Silliman's Blog

Bravo, Ron, bravo! You hit it on the nail on this one.
 

Ron,

Another important and insightful post.

When we talk about cultural production, it is usually with a focus on the art (the poem, the book, the painting, etc.) as a product or artifact. That is after all what artists make and what art consumers and art collectors buy. But as is the case with any product, we should also keep in mind that the financial transaction that accompanies the purchase of the artifact is only one transaction among many. The majority of these other associated transactions are service based. In the case of a painter, you have a requirement for raw materials. Easy enough. Then you have the education of the artist and everything that goes with it. You have inventory requirements. Early on you put the art under your bed, but eventually you need a loft, a studio or even an abandoned parking garage. You also have the entire art exhibition industry which includes universities, galleries, museums, corporate buildings, airports, parks and so forth. You have all the people who maintain and support these things. You have magazines, Internet sites and a host of other marketing and sales channels. You have insurance and transportation companies. We do not usually think about these things as being part of the art, but they represent a large portion of the art value chain. Last year, for example, art was insured in the amount of thirteen billion dollars worldwide. At this point in time, much museum art remains uninsured. Insurance revenue can only go up as more and more museums are built to hold more and more art. Think about it. Given the long lifecycle of the art artifact, hundreds or even thousands of years in some cases, the associated insurance represents a huge revenue stream. At some point, revenue resulting from art insurance may exceed revenue resulting from fine art purchases. I mention painting, but similar processes apply to poetry and other forms of writing. The primary difference between poetry and painting is the lower cost of capital production on the part of the poet and the much stronger role that academic institutions play in the production, selection and marketing of the poet’s work.

All of this is happening because in any value chain, the emphasis gradually moves from manufacturing/production to information and service as the industry matures. And this is because the introduction of a new service, necessary or not, is the easiest way to intermediate or re-mediate a transaction. Information and service economies are much different from manufacturing economies. They intermediate the original transaction between buyer and seller with numerous information and service transactions. In an information economy, the greatest profit is always made by the person or organization who controls the transaction. Both information and service economies revolve around mediation . . . intermediation, dis-intermediation and re-intermediation. It is all about the middleman. In the case of art, the art artifact as a product is subject to the same rules as any other commercial product. Over time, as more and more intermediaries enter the value chain, the real economic value becomes associated with the transactions surrounding the product as opposed to the physical product itself. Poetry competitions, workshops, grants and writing programs are very good examples. They certainly mediate and control the relationship between poet and reader. Whether they serve to separate the wheat from the chaff where poets are concerned is a separate issue.
 

I think you're trying to have it both ways. You describe the problems faced (the dangers for corruption in the neuroeconomics of it) -- and it's clear that some people have abused contests unduly on both sides -- but then you suggest making the names more important than the work in selecting winners, and that just seems hopelessly idealistic or hopelessly cynical.
--MH
 

A thoughtful post, but it is incorrect to say that taking aspiring poets money as part of a poetry contest entry is indistinguishable from taking their money as part of a writers' conference application, or from the nepotism that plagues faculty hiring decisions.

In the case of a writers' conference, the poet receives what the conference promises: instruction, readings, atmosphere, etc. The percentage of writers' conference participants who leave disappointed or "robbed" is relatively tiny.

The nepotism that plagues faculty hiring decisions is contemptible, to be sure, but the difference there is that no money is changing hands. (Well, rarely, we hope...)

Poetry contest entrants are paying money for the opportunity to be (purportedly) judged objectively, and it is this exchange of dollars that makes the poetry contest racket an especiallly heinous crime. Foetry was correct to label this as fraud punishable by law.

It's too bad Foetry had to be run by a vengeful, emotional twit who delights in rumor mongering. Most of the site was devoted to dishing dirt -- not solving the problem. I wonder how this might have turned out had the oppostion approached the problem with vehemence AND some modicum of grace. Foetry should have supplied the careful objectivity and judiciousness that's missing from the poetry world, not just urinate from the opposite direction.

Perhaps most damaging: The whole episode, broadcast on NPR and written up in the Times, confirms the public's worst suspicion about poets: They're childish, back-biting academics who care only about themselves and their own petty agendas. Foetry didn't clean up poetry; it just caked on a new color of dirt.
 

The news, of course, wouldn't be that contests (or for that matter, academic appointments, trade journals' and book publishers' contracts and so forth) are corrupt with nepotism and favoritism, or are in fact, rigged, but that there might be an entity that wasn't.

Like "the news" there is really nothing objective and unbiased about any process of selection. Put NPR and FOX NEWS side by side in the morning and try to imagine how you'd structure a presentation that simply gave us the facts, ma'am, but it doesn't compute. Even facts aren't true facts, in the end.

Should James Tate have won the Yale Younger Poets award? Should Jack Gilbert have won it? Should Adrienne Rich have won it? I think the answer is yes, but politics certainly entered into every choice, and we'd probably be astonished to find out who among the finalists over the years was NOT chosen, or who among those contemporaries never competed.

Then, too, would we really have wanted a prize like the Yale to go to our favorite "avant-garde" writers? Imagine Spicer getting it--weird, huh? Of course he'd never have entered, he would disdain it. How about Ronald Johnson?--for my money, A Line Of Poetry, A Row Of Trees was probably ten times better than any parallel collection of its time. In hindsight, I'm much happier with the Jargon book than I would have been with the flimsy New Haven pamphlet.

Take someone like Ted Berrigan. I'm perfectly happy with his publication history. The World, Auerhahn, Grove, Kulchur Press, Totem-Corinth, Blue Wind (Mattingly)--they define who he was in a way the New York publishers never would/could have.

We have to get over this preoccupation with the marginalization of poetry. There's no money in poetry. Publication should be a preoccupation of every writer, but in a much more concrete way. Writers should be involved with the production of text. They should print their own work (as Whitman first did), be more involved with the reproduction of text. That would begin to heal the disconnect between act, product and audience, and clarify the relationship between the creative mind and the chosen medium--a division which has infected the writing process since at least the 16th Century.

The "mimeo" revolution of the 1960's and early 1970's fueled a surge of feeling and community. Angel Hair and The World were publishing better work than The New Yorker and The Paris Review were. What happened to that spirit?

The great thing is, 90% of the time, the contests and editors get it all wrong. They choose the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, and end up in a sea of mediocrity. It's a circus, a very old and tired one, where the elephants and monkeys, trapeze performers and jugglers just keep cranking out the same old moves, and each new generation of youngsters sits on the bleachers eating pink cotton candy and saying "Ooooh!"
 

