I don't use lightly), Seth Abramson, asked this astonishing question: "You might well tell such a person, 'Look, telling me not to purchase a Ford Flex or a Honda CRV still leaves me with 69,998 car models I know nothing about, and I need and want to buy a car now, so how is this helping me?' And you might well add to that admonishment, 'Can't anyone out there help me figure out which cars I should buy?'"

    The problem is that, if we've ever read a back cover, we know that we can always find someone to blurb anything. If all 70,000 different brands are being praised--and they will be--how is that remotely helpful? Might as well just leave such "evaluations" to advertisers, no? Or cheerleaders. Why do you suppose a Consumers Guide is a blend of positive and negative?

    The very last thing we need is more blurbers. At a macrocosmic level, until and unless objective authorities stand up and say "Hell, no!" lazy producers and publishers will continue to crank out unspeakable shite, all of which will be "given unqualified praise."

    If everything is "mahvelous" then nothing is "mahvelous".

Obscurity Equals Failure

    When we are in the entertainment business, which includes but is not limited to art, comedy, film, music, fiction and, lest we forget, poetry, the unknown is the unsuccessful. Why that obscurity occurs (e.g. our lack of energy, commitment, talent or luck, a heartless public, an unfair system, the numbers game, etc.) matters far less than some may think. All of us know some very talented artists who, by any practical measure, have failed.

    All of this is equally true at the global level. Poetry has failed to capture an audience for more than half a century. The questions are many: Will it regain its place in the public consciousness? If so, how and when? How will we know if it has? By book and magazine sales?

Lest we have forgotten

    Consider these seemingly unrelated points:

Poetry existed for eons before the written word.

Poets used to be "rock stars", appearing in public theatres and in private gatherings organized by wealthy hosts.

In the seven years since its launch Youtube has resulted in more people viewing contemporary poems than reading them in books, magazines and webzines.

Most cell phone, video camera or webcam owners know how to make and upload videos and/or slide shows.

More than 98% of lyrics searched online are of songs the user has already heard.

More than 90% of scripts purchased are for productions the buyer has attended.

performance: Noun

the act of performing a ceremony, play, piece of music, etc.

...the efficiency with which something...fulfills its intended purpose.

    With prose, performance (if it happens at all) usually follows reading, as in a movie based on a novel. With film, theatre, music, and poetry, performance precedes reading. Shakespeare's plays were published years after they were staged, and only because the productions were as successful as they were. Today, the poetry reading tries to encourage poetry reading but fails because it is--you guessed it!--a poetry reading. As opposed to a performance. Imagine the prospects of an unknown rock band whose idea of "performing" is limited to reading lyrics aloud onstage.

    Without performance, poetry remains as obscure as sheet music or theatre/film scripts would be without performances.

The good news

    Not only is the sorry state of poetry criticism, publication and acceptance changing but the speed of that metamorphosis is increasing geometrically. Evolution is occurring at speeds previously associated with revolution. By the time we formulate predictions they are already the status quo. We need to "predict" in the present progressive tense.

    So, what grand transitional event is happening? I am betting that before 2020--perhaps today--poetry produces something for the first time in half a century: iconic words. That's right. By 2020 we will no longer be able to say that the average person is unable to cite a single line of poetry written since 1970. All it takes is one poem going viral. How long will this take? Personally, I'm surprised it hasn't happened already!

    Let's break the sequence of events down. Almost all print venues have a web version and almost all of those feature videos: interviews, readings/performances, and slide shows. With this in mind, submitters are beginning to include URLs of their poems on video to permit the editor and no one else to view the performance. (Currently, the easiest way to do so is to upload it to YouTube and mark it as "Private".)

    In a choice between texts of equal caliber a video could be the deciding factor. Even if it isn't up to the publisher's professional standards the video helps the editor envision the motif.

    The next hurdle is the publishing world's fixation on first serial rights. In due course, some practical editors--assuming that isn't an oxymoron in the poetry world--will realize what an opportunity they are squandering. They will go from demanding YouTube videos be Private to insisting that they be Public. By doing so editors can see how many viewers it attracts and what their opinion of it is. In both senses of the term, editors can see how the poem performs. Think test marketing here. If and when the piece is accepted its author will be asked to change the YouTube title to include the periodical's name before the poem's (e.g. Pat's Poetry Review: "Proof Rocks") and include a link to the webzine. In this way, every work published becomes an advertisement on one of the highest trafficked sites in the world. Now that there's a link to something with broader appeal than text we can add social media into the mix. Poetry could go from being dead to being a centerpiece of our culture in the space of 24 hours.

    Magazines and webzines are by no means the only ones that benefit from the web's multimedia options. Individual books have pages on publishers' and booksellers' sites. These will accommodate videos or links to them as they are created. Inevitably, people will purchase poetry collections for the same reason they bought music CDs: because they already love one or more of the pieces included. Let's not forget the effect of participation. Having acquired the book or e-book, readers might become video producers of other poems from it, creating an upward spiral of success.

    A new paradigm is being born.

The Difference an Audience Makes - Part I

The Difference an Audience Makes - Part II