Thank you.
I asked this question of the earlier panel, too.
But I think it's certainly relevant for our topic.
And that is, the one feature of today's literary landscape
is the sheer number of small presses, both print and online.
New journals and presses are launched every day.
Do you see there being pros and cons to this?
Is the sound-- OK, we're good.
I think it's almost all pro.
I'm a fan of having more and having more options, partially
because, I mean, as a writer, it's
an exciting time to be around.
I mean, you stumble across a new website that's
doing something cool, that you didn't think was even possible,
or you didn't think of.
I mean, or even, if it's like, you
can see a cool little press start up, and all of a sudden
it's turning out--
there's a little press that does kind
of matchbox-size publishing, which I think
is just amazingly cool.
I mean, there is a downside in the sense that, if you--
I mean, starting a journal or starting a press,
you have to find a way to distinguish yourself
from that crowd, which for me-- and the one main way
to distinguish yourself to me is design.
But the other than that, I've noticed in the last, especially
decade really, is how much easier design has
gotten for people, provided you to put the time in.
I mean, you can easily lay out a book in InDesign
that will look almost as good as anyone who lays out
a book at Knopf or whatever.
It helps if you do a little bit of reading,
and typography and so on.
But, I mean, these tools have really
flattened the playing field so that if you
have some sort of knowledge of design
and you had the interest in doing this,
you can immediately establish yourself.
And I think you can pop out if you have an interesting idea.
I mean, the downside of this is, of course,
from a writerly standpoint is trying to figure out, OK, well,
which of these presses should I send my work to,
which will still be around in 10 years?
Which magazines are interesting and are going to be valuable
and that my peers will recognize?
And I think, that is a real problem for writers.
But it's not a problem that research can't deal with.
And it's been the same, I think, probably,
for most of the history of publishing is that some things
will be around and some won't.
And you're kind of taking a bet.
I mean, I've submitted my work to a journal that
--like a journal, let's say like the normal school, which is
a pretty cool-looking journal.
But people ask me for work, and I'm like, yeah, maybe.
But I saw that first issue, and the design was great.
I mean, I saw that, and I'm like, OK.
To me that means I'm going to send them something
because I want to try to get into the ground floor.
And it indicates a certain amount of seriousness.
The production value-- this is a print magazine.
The production values are very high.
They clearly had a budget, which I
can't say really I have a budget for my press or my magazine.
And so, there are still ways, I think,
of distinguishing between the sorts of journals.
But, I don't know.
I just have a hard time--
I have a hard time seeing the downside
to so much great literature.
And some of it sucks, but, I mean,
that's always been the case.
So from any perspective, I think it's a plus.
And I think what you said about design
is so interesting because now in this day of e-books,
and apps, and all different ways to read
a book, I think in terms of the print world,
and that's what I'm most familiar with,
that's what's going to survive, these beautiful, well-crafted,
well-produced books.
And that's what people are going to want to spend money on,
to have, to enjoy the craft of the book.
Well, I agree with a lot of what you said about the upside,
but I can think of a couple of downside aspects to this.
One is, in online publication, for instance,
since our first issue in April of 2000,
we've always published electronic chapbooks.
So we featured the work of particular poets,
sometimes poets and translation, sometimes
collaborations, anywhere in length
from what would be maybe 8 to 45 pages.
For those authors who are published in that mode,
they are often perceived as not being really published
because they don't have something to carry around
with them and sell.
People will say, has your work being published?
And you don't have the object to point to or hand to--
hand over.
The other thing, I think is a downside
is the sheer amount of work being published.
And as a result, I think there's been a couple of things
that have happened.
I remember at one point, like in 2008, during a lot of online
reading from all sorts of different magazines,
really places with great production values
as Ander mentions, or people that looked like they just
put it up the day before.
And I became aware that there is this kind
of internet voice of poetry.
And it is a particular style of writing that is unidentifiable.
It has this sort of tone, play with language,
this preoccupation that can almost spit in anyone's mouth.
And so there's this kind of verisimilitude,
a kind of similarity that is occurring
in a way, as if everyone is moving
to the middle at the same time.
The other thing that I think might
be a factor is that criticism in terms of these great books that
will last or these authors that will last,
that partly depends upon the exercise of criticism.
And criticism as an active or very engaged
practice in American letters has practically disappeared.
I mean, we have a few notable critics
that comes to everyone's mind.
And they are always talking about the same few great poets.
But in terms of critics who are out there reading
the work of today and helping shape that dialogue
and conversation, that seems to be
one consequence of what's lost, in part because readers just
can't keep up.
Much less critics.
I mean, if I was a practicing critic,
I would find it maddening, given the proliferation
of titles and journals.
And I mean, it's almost like trying
to keep up with whatever's new.
Right.
Whereas at a certain point, you could reliably
go to a few journals that had established themselves.
I think it would be awful from a critical perspective.
But at the same time, there's a lot of interesting criticism
being done online.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I think of the Constant Critic
is a website run nominally by the Fence people,
I mean that does, I think, really striking poetry reviews.
And it's in the disappearing days
of the space from print journals and certainly from newspapers.
Right.
I mean, I guess I want to speak to quality.
But there's a lot of people writing a lot of criticism
online that, to me--
I mean, I think it's a great thing that they're doing it.
But I also would find it maddening.
Yeah.
Well, I agree on that.
Then there are other magazines that have been around
for a long time that have exerted a critical presence,
like Jacket--
Yeah.
--for instance or--
And Parnassus, which is dead.
Right, yeah, or Silliman blog or whatever.
But still, in terms of those particular groups,
I think one way in which they can be criticized
is their packs.
In other words, the Jacket people,
their criticism supports the Jacket poets.
So you have poets moving around as it were
and these kinds of, I don't know,
packs, clans, tribes, whatever, where the criticism that you
see is often connected with a particular group of poets
and a particular kind of poetry, praise
a style within those parameters, but seldom goes outside of it.
Yeah.
And I think-- I would extend that to say that I do
think that it created more cubbyholing
of little groups of poets.
I mean, as the internet has for anything,
I mean, you can find--
if you're a hiccup fetishist, you
can find your hiccup fetishists online,
which I stumbled on and obsessed with these hiccup fetishes that
are--
which don't ask me how I found this.
But, I mean, the internet does create that.
And so, there's less of a--
I guess, there's less of a space for criticism
that is moving back and forth, or even trying to tackle, say,
different sorts of poetics.
Mm-hmm.
I think of Joan Houlihan as a critic who I love a lot.
And she writes for--
she's got a column on Web del Sol.
And she's a very cranky critic in a way that a lot of internet
criticism is like, yeah, it's either you're just --
and blog criticism you're just trying to start some beef with
someone.
Or you just kind of-- or like everything's great,
can we be friends on Facebook?
But she's someone who is really actively trying to deal--
trying to tackle other schools of poetry
and figure out what's going on, and how can I deal with that,
and how can I not just stay in my own sphere?
So I certainly agree with that.
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