If foetry was pointing at a problem, the obvious solution to me is everybody stop sending their work to manuscript competitions, and stop sending unsolicited submissions to magazines, period.

Share your stuff with your friends. That is community.

Refereed competitions do nothing to create or promote community.
 

I agree with anonymous of 9:53 AM "Writers should be involved with the production of text"


...but, but, but, I went to school for a long time and I am a writer dammit, I MUST be taken seriously if only a fraction of how seriously I take myself, I MUST be shown that an institution will take a financial RISK on my seriousness, I CANNOT be validated as a writer unless it's a 4-color cover (high gloss!) and the text is offset printed on paper milled in Canada and the barcode can be found next to the blurbs and the imprint on the spine will send waves an envy throughout my "community" though I cannot tell you why exactly.

Because if I self-publish no one will respect me or take my book seriously, the universities won't invite me to read poems for $, and the competition (my peers, colleagues, countrymen) will get a leg up on me and they will be more "famous" than I even though I am the most serious writer ever. And don't ask me to edit, print, collate, fold, bind, or stuff envelopes because I am a writer not a book maker and furthermore I do not know a damn thing about the labor of such desperate activity. (And aren't books supposed to made in a factory somewhere?) I am too busy for such back room work, see I'm contemplative and mysterious and I am thinking about my own work far too much to think about someone else's.

What can I do for my fellow poets? Who cares! What can they do for me? I need a leg up! I'm serious!

~s pierce
(some sarcasm for Friday's sake)
 

Or you can publish your book through BookSurge for under $100 (if you have access to desktop publishing software and a pdf writer) and get printing on demand and global distribution through Amazon.com. The same thing will soon happen for visual art, videos and indie movies through Google. The Internet is a wonderful thing, don't you think?
 

Anonymous wrote:
"The 'mimeo' revolution of the 1960's and early 1970's fueled a surge of feeling and community. Angel Hair and The World were publishing better work than The New Yorker and The Paris Review were. What happened to that spirit?"

DIY. This is the punk spirit. It's what fueled the zines of the 80s & 90s. It's what made me stop submitting to magazines & contests a long time ago.

I'm reading Ron Padgett's biography of Joe Brainard and there seems to have been a lot of that same spirit in New York in the 60s.

Some of the best writing I've ever read has been in zines and chapbooks. Vive Aaron Cometbus!

steve nomansland, minneapolis, mn usa
btw, thanks for the Lucid Nation reference, Ron. They've been under my radar, but I like a lot of the bands they have worked with, so I'll have to check them out. However, tonight, my wife & I are seeing Ornette Coleman!
 

"Share your stuff with your friends. That is community."

I love Buck! Right on.
 

I thought Craig Arnold's book, Shells, which won the Yale prize a few years ago, was fantastic.

-jeremy
 

This post brought up a lot of questions regarding poetry and its production and dissemination but did so in a way that drove me a little nuts, and since I'm always already a little nuts (apparently) I'm going to ask for more sedatives than usual when they bring them around today.

First I would like to say of faculty hiring decisions that odd as they are they are GENERALLY done by a committee of at least four with an outside person doing oversight. I've been on several such committees and not once have we hired anybody that any one of us knew in advance. We tried to get the best person FOR THE STUDENTS' SAKE, that is, the person who would do the best job to provide a high level teacher to the community of students. That was the ONLY criterion.

Poetry and its appreciation is always going to be somewhat subjective but to simply say that the poetry doesn't matter and the author is everything would be a complete abandonment of the attempt to separate wheat and chaff.

Complexity and coherence have been the central criteria of art since their articulation by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa. When grading freshman papers I still use this criteria. I think that when you knock out Michael Moore on the grounds of being a simpleton, Ron, you are using those same criteria.

If we collapse on aesthetic and moral criteria and furthermore argue that we are part of a great tradition of slimeballs that have done the same thing it just seems that we might as well abandon cultural activity altogether. I found this to be a depressing post because it sends the message that unless you are an insider on some scene or another not only can't you get noticed, but you SHOULDN'T get noticed.

So what happens to the likes of a Seymour Faust who was clearly a more talented poet than 99.9% of his contemporaries? Is it not an injustice and a failure that his work is forgotten? I think we have a responsibility to the art form, and not to the specific individuals who make up our homies.

What you are actually arguing now is that the university wits should have triumphed over a relative loner without connections like Shakespeare.

Say it ain't so, Ron.
 

Michael, an aside comment here slightly straying from the point:

That is all very true but there are implications and consequences to the kind of publishing you suggest that concern me and perhaps other too (and I should note, these are questions we should ask about full run printing as well, not just POD, or perhaps publishing in general, contest or none) :

1) what do we know about the 3rd parties that this print work is farmed out to? What are the labor issues (often such outsourced printing comes from offshore or 3rd world...)

2) what are the materials and how are they produced, purchased? meaning, where is the pulp coming from and how, and are the labor and economic and environmental issues there?

3) who really benefits (money-wise) from such things? the writer or the people that publish (i.e. those who throw money at the printing) or is it the printers?


These are just a few things that are worth looking into in regards to the larger discussion of industry and market. It's always struck me as strange that for all of the poets, editors, and publishers (especially on the left) with strong opinions and interests in culture and society and justice and human rights, etc, that the industry that benefits most from publishing (printing) is not scrutinized like, say, a poet's affiliation with another poet or institution.

And who knows anything about how ink and toner are produced?

scott
 

The real problem which Foetry doesn't address is that no one wants to buy these books of poetry, so poets have to set up contests so the "community" will pay to have them published. The solution: stop writing poetry. Now! No one wants to read it!

-Andy Mr.
 

I suppose I am "No one," Andy, since I want to read it and often pay the price of a volume in order to do so.

-jeremy
 

I am thinking about submitting to the Yale Series next October. Excellent reality check, and I'm on benzodiazepines now. Pleasure as always.

Jesse
 

Oh God Jeremy give me a break. What record label releases records through a contest system? None. Because people want to buy records and labels want to release records that people want to buy. By design, a press that publishes a book through a contest has little or no control over the quality of the books they publish. Since most (if not all) poetry presses are subsidized, either by grants or by universities, they don't care whether anyone reads the books or not--and not many people are reading them, the average book of poetry sells what 500 copies, or less? Glad to hear that you're one of those 500 people, but obviously the demand for poetry books is pretty low.

-Andy
 

I would like to see poets pay more attention to the physical fact of the generation of text.

