brian, i way like the green cover better. so happy will we be when fashionable noise is among us.

+

last night i received an invitation to submit work to be considered for the following project:

"In the Fall of 2003, Potes&Poets Press will be publishing an Anthology featuring the work of 50 contemporary writers and poets."

as is always the case when i'm asked to submit anything, my first response was, wow, how nice/generous/humbling that someone wants to consider my work. in this case, i also felt happy to be contacted by the press, because potes&poets has published a great deal of work that i admire, including that of close friends.

my second response is more complex. i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on my questions. i'm esp interested to hear from editors, since editing and publishing are intense labors of love that i deeply admire and appreciate, and it is my intention to convey that message in my response to potes&poets.

i want to ask the editors of the anthology if they'd be interested in sharing their criteria in selecting the 50 authors for their anthology so that i better understand the dialog i'd be potentially contributing to. i am, however, afraid of sounding pretentious, elitist, and rude. i also realize that this question may not be of interest to them,

alas, i'm concerned that this anthology may purport to represent the "best" or "top" 50 contemporary writers that the editors have encountered, or have access to. and that's not a dialog i could contribute to. such a proposal doesn't make sense to me; in fact, it operates in a logic that's contrary to the logic of my poems.

i imagine the main argument -against- my concern is as follows:

"by offering your work to ANY collection and increasing exposure and distrobution to your work, you are increasing the potential that adjacent work by your colleagues, peers, and friends will be accessed, since someone may discover your otherwise obscure work in this best-of collection, and pursue related threads."

that may be true. but even if it is: (1) i'm not sure that "getting out the word by any means" is the whole deal -- aren't the very means a big part of 'the word'? [i've argued about this with rebecca w. in the past, when she asked us to buy _fence_ at barnes&ignoble, because they otherwise pulp unsold copies of _fence_ -- ding ding!, wanna go again? ;) ] and (2) it seems to me that "outside" readers who seek purported best-of collections are likely to be more interested in cultural capital and cocktail conversations than in the dynamics of various small poetry communities.

i'd like to re-state that these thoughts are -not- directed at potes&poets, which is, again, a press i have respected for years. that said, i guess the first question would be, should i even ask this question of them? i would really hate for it to come off as suspicious or insulting, and i think it would be hard to avoid leaving such impressions.

i'm all for anthologies, collections, and the like. however, it makes more sense to me to organize around somewhat specific questions and issues, so that matters of exclusion aren't mysterious, or implied to be based on that weird objective correlative crap. _chain_'s editors do an exemplary job in explaining their selection criteria, in asking whether or not a submission reveals something new abt their topic at hand.

carol

Posted by: carol mirakove at January 7, 2003 12:58 PM

Based on what Allison wrote me (in an email that she didn't post here), it sounds to me that the request was more general, that it was not a specific invitation to become part of an "elite." But even were it to be so, I don't see any problem with 1) asking questions of the editors concerning what sort of context you would be placed in, and 2) being singled out as someone worth paying attention to.

There are certainly enough times when, say, J.H. Prynne has politely declined being included in an anthology because he didn't quite approve of the structure, or maybe because he felt overexposed (Deanna Ferguson declined being in the KSW anthology also, but I don't know what her reasons were). If there is a strong editorial presence, there is a fair chance that the anthology will end up feeling like a single multi-author work, in which case you would want to be sure that you approve of the whole of the project.

As for being singled out, it's an honor to have it done, and certainly your work continues to contribute to a reading of others' work that might not be in there as you are altering, however slightly, the general understanding of what "poetry" is, or what poetry "now" is, which can't but be beneficial to your peers who have been reading you for some time and probably writing with your poems in mind.

Anyway, some quick thoughts... unless you feel the image presented by the anthology would be completely wrong and nefarious, then I would suggest just go ahead and do it.

