So, You Want to be Published

Rule #1:  Don't!

     It is like a Catch-22.  The fact that you're reading about how to go get published proves that it is too early for you.

     It is important to understand that there is little or no recompense involved here.  Glory?  The only people reading your words will be others curious about what kind of stuff they have to write in order to be published there themselves.  Bear in mind, too, that there are thousands of poetry magazines and webzines sharing very few readers. 

     There is also the small matter of poetry's condition.  How many living poets can you name?  More to the point, how many do you think even 1% of the population can name?

     With neither fortune nor fame in the mix, is there a downside to being published?  Certainly!  Editors almost always want "first serial rights", such that, while it might be used in a future collection, future magazine editors are unlikely to want that work.  Worse yet, if you were foolish enough to use your real name, publications could cause problems for you in the future.  As you improve, you might get more and more ambitious in your submissions.  Your chances won't be enhanced by future editors web searching your name and finding your rawest pieces.  Meanwhile, prospective employers and other business contacts might not like what they see when they Google you in the future.

    "Okay, then I'll publish a book."

     See Rule #1.  If you self-publish you will, at least, retain distributional control.  This is to say that you can bury the product later, when you have produced better offerings.  After foisting a few dozen copies on friends and family, the lesson shouldn't cost you more than a few thousand dollars--less if you use LuLu.

     Planning a book is not just wrong, it's exactly wrong.  As they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.  Instead of trying to fill a volume with, say, fifty mediocre poems, try to produce one stunning critically acclaimed masterpiece.  Think quality, not quantity.  Bear in mind that, aside from the players' parents, no one wants to watch Pop Warner football when they could be watching the NFL.  You will be competing against the best poets in the world.  It is important to view this as challenging more than daunting.

How to Produce a Stunning Critically Acclaimed Masterpiece

1.  Learn the craft.

      You don't make it into the National Hockey League by skating on your ankles.  Craft might not help so much with editors, few of whom have studied it themselves, but it will capture the attention of geeks--any one of whom can create a buzz for you if suitably impressed--and listeners.

2.  Respect the craft.

     If you don't know whether "The Red Wheel Barrow" is free verse or metrical you can learn.  Start now.

     If you don't care whether "The Red Wheel Barrow" is free verse or metrical you can't learn.  Stop now.

3.  Poetry is a mode of speech.

     Not writing.  Never, ever let anyone see you reading poetry--especially your own--aloud from a script.  That would be tantamount to announcing that nothing you write should be taken seriously, even by you.

     It follows that you must either perform it or attract the attention of those who can.

4.  Say what you need to say.

     And nothing more.  Ideally, it should be something small that could unfold to something different, something bigger.  Avoid clichés and well-worn themes.  Use original language to conjure up something interesting.

5.  Never, ever describe what you're doing as "poetry". 

    The idea is to attract listeners, not to repel them.  Choose words that people will not only want to hear, but to remember.  Verbatim.  Let the audience decide what to call and how to treat your offerings.

6.  We need to develop performance, multimedia and social media skills or network with those who have them.

    By far, the most likely way for an individual to reach a large audience is to have a YouTube video go viral.  Here is where technique can mean everything.

7.  Avoid any mention of hearts, souls, the abyss, or other overwrought abstractions. 

    And shards. 

    Especially shards.

8.  Know that you have "arrived" when strangers quote you.

9. Avoid Seinfeldian ("So what?") poems.

If You Insist

     If impatient or overconfident, here are some pointers:

     Do a web search of outlets or go to "Poets & Writers - Literary Magazines".  Look for what seems a suitable venue and then research it.  Make sure the outlet is still in operation.  Check out their reading period.


     What kind of content do they like?  As long as it isn't a diary entry, one can wow editors with succinct plotlines that end with an intriguing twist.  If not too self-conscious, a clever turn of phrase can help.  Humor always sells.  Avoid propaganda unless willing to severely limit your options. 

     Academia is a different market entirely.  University presses are a slam dunk if you can claim to be an alumnus and/or can fit in enough literary allusions to keep scholars annotating for hours on end, along with enough dead ends to keep interpreters guessing for decades.

     Whatever your expectations are, lower them.

The Malsitna

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #62

    When was the last time you got a letter, email or message quoting a contemporary poem the non-poet sender did not write?  When was the last time you saw a politician, interviewee, inspirational speaker or standup comedian quote today's poetry?  When was the last time you saw someone perform--not read or recite but perform, as a Shakespearean actor might--a poem recently authored by a third party?  These are things poetry fans used to do centuries ago.  These were poetry's lifeblood when it was alive. 