The old paradigm was you either wrote in long-hand, or on the typewriter. You got a manuscript together, organized it, corrected the errors in the typescript, then submitted it, physically. Then the publisher looked it over, some further editing etc., was done, then it was sent to the design department which dreamed up the look and feel of the book, which was then produced, either in-house, or by a book printing company, and a binder. The finished product had passed through a transformation that had totally divorced the content from its original circumstance.

Since Olson raised the issue of the layout of the page, and the attendant issues of scale, size, positioning, technology of type generation, typeface, reproduction, and control, poets have either ignored these choices--and lived with all sorts of unpleasant compromises--or segued into letterpress, small press, or other disdained media. (And now, of course, we have online.)

But since the invention of moveable type and the reproduction of the bound book, writers have been steadily alienated from the act of engagement with materials, which has had the effect of trivializing the value of the alphabet, and in turn, the word. When monks spent their whole lives creating calligraphic texts by hand, an enormous investment of feeling and commitment was required to sustain that labor, not to speak of the energy and delight that went into designing and realizing it. The Chinese had a good handle on the quality of that commitment through the brushwork of their written characters.

Paper, type, page-size, opacity, mass, etc., are NOT trivial variations of the realized text. Do you want to be "packaged" and sold like cereal? "As freedom is a breakfast food..."

We have to get away from this nonsense that New York publishers or academic publication committees are qualified to validate the text through a bogus selection process to which the artist/writer must submit, which is then realized through the current cliche book production process. The writer who creates the text, the editor who passes it on for approval, the page printers and the binders, then the distribution departments and sales divisions are discrete, disconnected participants in an industrial process which has little or nothing to do with the imaginative occasion of the work.

I'm not suggesting that there should only be one copy of a work, or that poets should collate mimeos. Only that they should think more about what their work means as material text. It is not just numimous "stuff" floating around in the aether--it's a THING!

-CF
 

Scott,

The idea is to not make a thing until someone asks (pays) for it. Any time you can substitute information for matter, the costs of production drop dramatically. On-demand publishers take your book in the form of data, store it on a disk for a few pennies and each time the book is ordered, print one copy of it using a computerized system. The printing facilities are placed in different countries to reduce transportation and tariff costs. In the case of BookSurge, the royalties are higher than average and the publishing contract is non-exclusive. The technology is so advanced that they can print and distribute books one at a time as hardbacks, paperbacks, chapbooks and eBooks. It's amazing. I think that ecologically it is probably a better deal than traditional printing. I don't think this will in any way inhibit the creation of hand made artist's books, chapbooks, zines or anything else. It will, however, make it easier for writers to flood the market with noise.

Which brings us to Kirby's point. I am also convinced that there is such a thing as good art and maybe even great art. Some things exist as a result of consensus and social heirarchy. Some things (i.e., gravity) do not. Some things are true, no matter what. I have to believe that there's some truth to the idea that Shakespeare is a better writer than Ed Wood. On the other hand, it was twenty years after I first read Joyce that I uncovered Flann O'Brien.
 

Is Mr. Stillman being disingenuous? The point of such contests with blind judging is to give writers who are relatively unknown a shot at prestigious publication and attention. Any judge who has a prior relationship that makes it impossible for them to evaluate a manuscript without identifying the writer should recuse themselves from evaluating that manuscript, period. There are so many contests, it's not necessary to enter one when you know the judge. When these organizations accept entry fees in a blind contest, they do so with the knowledge that the participants believe they have an equal chance, based upon skill and perhaps, aesthetic bias alone. They have NO BUSINESS accepting money from entrants if they are not given a fair shake. If judges have the freedom to pick from poets with whom they share a previous attachment, then the contestants have a right to know that in advance. We may not have any control over favoritism when it comes to publication and hiring outside of contests, but yes, I do believe that when judges and the people holding the contest act with integrity and honesty, then the contests have value. And it IS different than other kinds of competitions. Money for summer conferences is spent in exchange for information and critique. It doesn't cost anything to submit to a trade press. The contests we're discussing are PREDICATED on the idea that the manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of talent, skill, orginality, alone. I don't think anyone has a problem with that if the judges have enough HONOR to eliminate the work of entries from poets they obviously know. How difficult can it be to help talented poets they already know without lying or cheating in a process for which they are being remunerated? Surely there are enough First Book Contests etc to go around. Why are the writers in question entering if they know the judges ahead of time? Surely they know it's unethical?
 

I refuse to give you a break, Andy, with or without the help of God. For some reason, I don't think that the music industry is a good comparison to poetry publishing and it's certainly not an industry whose business practices should be emulated.

I was reacting to your comment "Stop writing poetry. Now! No one wants to read it!" Which, stats or no stats, seems foolish to me. We could get into an endless flame war over the politics of subsidies for presses, but the fact remains that no matter how much the number of readers dwindles, that minority is far from insignificant. If one of those 500 books that are pressed for a volume end up in the hands of a future world leader, then the run was worth the cost and more.
 

I hear you about POD, Michael. That all does sound like good business. But beyond business, beyond the royalty perks and the efficiency of the equipment used to print/bind in this manner, and the sidestepping of US tariffs and labor laws (?) I'm asking to what extent are we as consumers responsible for whoever's back this tech and these services are built upon. That is a charge beyond POD, but pointed at the printing/publishing industry at large. And to those that buy the books too I guess. The irony of the bleeding heart tree-hugging poet whose book (it's possible) was produced in a sweatshop with who knows what paper from which forest harvested by who only knows, in a country we don't bother to ask about, seems obvious. Sure, it makes perfect sense to save a few bucks and few hours of plate making, etc, but beyond the economics what do we have...

I mean I am not a model of the alternative, I'm just surprised this doesn't come up more in discussion of market, etc.

scott
 

Taking money for a contest and then awarding the prize to a friend seems fraudulant to me.
 

POD> Salt Publishing's line is POD. And it's working very, very well, I'd say, with a depth and breadth that would make anyone's. Hell, considering they're in the U.K., they have an ease-of-distribution in the U.S. that is higher than other "mid-major" poetry presses because of the POD.

Let's say you publish a contest winning book with, say, a 2,000 copy print run. How many of those will sit in a warehouse? For a POD publisher, it literally doesn't matter whether they publish one book that sells 2,000 copies or 20 books that sell 100 (or more) each. It really doesn't matter, except in terms of sending out review copies, etc.--which comes down to passionate selling anyway.

And which one of these publishing models do you gather is more conducive to a progessive poetics?