Posted by: Mr. Arras at January 7, 2003 02:46 PM

thanks for feedback. i have asked the potes&poets editors if they might be interested in elaborating on the occasion of the anthology, and on their selection criteria. i appreciate your opinions in whether or not that was an ok question to ask.

onward:

the actual potes&poets situation is, in my mind, a relatively small force in the concerns i posed. i’m more interested generally in the bigger, ethical questions of the negotiations around locating one’s own and editing other people’s poems. i realize some people aren’t comfortable, and are otherwise bored by, these questions, but i appreciate the extent to which anyone feels like engaging them. i think the questions are directly tied to how we treat one another as humans, co-habitants, and laborers, and that seems important.

an anthology is different than a magazine. a magazine is serial, and typically assembled within a much smaller time frame. the occasion of a magazine is not usually defined at a granular level, and i don’t think that’s a problem; a frequently issued magazine doesn’t beg the issue of exclusivity the way an anthology does. an anthology is, by definition, a single collection around a single occasion or question. and so, it’s important that editorial criteria be communicated. to comment further on _chain_, since it’s published annually and contains such a large volume of poems, i tend to regard it less of a general periodical (in the way i regard pom2) and more of a specific, occasional collection.

i don’t think that for pom2, or any frequently issued magazine, it’s necessarily appropriate for the selection criteria to be so explicit. pom2’s operating criteria seem fairly specific to me, actually, as the journal exists on the premise of polylogue. i assume its editorial criteria includes (1) whether or not a submission engages a precursor thoroughly and surprisingly, and (2) whether or not a submission is ripe for further generation. of course selection criteria will always involve subjectivity -- it would be disingenuous to pretend it could ever be otherwise.

by extension, i don’t think anthologies need to aspire to “objective” editing -- but i think they do need to be clear about methodologies of inclusion (even if it –is-, “according to us, these are the 50 best writers living today”), and the occasion. if such a project can be meaningfully received, there needs to be communication regarding what is being offered.

regarding dissent within small-press poetry communities, and my hesitation to ask the potes&poets editors to elaborate on their anthology, allison makes a very important point that dissent often is presented / received in attack mode (as she aptly paraphrases, it too often goes something like, “i've pointed out a critical issue that you've missed, and this makes me superior”). that attitude is for sure a dialog crusher. still, i want to think that we can and should make efforts to succeed such attitudes. if we’ve given serious consideration to our ideas and our ethics, there really should be –no threat- in talking abt these matters, and in receptively listening to other people’s values. this is a dumb analogy, but the person who attacks or feels attacked no matter how the dissent is presented reminds me of an incident i experienced with my mother from my adolescence: we drove past 2 girls who were obviously sneaking a smoke, and my mother said, “if you have to hide it, you shouldn’t be doing it” --> which is to say, if you’re quick to jump on the defensive, maybe you’re not really ok with your ideas and values.

now onto some comments from brian’s post..

there’s nothing wrong with being singled out as someone worth paying attention to. however, if that singling out is happening without a defined context, then the attention to me seems vacuous (boring), and i wouldn’t feel comfortable asking people to spend their time on my work under that pretense. of course i agree it’s a huge honor when anyone (editor, reader, friend) suggests that your stuff is worth considering. i guess i feel that in living up to that honor, there’s a responsibility to make sure that i’m not only offering work that is hopefully generative, but that i’m locating it in ways that are also generative. i’m not sure i think that any “best of” or “top 10” structure -is- generative, since that structure seems to presents work on a pedestal rather than in a community.

as for our service to “poetry”: what is “poetry”? what does “poetry” mean? i’m honestly not trying to be annoying when i say that i have no association with “poetry.” If you’d care to take a stab at telling me what it consists of, or what i’d be affecting & how i’d be affecting it by placing my work any place that is generous enough to have it, i’d be happy to realize such an elucidation.

otherwise, my head’s here: the more “global” (read: overwhelming) our political climate becomes, the more i feel that there is a dire need to invest in the local. i think we need to clarify our relationships on a very intimate level, and then scale and refactor that model as we encounter other local groups (which will each have their own sets of values, which will have grown organically from their geographies and histories). otherwise i’m not sure how we’d avoid acting in targetless and ineffective manners.

love
carol

Posted by: carol mirakove at January 8, 2003 06:09 PM

About the whole politics of anthologies:

I agree with Carol in her post on Tuesday that the methodologies of inclusion -- and responsibility that comes with the inevitable creation of a "defined context" when creating an anthology -- are critical issues.