    The bad news is that, as far as we can tell, poetry has only one remaining fan and age is catching up with him.  He attends open mics and, despite a failing memory, he performs the poetry of today's best versers--something that is illegal in slams.  As things stand, when he retires the last vestige of poetry's glory will disappear.

    The good news is that this same person has come up with an idea to encourage others to revive poetry's significance in our culture...and have a lot of fun doing it! 

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #18

    A malsitna is exactly like a slam except that, like the Poetry Out Loud initiative, participants must perform someone else's work.  That might sound like a minor, cosmetic change but think of how little our DNA would need to be modified to produce a gorilla, a chimpanzee or a Miley Cyrus.

    For starters, the event immediately switches from a competition among poetry's producers to one among poetry's consumers.  Since the latter are an endangered species some of the former will need to convert.  Already we can see the appeal to publishers, who could organize malsitnas where competitors choose poems from the sponsor's publications, similar to Performance Contest Marketing.  These can be either live, like slams, or online ("cybermalsitnas", where entrants post recordings of their performances to, say, YouTube).

    Text-based poetry organizers and publishers can regard the malsitna as a way to encourage reluctant poets to honor the art form onstage without encountering the perceived demographical, stylistic and aesthetic tendencies of a standard slam.  Budget?  A malsitna doesn't cost money, it makes money [if you want it to].  Regular slammers could use the malsitna not only as a fund raiser but as a way to broaden the perspectives of their poets--two vital considerations when advancing to the nationals.  Ideally, the public might notice and wonder:  "What's this?  Poetry karoake?"

     A bar could sponsor a Malsitna Night where, with great pomp and humor, the manager might award a "Golden Pitcher" (like a Stanley or Davis Cup) of beer to the winner.  A book store or library might give out poetry volumes as prizes and, perhaps, have their own Ring of Honor for recent victors.  The event could be recorded and, with the proper permissions, shown online.  If the video goes viral, in one fell swoop, a poet in Alice Springs, Australia, a performer visiting from Peoria, Illinois, and a brick-and-mortar in Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, Alberta, can get their three minutes of game.

    Use your imagination!

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Competence?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #71

     In his September 6th, 2013 Chicago Tribune article, "Where competency ends, poetry begins", Michael Robbins mentions how only 1% of the Chicago Review's poems come from unsolicited submissions.  This preamble was hardly the point of the article but it did raise a few eyebrows...and a few hackles, since it suggests that 99% of the final product was solicited.  While that may be higher than the norm, most objections came from those who have never glimpsed the horrors of a slush pile--at least not Chicago Review's slush pile.  It is the flip side of the Watermelon Problem:  what do you, as an editor, do if you don't receive enough memorable poems?

    Why, you go out and acquire them, of course!

Armin Shimerman plays "Quark"

     If poetry is about poets, as the print world insists, you approach producers:  recognized poets.  This makes perfect sense.  In theory.  In practice, it results in a lot of "New Yorker"¹ poems  and the dull homogeny of a clique.

     If poetry is about poems you seek out specific recommendations from consumers:  critics, bird dogs and readers.  This approach gives us eclectic sources like The Hypertexts.  Editors might be surprised to hear how many interesting poems people have encountered in workshops, open mics or elsewhere. How can it hurt to ask your readership for tips?  To paraphrase Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #111:  "Treat subscribers like family.  Exploit them."

     I enjoyed Michael's article.  However, it seems that Mr. Robbins and I have very different definitions of competence.  For example, regarding "Apple Slices" he writes:

"Now, this is crushingly banal (and, at the end, questionably grammatical). It's not just that this scene of adolescent wholesomeness is textbook workshop pablum, but that it has been platitudinized. It's trite and conservative.

"But it's eminently competent."

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #11

     Yes and no.  As an exercise in sonics it is downright excellent.  It fails as a poem because, in addition to imagination, it lacks everything else we might hope to see in free verse, starting with thoughtful linebreaks.  Shouldn't competence include more than assonance, spellchecking and an overactive ENTER key?

     Then there is this:

     "The merely competent should study Mlinko's work with envy."

     I appreciate the bold statement.  In my time I may have made a few, myself.  The problem is that this sample illustrates what Michael is bemoaning, not what he is championing: 

You never hear of Ixion, tied to a revolving wheel,
but it's an axiom that, sooner or later, a hurricane'll hit here.

     Before we pursue that, though, we must make the same detour Mr. Robbins did in considering Mark Edmundson's "Poetry Slam" article in Harper's Magazine:

Mark Edmundson:  "Contemporary American poetry speaks its own confined language, not ours. It is, by and large, pure. It does not generally traffic in the icons of pop culture; it doesn't immerse itself in ad-speak, rock lyrics, or politicians' posturing: it gravitates to the obscure, the recondite, the precious, the ancient, trying to get outside the mash of culture that surrounds it."