I guess what bothers me most isn't the larger high-octane contests--those are tied to a mostly bankrupt value system in regards to poetry's place in the world anyway, so whatever. Rather, it's the smaller and more experiental poetry presses--that allegedly are part of a project of a critique of capital and exploring the transgressive realities that poetry can construct in the world--that fall into offering contests and payouts that galls me. "Let's have it both ways! And let's take money from ephebes to subsidize our EXPERIMENTAL VISION!" Doesn't work that way. Or it ought not to, at least, esp. when revolutions in digital printing have lowered costs and raised access everywhere. There are some "post-avant" poets and presses of my generation who fall into this with astounding alacrity and glee--this, I think, is the major question in terms of poetic production that we are dealing with in our generation. And there have been some great solutions (e.g., Ugly Duckling Presse's trapezoidal books).

Alan DeNiro
ptarmigan.blogspot.com
 

I'm with Scott.
 

All I'm saying is if there was even a modicum of interest in buying poetry books, then the whole contest system wouldn't be needed. As it is, no one is buying these books so they have to be subsidized by entry fees. I guess there are other factors at play, like the prestige of winning a prize and whatever cache that brings when one applies for a teaching position, etc. But the bottom line is no one is buying these books. Or at least not enough people are buying the books for a poetry press to break even, much less make a profit. So if no one wants to read these books, why are people publishing them?

I guess Jordan's going to chime in on this. Maybe he can explain it to me...

-Andy
 

Is anyone else troubled by the vast number of people who's parents could find nothing better to name their children than anonymous?
 

UDP is at top of my list too. Love what they are doing...

Scott
 

Scott,

I understand and agree with your concerns. I live in Shreveport, Louisiana, a town named after a man who blew up a log jam on the Red River with dynamite to make it navigable. There is a smaller town called Bossier City on the other side of the river, where many B-52s and A-10s are located. Shreveport used to be about fur trading and cotton. Then it was about oil and natural gas. Now it's about riverboat gambling, biomedical research and GM and GE manufacturing plants. Where there were once many species of hardwoods, there are now mostly pine trees, grown to feed the paper mills. There are great salt domes near here used as storage for toxic wastes. There is a large oil refinery in the middle of the town. In spite of all that, it's still a very beautiful place. (Hard to believe, but it is.) It's not nearly as bad as the marshlands and swamps further south, where the dead silence extends for miles and miles in every direction because of the heavy metals that have entered the water table as petrochemical waste.

For my own part, when it comes to artifacts, I make paintings and artist's books, one at a time. Sometimes I sell them, but mostly I give them to my friends. I like to design my books myself: the typeface and point size, the layout, the cover art, the paper and the words and pictures inside.

I have worked as a supply chain architect for a number of years and have learned a great deal about how things are made and sold. It is because I want to make sure I cause the least possible damage to the environment, that any book I publish will be through a POD publisher.
 

That seems incredibly reasonable to me, Michael. I know others, Geoffrey Gatza at BlazeVox for example, that stand by it too and for similiar reasons I'll presume.
 

Andrew:

Of course you're quite right about markets. Poetry is a loss-leader for publishers, has been for at least 75 years. The market for it in Western Europe and The Americas has been steadily shrinking as a simple percentage of the so-called reading public. There used to be a tradition among old-line New York and Philadelphia publishers that you'd print a certain number of literate titles in your annual list (including poetry), and write them off as tax losses. It was considered the gentlemanly thing to do. Also, there was a formula that said: "Publish one or two books of poetry, then a volume of short stories, then hope the jerk writes a novel that will make it all back for us " (I think that's been the idea with Denis Johnson, though his blockbuster has yet to arrive!). It worked with Ondaatje, though!

Absurd as it may sound, too, occasionally a poetry title will just take off, selling tens of thousands of copies. Sharon Olds's books do, and then there are the war-horses, like Plath's Ariel, Millay's Collected Poems which is in like its 120th printing, Allen Ginsberg's City Lights books which are pumped out in unimaginable quantities--so actually some of them do make quite a bit of money. Even the wretched stuff, Rod McKuen, Jewel, Rumi, sell into the many thousands. Bukowski. Frost. Etc. And poetry sells well in Russia, France, and Germany.

And another thing: It may not be apparent, but there really is a ton of poetry being published these days. I sit at one station in the secondary wholesale market, and there are 40-50 brand-new books of poetry every week coming down the chute which you've never heard of, many of them first books. My guess is that fewer than 100 each of these actually sell--probably more are distributed gratis to reviewers than actually make it to the check-out counter in the retail world. Why all this flourishing of activity, I have no idea. It does seem weird. All these polite, ambitious people churning out quatrains on sunsets and favorite dead dogs and wrinkled elm leaves--whew!

But the point, Andrew, seriously, is not to sell them. If you narrowly define the significance and justification of writing (as a solitary act), only in terms of its market viability, you've pretty much painted yourself into a philosophical corner, unless you're being ironic. I first wrote poems in junior high school, just to prove to myself that I could, as a kind of personal dare. I think that was a lot more direct and honest kind of motivation than trying to imagine whether or not Richard Howard would be likely to accept it for The Paris Review.

The imagination of a possible audience usually comes down to one or two people. What would [ ] think about this? Actually, writing with an editor or critic in mind is a dreary act, in my view. What could be less inspiring?
--CF
 

Thanks Curtis, I was being ironic, especially when I said "Stop writing poetry!" Although I certainly wish that some people would. But I do think that one thing that's missing from the whole Foetry/contest system discussion is the very reason why this system exists. Lots of books that I love would not have been published if it weren't for contests: Graham Foust's second book, Joshua Beckman's first book, Sam Truitt's Vertical Elegies, the list can go on and on. But the sad fact is that not enough people want to buy these books (or not enough people are being exposed to them, etc.) to make publishing them financially viable.

I always hear people bemoaning the fact that there aren't enough presses publishing poetry, because there is so much poetry to be published. Personally, I wish that LESS poetry was being published, so I wouldn't have to sift through 100 books to find one good one. Maybe everyone that reads a book of poetry shouldn't publish one. And maybe some people who don't write poetry should read it! Most presses don't seem to be appealing to those people.

Seymore Stein didn't put out the first Ramones album because it won some anonymous contest or because they slept with him. He put it out because they were awesome and he thought that people should hear it (and would buy it).

-A Mr.
 

Ron, that seems absolutely ridiculous to me, to read only names rather than the poetry sans names. There was a time when The New Yorker actually published poetry by unknown writers, one aspect of what poetry is all about. Poetry should be closest to the people, written for the people, of that experienced by the people.