There's the tired politics of anthologies of marginalized writers, of course-- anthologies taking on the brave task of representing writers based on a single aspect of their identity, be it race, gender or sexuality. But maybe it's not so tired -- Haki Madhubuti says "Racism is not only alive and well in American; it's a growth industry, especially in the humanities." And James W Johnson's "Book of American Negro Poetry" from 1922 is still in print and widely available -- which makes his political choices about how to define "Negro Poetry" critically important. But it may be so important to make sure marginalized voices are heard, that an anthology is really necessary despite the risk.

So yeah, I think even when it's not an underserved group of poets or something of a large temporal and spatial scale, the task of creating an anthology has some weighty responsibility for carefully defining its choices -- because no matter what, it is going to create a definition of something by its very project. It just ain't that simple.

But aside from the task of *making* the anthology, there's the tough choice of whether or not to be *in* one.
Personally, I'd rather be part of anthology where the editorial presence is strong -- "here's 50 poems I like" -- than to risk the responsibility of somehow being made to represent other poets of my time, place, gender, or proclivity -- or for that matter, offering a few poems that would represent *me*! So I much prefer anthologies of poems, rather than anthologies of poets. And as to 50 writers -- pshaw. It's so clearly subjective, I hardly worry about it doing any harm.

Ok, so here's an idea: An anthology of poems that include both the word "monkey" and the word "pants" -- would you be concerned about being included?

Posted by: jen coleman at January 9, 2003 12:54 PM

monkey pants:
good one. monkeys rule.
i think that wld be a specific question, actually -- one that would pose many fun possibilities. and i think it could not claim the same historical, cultural import as an alleged, larger occasion, such as "top 50" or "best of." so, no: not concerned.

but, if i'm right to gather, jen, that "monkey pants" might represent an arbitrarily themed collection, then i don't think i'd be concerned, but likely ambivalent.

concern goes away when the exclusivity factor and otherwise cutting, hierarchical organization goes down. ambivalence rises when the premises of dialog are vague. in the face of ambivalence, the impetus to act often eludes me (and so i'm not apt to submit).

i did hear back from a potes&poets editor.
the qualifications cited to me are,
the anthology represents 50 poets who are mostly
-- but not always
under published.
most of these poets are from the east.
the work is contemporary.
the editors love experimental.

i didn't belabor the editors with more questions (as i'm sure they are busy enough) (and it's not unusual for editors to not issue criteria) but i'm not really any more clear on the selection process, e.g., how, and why, the "most" guideline is excepted, and how the poets are selected, beyond being alive. i was given the name of one poet who is confirmed to be included. i don't really feel aligned with her work, and i'm otherwise feeling in the dark as to the question or occasion posed by the anthology (thereby unable to really articulate a response/submission), i'm not sure how or why i'd respond to the call..?

carol

Posted by: carol mirakove at January 14, 2003 12:46 PM

This will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of

Posted by: Denton at January 19, 2004 02:35 AM

This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?

Posted by: Salamon at January 19, 2004 02:35 AM

That gives us a pretty good starting point to understand a lot more about variables, and that's what we'll be examining next lesson. Those new variable types I promised last lesson will finally make an appearance, and we'll examine a few concepts that we'll use to organize our data into more meaningful structures, a sort of precursor to the objects that Cocoa works with. And we'll delve a little bit more into the fun things we can do by looking at those ever-present bits in a few new ways.

Posted by: Jesse at January 19, 2004 02:36 AM

This code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?

Posted by: Alexander at January 19, 2004 02:37 AM

The most basic duality that exists with variables is how the programmer sees them in a totally different way than the computer does. When you're typing away in Project Builder, your variables are normal words smashed together, like software titles from the 80s. You deal with them on this level, moving them around and passing them back and forth.

Posted by: Elizabeth at January 19, 2004 02:38 AM