Michael Robbins:  "This is just not true..."

     "Not true?"  The Ange Mlinko excerpt was not obscure?  Not recondite?  Exactly how many anglophones do we think will know who Ixion was?  Greek mythology isn't ancient and "outside the mash of culture" here in North America?  What could be more precious than speaking of Ixion using quaint contractions, the last of which breaks voice and rhythm?

     In an era when few MFAs grads know whether "Prufrock" is verse or free verse competence is a far greater and rarer accomplishment than some seem to think.

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Footnotes:

¹ - "New Yorker" poems = throwaway poems by celebrated poets.

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Zombie Poetry Part II: You Should Perform

    ...for all the reasons you don't want to.

"I'm too shy!"

    That's a given.  Otherwise, the mere existence of an audience would pull you in like a bee to pistils, a bridger to Stayman or Bill to Flowers.

     For us squirrels, timidity is survival, like your fear of snakes, spiders, heights or tax audits.  The same reserve is not so healthy with humans in general, poets especially.  A shy verser is like an acrophobic paratrooper.

    As an introvert, your perfect test audience would be a group of deaf and blind people turned in your direction.  Well, that pretty much describes the average slam or open mic audience.  These people are so self-absorbed, even when not waiting for their three minutes of fame, that you could probably strip naked and dance a tarantella without any of them noticing.  (This may explain why nudity is among the few things expressly forbidden at slams.)

     As a newcomer, regardless of how well or badly your performance goes, 30 seconds after you finish no one present will be able to pick you out of a lineup.

"Aren't those people slightly creepy/crazy?"

    This is a gross misapprehension based on a ridiculous stereotype.  Open mic and slam afficionados are not "slightly creepy/crazy".

     They are completely so.  Lest you doubt me, try showing up five minutes before starting time.  Watch the performers robotting about, making spastic movements and gestures while grunting and whispering to themselves.  They are either poets practicing their presentations or zombies, and the smart money isn't on "poets practicing".

     Do not worry about your safety, though.  Such events are like boarding the Borg cube;  if you aren't seen as a threat you aren't seen at all.  That said, stick close to the organizers and MC, just to be sure.  (Why staff members aren't forced to wear white coats is anybody's guess.)

"But my interest is in teaching, not writing or performing, poetry."

    Of the the myriad reasons to practice performance, none trumps the fact that you will be quoting poetry to students on a regular basis.  To put this in perspective, only the need for teachers to perform poetry exceeds the need for students to read it.  That may seem like hyperbole to anyone unfamiliar with Literature or Creative Writing course dropout rates.

"But these performers are so much better than I!"

    Hell, no, they ain't.  You must participate in order to appreciate the fact that, sight unseen, when you take that stage for the first time you'll be among the three best presenters present.  Don't believe me?  This guy is a world champion slammer:



    Did he go to the same acting school as William Shatner?*

"If these performers are so bad what am I going to learn from them?"

    Nothing.  If you're extremely fortunate you'll find someone who isn't trying to cram as much angst into 180 seconds as possible.  You will find a friendly (or, at least, totally indifferent) audience, though.  This will help you overcome your fear of public speaking.  You'll discover why reading poetry aloud works only on kindergarteners.  You'll learn to perform from memory so that you can look the mealy-mouthed bastards in the eye to know how well you're really doing.  None of this can be convincingly imparted by a squirrel on a blog;  it can only be learned through experience.

"But slam is a competition!"

    And getting published in a high end literary magazine isn't?

    Ignore the competitive aspect of slams.  The judging is insane.  As recently as this week I saw a competitor blow the audience, including the judges, away, only to earn 7s and 8s.  The next poet put everyone to sleep.  The judges shook off the effects of their slumber, looked at who was climbing off the stage, and flashed 9s and 10s.

    There is a competition going on here but it is far more subtle than the one involving drunken judges raising cards with numbers on them.

"But I don't write for an audience."

    Then isn't it time you started?

"But I write for myself."

    They why show it to anyone?

"Sorry, I meant to say that I write for poetry readers."

    Why not for something more numerous, like unicorns?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #31

    Let's take a best case scenario:  A fair-sized publisher puts out your poetry collection.  You'll be asked to do book signings and readings.  Why readings?  Because even publishers understand that poetry is not primarily a textual or an audio art form.  Like standup, television and movies, it is an audiovisual one. 