Should judges start choosing poetry winners based on their names and academic reputations attached, that's just as tainted as selecting a winner known to the judge personally, and does not return poetry to its source, the people (for whom the poet is a recorder and interpreter) nor does it expand the readership for poetry, which is suffering dreadfully; and suffering despite the large amounts of poetry (bad as it may be) written today.

Kat
 

This whole contest thing is a fairly complicated matter for me -- I got a book published thru the contest system, though I don't really feel much prestige is attached to it (from myself or others). Sadly enough, the publication has mostly been a way to feel invited to participate actively in the poetry world, but I think I've felt much more of a sense of identity from doing Octopus with Zach and blogging and being a part of the Lucipo group here in NC than as any sort of award winner.

I might imagine that my insecurity and sense of isolation from what I considered the big, urban, coastal and/or academic poetry world kept me from attempting something like blogging or editing until I got granted permission from the contest system that I'm now, at the least, pretty skeptical about; skeptical not so much in Foetry terms, but just realizing that there's not any difference at all between winning the Whitman and getting a book published by a friend who's starting a press. The whole point seems to just to find a way to have it out there.

Coming from a point of complete naivete concerning publishing (background pre-publication: tiny community college and a tiny Christian college, then a conservative MFA program in Arkansas: not anywhere where anyone's got the scoop), the contest system actually did seem like the only conceivable means of getting a book out, partly because of geography (not many books w/ my aesthetics coming out of southern Missouri or NW Arkansas) and economics, partly just out of the conditioning that occurs in the MFA culture that I didn't yet know an alternative to.

Now that I'm living here in Chapel Hill w/ friends that construct an actual community of peers as opposed to some bizarre Survivor-like competitive arena (MFA land), my view on the whole thing has altered. I was going to say that if I knew then what I know now I wouldn't have bothered sending to the Whitman, but then I remembered that I sent my latest m.s. to a couple contests because I still really am not sure of others ways of getting a 150 page book out there -- none of us have started a press here in Chapel Hill yet, at least not that does book length projects; thus far, none of my Arkansas or NC peers have presses that do big uns, tho Scott Pierce is doing a heroic job with Effing Press (Red Juice looks, and reads, amazing) and Ken Rumble, Chris Vitiello and maybe some more of us will be starting up a chapbook series connected w/ the Desert City reading series here, and Aaron McCollough and myself have recently received saddle-staplers as birthday/Christmas gifts and talk on the phone about future chapbooks from GutCult and Fascicle, respectively. Chapbooks kick ass -- I can't wait til World Jelly comes out w/ Effing, or the as yet untitled/unfinished chapbook that it looks like will be coming out via Desert City. Now that I'm actually situated (socially, geographically) where chapbooks are a possibility, it seems like the healthiest and sexiest of options.

To keep going: so I've sent my ms Sex Hat, or portions, or queries, to presses whose books I purchase and read, but quite a few are all backed up for at least a year or two, and some of the publishers insist to submit via a contest, which I guess I'm fine about, at least until Leigh and I, or friends of mine, can start a press, or the second coming of James Laughlin comes around and calls me up and the whole system can be bypassed.

Funny someone brought up Ronald Johnson earlier, maybe my favorite poet of the last x years -- where were all of y'all older folks when he was trying to get the sections of ARK published twenty years ago, or to get ARK itself published in its entirety? I'm sure a lot of you helped out, but . .

We can all pee pee on the contest system, but it's gotten books by Ashbery, Sikelianos, NE Gordon, Aaron McCollough, John Yau, Cole Swensen, Sarah Manguso, Ed Robeson, Standard Schaefer, Ben Lerner and a bunch more out there for me to read. None of these folks have the contest albatross to me -- I don't think I've ever been such a fan of purity to look down on people who use one of the systems that actually exists as a means to getting their books published. That's still my attitude on the MFA -- you don't have to go into debt to go to Arkansas' MFA for four years, and you only have to work maybe 12-15 hours a week. I mean, if it's that or working 40 hours a week cleaning condos or working the front desk at a hotel, there's no comparison.

Anyway, even IF the contest system would be below Spicer's dignity, it actually DID help out Ronald Johnson. Didn't he get one of the early installments of ARK published thru the National Poetry Series back in the early 80s? Picked by Charles Simic, I think, Mr. Eastern European Quietude himself. I'm sure Johnson wasn't fishing for prestige. Maybe he just got tired of waiting for his community to ask him if they could publish his book.
 

If no one buys poetry books anyway (not even other poets), why are so many poets jacked up on the idea of getting a book published. It's insane! I think more poets should have some gonads about their own work and get it out into the world themselves. Not through POD, that's just tacky and mimics the phony authority of being perfect-bound in slick covers, etc. There's no reason to lament the old days of the mimeo when we have more tools available to us now than they had then. If the work is good, people will take notice, regardless of the packaging.
 

Tony: It may be that RJ's ARK just wasn't as good as his earlier work (?) (heresy!)

Yes, one thinks of exceptions. Ashbery's Some Trees, Schuyler's Freely Espousing (Paris Review/Doubleday Editions), Justice's Summer Anniversaries (Lamont), and on and on. One can regard publication pragmatically--whatever works, etc., but once you've let yourself be taken up by that system, the choices tend to become framed, conceptualized. Let's say one's first book was done by Sun & Moon, probably no New York publishers would touch you after that.

It does matter.

In the end, you're going to wish each publication, each "event" had turned out right, right look and feel, right vision, the right selection, etc. Small publishers can be a lot more useful that way, than these big, faceless monoliths who use the cheapest paper and materials, and want everything streamlined and trouble-free. They're just churning out pamphlets in cardboard sandwiches. And that's even true for established poets like Simic and Charles Wright and Mark Strand--they cost about $1.25 a copy to manufacture, and they ask $18, $22, $26, $30 retail!! It's crazy. And which--in turn--encourages writers to publish too much. 20 books in thirty years is just dizzying. No one is that inspired.

I should think 200 pages would constitute more than a life-time's worth of good work. There are very few writers of poetry who can produce copy that's good enough to exceed that median.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Anon,

Luckily, I'm one of those few who shall produce pounds upon pounds of gold. Me and Robert Kelly and Clark Coolidge. The tap's always on with us.

On Sun & Moon, New York publishers, etc: Tell it to Jeff Clark! But usually, you're probably right, but then again, I doubt many of us trolling SIlliman's reply box are that interested in the big slick publishers. In fact, I think just posting here disqualifies me from Penguin. And (now) posting twice under the same topic is likely almost as big of a career killer as winning the Yale or the Whitman -- I'm afraid if I post one more after this that I will officially enter the comment box society with Kirby, Curtis, MH, et al, where I must give up all previous identities and relationships and dwell only here.

Friday night! Anyway, I agree, it _does_ matter, like you say, but to varying degrees. I'd most definitely rather be published by my friends at Cranky's Corkscrew who believe very strongly in my work and will do 200 copies with love and attention than by a faceless Knopf; I suppose I just need to be patient until some of us here in NC start up a Cranky's Corkscrew -- I guess my main point was that people in more isolated places can't realistically rely on the community model to the degree that people in DC or Chicago or wherever can. Doesn't mean it's impossible -- First Intensity being an example, or the beginnings of Lost Roads in Fayetteville, AR.

And we'll just let that remark about ARK slip by as the cruel joke it most surely was.

Now I'm gonna finish reading the new issue of New Review of Literature. It's really good.

G'night.
 

Now Tony, no need to disain those who can cogently comment while maintaining a life beyond that. Can I help it if I can read blogs all day and comment on them while outperforming my better educated peers at work, plus commute 4 hours per day to do it, plus organize readings, give readings, write poetry, revise poetry, be in two poetry organizations, all the while being accused of being Foetry, plus be daddy and husband, family finace manager and cook every night??? Even now I've just been at the neighborghood bar havinf had a beer and twp Manhattans and still here I am ready to wollop yr sorry ass. Get a life, you say. Right now this is it and wouldn't have it any other way, plus today wrote 3 poems, revised a few, submitted 6, etc. Now, if I drink a large glass of water, piss once right away and once again be fore dozing off, and finish this comment before my lovely wife gets back from taking the babysiter home, I win. And I've just found out from a neurosurgeon I'm doing it all with a slipped disc. My point: don't reduce me.
--MH
 

Ron,

I like the way you'v taken the problematic and move it beyond the 'personal' (as in the way Foetry got personal but did so by saying things anonymously) into a place that shows the many other implications--academicizing of poetry, the pitfalls of that for poets and for poetry. I'm infering the conclusion that ltimately, very little of a strongly innovative poetry can thrive in any of these contexts attaching to this problem. People writing need to make, to promote, and to sustain poetry in their own communities, strengthen that bond, then to branch out, not to depend on top down false ideas (ideologies, basically) inherited from institutional forms of knowledge. History, and historiography, yes--institutional crap, no! Especially not state-governed forms of discipline attaching to poetry and the arts--ack. Thanks for this post, Ron. I think it's an eye-opener. Glad to read this lively response, too.

Best Wishes,
chris
 

It is difficult/

to get the news from poems/

yet men die miserably every day/

for lack/

of what is found there.

WCW 1955
 

I think Nathaniel Tarn said something along the lines that people are far more tolerant of experiemental novels than poetry, and we should boycott these books until people are willing to read the poetry that uses the same technique.


I know to a certaine extent, I'm comparing apples and organges here, but the hard number bear out that most "literary novels," as the industry calles them, ones that Tarn would include in this boycott-list, sell along the same lines as books of poetry: anywhere from 200-2000 copies. As we speak, fiction writers are getting 4,000->20,000 USD advances for these books, in the hope that they will write a blockbuster-movie book later down the line?

So the dirty little secret? Poetry books do sell! People do buy them, at least as much as a lot of literary fiction. One of the points I try to raise when I talk to people about this, is we should gloat over this, rub it in peoples' faces when people do say poetry doesn't sell. The main thing as far as the feasibility of poetry publishing is to keep the scales of economy low enough to makes money off of these sales figures.
 

I seem to have miffpelled some of my words up there in the Olde English. My apologies.
 

American Idol is an example of a musical contest that parallels poetry contests.
It plays on Tuesday nights and the loser is announced on Wednesday nights. Simon Cowell is a good example of a critic who is focused on quality and on telling the truth. Most of the work that is produced on American Idol isn't that hot, but because of the massive dissemination even the losers are guaranteed to sell millions of albums.

Oh, and Tony -- I have a new book out on Andrei Codrescu (plus two other academic books) and a novel coming out in the fall. I also have three small kids, and am teaching five classes, and many other articles coming out in academic quarterlies, a story coming out at McSweeney's, am the editor of a humor newsletter with a circulation of 500, coach a little girls' soccer team, I give talks at conferences, have read my own poetry in St. Louis (last month) am going to Iceland this summer to present another reading, etc. etc. That doesn't even begin to include personal correspondance, shopping, etc. Curtis and I have many other things going on which is what makes us such tirelessly and occasionally even quite scintillating commentators.

You're way too focused on Ron's blague -- which is ok with me, it's the best around, but geez, I do feel somewhat reduced into absurdity by your bizarre inklings.
 

I wonder how MH and KO can type while stroking their egos so vigorously. Nothing like an aside from Tost to get the multi-taskers ruffled! Perhaps they should take charge of Foetry, since that is, uh, the original subject of Ron's post and since they're so capable. "outperforming"! "shopping"!

By the way, I think Tost was joking. Being sarcastic. Etc.
 

Anyone who uses a word like ego in the year 2005 almost certainly has mad cow disease.
 

This Kirby character sure knows what matters in art or any pursuit: QUANTITY!

i wonder how many more babies he's going to make his wife squeeze out.
 

What is up with all these anonymouses.
 

Hey Anonymous: You ought to leave families and children of those you're attacking out of it. It's uncalled for and actually pretty scummy.
--MH
 

I finally got through this library of comments today, and can't help but notice how it mirrors American poetry-culture (poeticulture?)--at least toward the end: Poets sniping and quipping, while the rest of the readership is anonymous and hostile.

--Trevor Calvert
 

I count 6 of the 50 comments here as anonymous, Trevor (and one of those is mine, agreeing with Micahel Harold that I forgot to sign my name to). There only seems to be one or two "hostile" comments but maybe you think of hostility in different terms. The rest seems to be some very informative stuff. Does this mirror American poetry-culture or just simply life on earth?

You should accompany me to the meeting I am about to walk into about the implementation of new finance software in North America and Europe at the company I work for.

That'll make this chat look a passage from The English Patient.

Time to put on my helmet.

-scott pierce
 

In my own experience of twenty years in the academy (tenured English professor), the only field in which I've ever seen "nepotism" in the hiring of a tenure-track position was creative writing (poetry). The only male faculty who persist in sexually harrassing their students have been creative writers (one to the point of getting out of the sack to get the sack). As the editor of a scholarly journal the referees I choose (mostly known only by their scholarship) do not have an interest in the manuscript before them (name unknown). I would not generalize from what I've seen to the academy at large, but it does seem that the mores in creative writing are different.
 