    Let's say there are so many attendees that the event can't be held in a phone booth.  (I'm sorry.  Phone booths were tiny alcoves built to accomodate obsolete land line telephones.)  Knowing that viewers may own videophones and that poetry readings cause narcolepsy, don't you think the time you spent overcoming your shyness and developing performance skills might come in handy now?  Whose video will make a bigger and better impression online?  Your scintillating display or readings that cause stocks in Ambien to tumble?

"Won't this change the way I regard and write poetry?"

    Only if you're lucky.

"I don't know.  Open mics don't sound like something I'd like."

    "Like"? 

    "Like"?!? 

     Are you kidding me?

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #30

     You will loathe every second of it.  After the first one you'll resolve to never return.  You will wonder why you ever listened to some silly squirrel on the Internet.  You'll stay away for months.  Maybe years. 

     Then, an eerie, perverse, Capistranic homing instinct will kick in, inexorably drawing you back.  Soon you will be making friends and looking forward to the next get-together.  Nevertheless, you will remain an outsider until that one, transformative moment when a few listeners, their eyes gleaming with fascination, lean forward and smile.  If only for a instant, you will own them.

     And they you. 

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• Zombie Poetry Part I
  
  
• Zombie Poetry Part II:  You Should Perform

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Footnote:

*  William Shatner in an acting class?  What was I thinking!?

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Performers: The Auctioneer

Sean Matthews "People Smoking Out my Window":



Among pixel, page and stage poets, the one that sticks closest to stereotype may be the last, especially the slammer. It is a young (i.e. fewer than 5% that I've seen were over 40) man's (i.e. more than two thirds of those I've encountered were male) world of cliché, platitude wannabes, constant shrieking, narcissism, and self-promotion. It is the mirror image of Tim Murphy: slammers generally make good eye contact and [over]use gesture and facial expression but don't modulate their tempo, tone or volume any more than John Marcus Powell does. Almost without exception, they speak so fast their words blur; combined with their excessive enthusiasm, they seem like overeager salesmen or auctioneers.

Eric Darby's "Scratch & Dent Dreams" from the 2005 National Poetry Slam Individual Semifinals:



Is it poetry? Not by any useful definition. It seems memorable enough for the orator but not for those who count: the attendees. In the slam world, the ultimate compliment a viewer can render is requesting to see the words. Such flattery rarely occurs. Even the national championships don't draw more viewers than participants. In all my research I have never seen a slam offering being presented or quoted by anyone other than the author. Rhetoric with rhyme (if present) could be a more apt description; other aspects of technique are conspicuously absent. The presentations and comments feature passion and message (neither of which vary much from one performance to the next), making most slammers a fatal combination of sentimentalist and Content Regent.

"We Are More" by Shane Koyczan for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics:



On the plus side, it would be impossible to create a composite "perfect poet" without the slammer's assertiveness in public.

Preservation, Presentation and Promotion - Part II

"Verba volant, scripta manent."

- "Spoken words fly away, written words remain."

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The written word, then, usually comes with some assurance that we can return to it later. This, in and of itself, discourages memorization.

The spoken word may be no less a mandala than existence itself but, in a field where participants could synchronize their watches and argue about the time of day, there is an almost unanimous consensus that:

• poetry is primarily and originally an oral/audiovisual mode of communication;



• few modern poets are even passable performers; and,



• cultures that still revere poetry also value performance.

Why, then, do so few poets, professors, MFA and English graduates learn the rudiments of performance?

Presentation

Impressions: Based on the paucity of crossovers (i.e. well known active members of more than one group), the society of performing poets has to be the most isolated of the three metacommunities. The average age seems to be lower, the gender mix similar to the Print World. The Presentation World certainly takes pride in its "democratic" nature but I'm not convinced that the word "anarchic" wouldn't be more apt. Surprisingly, its aesthetic may be the most narrow, rarely straying far from the stereotypical impassioned rant. As with Print Poetry, whole genres (e.g. elegy, allegory, epic), including the three most popular with audiences (i.e. comedy, romance and third party narrative), are largely ignored.

Overview: Performance poetry is a reserved expression describing "anything goes" stage poetry. It tends to eschew competition but allows props, costumes, music, actions and whatever else the poet deems appropriate. By contrast, slam poetry is a competitive format that permits nothing but words and gestures. The most common live venue is the open mic[rophone], many of which follow a reading from a recently published book.

Perspective: The medium that will likely take center stage in poetry's revival is YouTube (and sites like it). Consider this contrast in mindsets: those from the Print World despair at how difficult it would be to resurrect interest in poetry. Performers marvel at how easy it would be: two or three poetry videos going viral might be all it takes!