Ridiculous.

you should get out of your Humanities Bld a little more then.

Poets are people, people are poets.


-sp
 

"Ridiculous.

you should get out of your Humanities Bld a little more then.

Poets are people, people are poets.


-sp"

Yes, and people are acculturated. But I wasn't talking about poets. I was talking about university faculty, creative writing.
 

"Yes, and people are acculturated. But I wasn't talking about poets. I was talking about university faculty, creative writing."

And of course they/we aren't people, right?

Bob Watts
 

I think he's saying that some people have looser or different standards than others.

Perhaps creative writers value friendship when choosing a new faculty member, while other English faculty value standards or principles.

I can't see why this is so hard to understand.

Agreeing with it is another matter. I don't have enough experience to know whether or not I agree with it.

I think the dichotomy between creative writer and critic is a false one. Most of the creative writers I know or would like to know are also competent critics, and vice versa.
 

I think he's saying that some people have looser or different standards than others.

Perhaps creative writers value friendship when choosing a new faculty member, while other English faculty value standards or principles.

I can't see why this is so hard to understand.

Agreeing with it is another matter. I don't have enough experience to know whether or not I agree with it.

I think the dichotomy between creative writer and critic is a false one. Most of the creative writers I know or would like to know are also competent critics, and vice versa.
 

I think he's saying that some people have looser or different standards than others.

Perhaps creative writers value friendship when choosing a new faculty member, while other English faculty value standards or principles.

I can't see why this is so hard to understand.

Agreeing with it is another matter. I don't have enough experience to know whether or not I agree with it.

In my own limited experience I think the dichotomy between creative writer and critic is a false one. Most of the creative writers I know or would like to know are also competent critics, and most of the critics I know can also write a decent poem or story or novel.

I tend not to want to know anybody who can't do both.
 

"Yes, and people are acculturated. But I wasn't talking about poets. I was talking about university faculty, creative writing."

And of course they/we aren't people, right?

Bob Watts
------------------------------
Some creative writers are acculturated in MFA programs to be paranoid about their status in the academy and their position vis-a-vis the majority drysasdusts. Your response perfectly demonstrates this.

I've met lots of folks (and have as colleagues several) with academic PhDs as well as MFAs. They know what I'm talking about, and its not hard to grasp.
 

As long as they know what you are talking about, then that's all that matters. Still lost on your point though.

"Some creative writers are acculturated in MFA programs to be paranoid about their status in the academy and their position vis-a-vis the majority drysasdusts."

Seems you want to make "creative writers" at universities a category all of their own as far as politics and nepotism and paranoia etc. goes and I don't think that's the case. I really don't. Are you pointing your finger at yourself and your colleagues, as you are a tenored prof as you have stated, you have the inside skinny so to speak, but really, do you really think such behavour is special to only creative writing departments? Do you have any idea how competitive electronic engineering is in regards to university jobs as well as acceptance into programs? What about athletics departments? No nepotism/sexism/and a whole lot of other isms there? Much less paranoia and fear of rejection or failure in the job market?

I'll maintain it's a human condition of and it's a numbers thing. It's living and working in a society, not special to poets and creative writers on campuses. It's in every corner of life. Writers and teachers just have a knack for communicating and spreading info quickly via networks online and in print publications so perhaps it is just more apparent because it is made public in communique.

But I'll maintain, I think it is without value to make such a broad and stereotypical statement like your original one here. It's tunnel vision.

-sp
 

to tie my above statement back to Foetry, etc, and it is my strong opinion that the issues they raised and others defended is not only biproduct of a much larger capitalistic culture and rat race, but also a narrow-mindedness that somehow corruption, competition, paranoia, bickering, on and on are somehow only occuring in the realm of US poetry.

While W trods hand in hand in a field of bluebonnets with the Saudi oil king.

welcome to the fuck all paradigm.

-sp
 

POD is a real boon for poetry publishing. I publish 50 poetry books per year, mostly by poets such as Allison Joseph, Phil Dacey, et. al--not so many from this end of the poetisphere--and I do it without contests. And I do it full-time, that is, my wife and I earn our living from it.

I can't speak to third-world sweatshops: my books are printed in LaVergne, Tennessee. But I can definitely speak to how fundamental POD is to what I do.

Kevin Walzer
WordTech Communications
http://www.wordtechcommunications.com
 

"Seems you want to make "creative writers" at universities a category all of their own as far as politics and nepotism and paranoia etc. goes and I don't think that's the case. I really don't. Are you pointing your finger at yourself and your colleagues, as you are a tenored prof as you have stated, you have the inside skinny so to speak, but really, do you really think such behavour is special to only creative writing departments? Do you have any idea how competitive electronic engineering is in regards to university jobs as well as acceptance into programs? What about athletics departments? No nepotism/sexism/and a whole lot of other isms there? Much less paranoia and fear of rejection or failure in the job market?"

If you go back to the original post you'll see that I made some remarks based on direct observation, followed by a tentative generalization. You're over-reading. Obviously we're all human, all-too-human. A rant on the ethical or personal failings of non-poetic academics would be easy to write. But I've served on over a dozen search committees (English, Foreign Language, Women's studies, the Library) and not once has the candidate who was hired been known to members of the committee. When friends have applied (two occasions) I've recused myself (neither were hired). Creative writing search committees, on the other hand, have several times pulled close personal friends of committee members out of a large and qualified pool. I've also served for years on graduate admissions committees, and not once have we offered a fellowship to a student who was sleeping with a committee member—-not alas true of the MFA admissions committee. Conversations at ADE and MLA have led me to believe that my creative writing colleagues are not a particularly bad lot (and they aren't)--and that they are more or less typical in their professional behaviour.

My conclusion is that the path to academic acculturation in the MFA program (fewer requirements, fewer different teachers, much more intimate relationships with the teachers, three years on the average versus seven) produces different behaviours. It's not nature, it's nurture. (Studio art faculty tend to operate in similar ways, for the same reasons.)

I recently went to a reading with a "senior poet" followed by two ephebe poets who in their introductory chats lauded their mentors, told tales of their workshops, made comments about personal gossip assumed to be common knowledge, etc. Hearing a scholarly presentation by a recent PhD I would be amazed to even have the name of the scholar's dissertation director mentioned.

I can't say I know anything about academic electrical engineers. Your assumption that highly competitive programs, ipso facto, are corrupt in their admissions and hiring I cannot accept. As for athletic departments they're academic abominations and one doesn't care what they get up to.
 

Anonymous wrote:
"Some creative writers are acculturated in MFA programs to be paranoid about their status in the academy and their position vis-a-vis the majority drysasdusts. Your response perfectly demonstrates this."

And some people are acculturated--or just naturally have the tendency--to make broad generalizations without facts. I have a PhD, thank you, was never interested in the an MFA. And I'm not particularly worried about my status in the academy as I've published both poetry and scholarly work, as have many "creative writing faculty."

One of your mistakes is to equate "creative writing faculty" with the MFA. While the MFA used to be the terminal degree in CW, more and more the CW PhD is replacing it. Another is your assumption that all MFA programs are basically the same. I have no doubt that the problems you describe above exist in your program, and in other programs as well. As you said, it's human nature. But it has been my experience that creative writing faculty are no different in their behaviors than are their colleagues.

"I would not generalize from what I've seen to the academy at large, but it does seem that the mores in creative writing are different."

I'm glad to know that you wouldn't generalize, but I must confess that I am left a bit confused as to what you would call what you are doing.

Bob Watts
 

anon~

I see what you mean about the nurtured culture of MFA programs. That, it seems, makes some sense. And yeah atheIetics departments were a poor example. But don't count out the dark side of electrical engineering!

I don't think nor could I prove that other highly competitive programs are necessarily corrupt in their admissions and hirings (though it be true in many sectors in the outside world), but I do think wherever a power system is set up the potential and the probability - at any or some stage in the system's development & maturation - when you put people from this planet in those roles, then you have a recipe for what we as humans do. the olde Cain and Abel hoo ha. I didn't pursue an MFA nor do I have plans to so I don't care about defending the integrity of such programs, but I think it's naive to think such programs (and studio art!) or, rather, the people that make up these programs, are the only programs/institutions that pull bullshit.

But in the end I'm not qualified to say. In a court of law that is, hand on the bible.

I can imagine Philosophy departments to be a nasty bunch.

And Classics departments as they turn to ruins themselves.

?

Just remembering, I once took classes with a Professor Richard Berthold at U of New Mexico. Google that name for some ethics fodder!

-sp
 

and he was a great teacher I should add.

-sp
 

Bob Watts: "But it has been my experience that creative writing faculty are no different in their behaviors than are their colleagues."

So yes, different experiences.

SP: " don't think nor could I prove that other highly competitive programs are necessarily corrupt in their admissions and hirings (though it be true in many sectors in the outside world), but I do think wherever a power system is set up the potential and the probability - at any or some stage in the system's development & maturation - when you put people from this planet in those roles, then you have a recipe for what we as humans do. the olde Cain and Abel hoo ha. I didn't pursue an MFA nor do I have plans to so I don't care about defending the integrity of such programs, but I think it's naive to think such programs (and studio art!) or, rather, the people that make up these programs, are the only programs/institutions that pull bullshit."

We're in agreement about human nature; my point though is perhaps that the bullshit differs not only in degree but (perhaps) in kind, depending on training. As an example. On another list for writers a member quoted approvingly a poet who bragged about how he would go into the chair's office and to fake temper tantrums in order to get out of committee work or teaching on friday. Sadly familiar behavior. But in the culture of creative writing (us creative folks versus them) it is permissable to brag about it. On a list devoted to early modern british literature I don't think that brag would be aired, though 17th-century scholars are perfectly capable of the same behaviour.
 

I might add that the responses to my initial post have tended to herd me towards a position which I don't hold, vis-a-vis academic creative writing. I was responding to the passage in Silliman's take on foetry.com that implied that the questioning of poetry contests was the wrong question because contests were being held to a higher standard than general academic hiring, refereeing, etc. ("What is it about contests that is supposed to make them less subject to nepotism & other literary fixes than, say, the hiring process at any college? Or publication, especially by a trade press? Or the peer review process of an academic journal?") I think there are differences between traditional scholarly disciplines (for instance the way PMLA chooses articles) and creative writing (the way Georgia awards a poetry prize), and in my observation creative writing faculty tend to have a somewhat different set of mores as they operate within the academic. For instance Silliman quite rightly obvserves, "When I was a student in the 1960s, English professors routinely slept with their students if they so chose. Everybody knew which professors had reputations for this. That level of coercion largely got cleaned up – one of second-wave feminism’s greatest feats, actually – but the underlying dynamics haven’t changed all that much. Power still corrupts. The absence of any objective test means that it gets to do so largely without checks and balances." The point I was trying to make was that the clean-up within creative writing lagged behind the rest of the academy. (And since the examples I mention come from my own department, I maintain anonymity.)

The best literary magazines for me a generally the ones where a strong editor unabashedly publishes what he or she wants, including the work of friends. Magazines where submissions are vetted by committees of MFA student readers tend to be boring to me. So I don't think all the academic procedures should be adapted.

As for Richard Berthold, there's no ethics fodder there, at least for me. He made a stupid remark without thinking.
 

Yeah Yeah. He made a "stupid" remark one day. That's a fraction of the story but no matter, it was an aside anyway (and we won't go into the unethical manner in which the university tried to fire him for his free speech) I just heard several stupid remarks on the elevator at my office, they just happened to not be political comments.

But I can agree with you on:

"The best literary magazines for me a generally the ones where a strong editor unabashedly publishes what he or she wants, including the work of friends."

But really, if you want some kind of sterile politically correct academic "procedure" at universities and if that is the direction they are going and nutty profs who speak their minds and live their lives no matter how unwholesome then I am glad to not go that route of "higher education".

Methinks you are speaking out of frustration for one department and a certain set of faculty, so I do trust that you are wrong in your assumptions that creative writing people at universities have different (weaker?) mores or at least ethically-challenged mores and these people need to be "cleaned up" or they lag in the ethics overhaul.

But I'm a godless heathen.

Contests? Forget em.

Quick solution to raising money for publishing costs: keg party. a buck a cup.

-sp
 

Quick solution to raising money for publishing costs: keg party. a buck a cup.

-sp

How about this one. Rather than an entry fee, each submitter sends the cash register receipt for two books by contemporary poets or three literary magazines.
 

Or a bake sale. Or pony rides. Effing Press will be having a yard sale fundraiser this summer and people are donating stuff for that. Or an event of poetry, music, and various performances + a raffle of local DIY objects and services.

But I know maybe not every town is like Austin. People here like some eye and ear candy to go with their Pabst. And I don't feel the least bit bad about organizing some entertainment in exchange for some bucks. Plus we get to put the word out and perhaps educate people about what we do. And it brings together all sorts of people, not just bookworms, and one can see - at least in my local community - some of the larger issues of the DIY movement.

-sp