For a state-of-the-art view go to YouTube and search for "Poetry". The unfiltered results are unlikely to impress you. Indeed, it confirms the Crap Constant, 98.3%, that we discussed here. There is a wrinkle, though. Just as bad verse is more noticeable than bad free verse, the visual effect makes terrible performance more evident than terrible writing. This leads to the misimpression that all presentation poetry, like all doggerel, is awful. This problem is exacerbated by performed verse, a double-whammy often riddled with clanging rhymed couplets and bone-jarring meter. In that vein, here is some gratuitous advice for new presenters:

• Poet, look the bastards in the eyes...
  
  You need to look at your audience, if only to know when you may be losing them. Pick two or three prominent listeners, spaced evenly about the audience, and speak exclusively to them. Make it intimate. Let some hear while others overhear.
  



• while not allowing yours to rise.
  
  When looking away to avoid staring and/or to feign thought peer down and to the side, so that you don't appear to be reading from notes, or turn your entire face upward. Do not roll your eyes upward and to the right; that is a sign that you are trying to recall something you've read or seen. (Upward and to the left means you're performing a calculation rather than a poem.)



• Imagine patrons in their drawers.
  
  Unfortunately, for me, this brings up a disturbing mental image:
  
  
  I hope this bit of advice works better for you than me. In one variation, we're also supposed to imagine that everyone in the audience owes us money. I'm not sure what that is about. In any case, remember that everyone is there to be entertained; they're pulling for you.
  
  There is no need to be nervous. Consider practicing on your webcam. Oh, and remember to breathe!
  


• Don't read from scripts, from books or scores.
  
  Teleprompters? Maybe. Reading prose? Sure, but that is the difference between prose and poetry. If your verse isn't memorable to you, it won't be to anyone else (even if your message is). You wouldn't tolerate this level of unprofessionalism from performers in a movie or a play, would you?
  



• How much of verse resides in pace,
  
  Close your eyes and listen to the rate of a performer's words. Notice how uniformity, lack of pauses or undue haste adds an alienating level of artifice.
  


• in body and expressive face?
  
  Study how much a great Shakespearean actor's gestures add to context, clarity and emphasis.
  


• Speak at, not to, and none will heed...
  
  I can't stress this enough: there is no special voice for poetry. Talk to your audience exactly as you would to three buddies in a diner booth.
  


• as auctioneers blur words with speed.
  
  Rookie open-mikers and slammers make the mistake of trying to cram too many words into the allotted time. Pick shorter pieces. Better to leave them wanting more than less.
  
  


• Performers pause for thought, not breath...
  
  The essence of performing is in the apparently impromptu nature of the speech. Act as if your words never existed before you spoke them. Own them. This cliché is fundamental to all theatre, of which presentation poetry--if not all poetry--is a subset.
  


• as monotones bore all to death.
  
  All too often, slammers scream non-stop, without variation in pitch, pace, tone or volume. This is no more interesting than a reader droning.
  

Samples: There is no shortage of examples of how not to perform poetry. Here are the two best known recent cringefests, one from each of the Poetry Worlds we've discussed:

1. Elizabeth Alexander's dismal outing at Obama's inauguration gave us Rule #24: "Poetry's only selling point is that it is cheaper than tear gas."
   
   
   



2. Not to be outdone, Shane Koyczan's beer commercial ripoff, "We Are More", at the 2010 Olympics demonstrated once and for all the danger inherent in mixing nationalism, "art" and laziness.
   
   
   

It wasn't easy to find examples of well-performed poems. If you can link to a convincing one, please do so in the Comments box below. There are a few at "Poetry Out Loud: Learning Recitation", including:

1. Allison Strong
   
   Sonnet CXXX: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
   by William Shakespeare



2. Shawntay A. Henry
   
   Frederick Douglass
   by Robert E. Hayden

Many of these efforts illustrate how difficult some modern poems are to perform. IMHO, great poems have to be written with performance in mind yet still stand up to review as text. Due to the isolation of the three Poetry Worlds, few contemporary poets have exhibited both talents.

Conclusions: We can blame music for the precipitous drop in poetry's fortunes between 1920 and now. How do we explain the gap between poetry's popularity in anglophone versus other modern cultures, though? The lack of theatre in our prosodies and prosody in our theatre seems the only explanation.

We can and should preserve on video the best performances of our time. Nevertheless, there will always be a you-had-to-be-there presence to them. As such, this critical aspect of the art form has to be reinvented and reiterated by each generation. That this transitory magic cannot be preserved like text is its charm--a strength, not a weakness.

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