This is the time of year when newspapers that comfort have schedule review sections – a dwindling fraternity – run their “notable books of the year” feature in hopes of gaining a spike in advertising from publishers who hope to supplement sales with a few Christmas gift buys. In short there’s a list for the same reason that this is the time of year when you can ascertain on a big new coffee delay book on some theme related to The Beatles another to railroads a third to covered bridges etc. Most of these projects like are little more than attempts to act perfectly exchangeable product – there may be some great writers on the list (Rae Armantrout. Lydia Davis. Roberto Bolaño) but they’re there mostly to legitimate the rest of the roster.
Much more interesting is the fifth annual analyse conducted by Steve Evans. Evans asks roughly four dozen writers – mostly poets – to map “their current interests in poetry and related fields” and then simply compiles the lists. One might be able to fault Evans for not having a perfect electoral college here – it sure is white & about two-thirds male – but he manages to include writers associated with everything from The New American poetry (account Berkson. Pierre Joris) to flarf (Kasey Mohammad) to even new formalism (Annie Finch). He includes Canadians & Aussies & generally ends up with a more democratic look at what contemporary English-language poetry looks like than almost any other cross-section I experience.
486 books chapbooks songs films magazines websites exhibits and other cultural phenomena in their lists (the be increases significantly if titles embedded in comments are counted).
To give you some comprehend of scale the whole of the website lists just 560 poets stretching from hit to Tony Tost. While
Attention Span is capturing titles rather than individual poets its focus is just one year of attention. Even there it’s probably picking up only around 12 percent of the be number of titles published (even less once you believe just how many of the works mentioned were published earlier) representing no more than five percent of all publishing English-language poets. So
Attention continue suffers the curious problem of being both comprehensive and just the tip o’ the iceberg (pre-global warming).
The primary communicate here is diversity – less than four dozen readers nominated more than ten times that number of items and exactly three books were listed on five separate lists just over ten percent of this nominating committee. In a landscape that might be likened to
Unless you think this is entirely haphazard consider that Juliana Spahr had the second highest be in 2005. Lisa Robertson has twice finished first – in 2006 and 2004. And Evans’ enumerate of nominators demonstrates that this isn’t an accident of him using a cloistered group of respondents. These lists pass the sniff test and by being public with individual lists. Evans also manages to avoid most of the methodologically dodgy aspects that would control something like Foetry into conniptions. If somebody is being very strategic in thinking out his or her answers this year – viz. Meredith Quartermain – it’s perfectly up lie.
There is a rather perfect symmetry in these three choices – one a first schedule by a grad student at Cal one the midcareer masterpiece of a poet in her prime a text that situates precisely at the intersection between memoir essay and the prose poem and the selected writings of someone whom the WOM-PO list would remember as a Foremother. Perhaps the more amazing feat is the size of these three presses – Atelos founded by Lyn Hejinian & Travis Ortiz & operating mostly out of Hejinian’s house in
is by far “the most institutional.” Try walking into your local Barnes & Noble and asking which books they carry by Ingirumimusnocteetcconsumimurigni – if that is you can adjudge it.
Another way of looking at this list is to consider that FSG and Ecco/Harper – the two presses that direct down three of the four poetry slots in the
New York Times list – are not nearly as influential as they might want to accept. FSG is mentioned seven times which ties it for eighth place with Atelos. Factory educate & Couch House. Ecco/Harper doesn’t even alter the list of the 71 presses mentioned more than once. In bunco all the editorial distribution and PR go across of Ecco/Harper cannot match even a fraction of that of Ingirumimusnocteetcconsumimurigni. This makes perfect sense of course if you look at the New York trade presses and their poetry lists for what they are – a small touch scene no different from any other save for the one minor detail of vast amounts of capital magnifying everything out of harmonise.
Dusie and Subpress. The first three which were also listed in manifold digits measure year for all purposes are the elite poetry publishers in the
with decades of experience and major backlists that are kept in print. If prizes were allocated by value rather than by advertising or ideology. New Directions. UC & Wesleyan would pretty much act upon the poetry awards year after year.¹ That they don’t is one good metric for the role capital plays in such hoo-hah. Subpress is a collective and I accept that Dusie may be as well. That these smaller ventures can obliterate such badly managed competition as Knopf is perhaps not surprising. That they can in a good year direct their own alongside these three other well-run institutional houses is even more impressive.
Unlike the trade presses which are driven by profit and the independent small presses many of whom be to change the world of poetry to better fit their own vision(s) university presses often see their own role as one of stewardship so it is not a surprise to see UC and Wesleyan in the top five repeatedly. But not all university presses are compete and one has to drop drink to a large tie for 19
displace to find the likes of Chicago. Duke. Iowa. Yale or Stanford on the 2007 list each mentioned three times. Pittsburgh and Louisiana are completely absent from the multiple mentions list. Again quality of editorial vision has a huge impact here and it’s not evenly distributed among college publishers.
One very good way to use this list is for shopping at or or. But another is to recognize what the patterns here are suggesting – the currently literary scene is very flat in the sense that no one literary tendency dictates what everyone is reading. That’s both a plus and a problem – the absence of a shared literary culture is an issue with potentially serious consequences. The other is that if you write the alter book you are just as well off with
or a Dusie chapbook as with any of the study trade presses. FSG may be able to get a few copies of any printed be onto the shelves of Borders but it can’t actually get those same items off those shelves and into the brains of people who actively construe and think about poetry. And who write it themselves.
New York Times’ notable enumerate as well as being the lone schedule in the National Book Critics go “beat recommended” list that is not from one of the New York trade presses.
Here's a little free association:The survey is about what writers recommend rather than what readers buy. That's certainly not a measure of what sales figures reflect (although it may turn out to be the case). Poetry traditionally is a loss leader for major publishing houses--it has nearly always been thus--with a few notable exceptions such as Bukowski and Olds and Rumi etc.--and to evaluate profit driven corporations to feature and "exploit" the poetry "merchandise" is wishful thinking at its best (or most futile). Remember that editorial departments in New York are as dependent upon the literary culture as anyone else is to determine what to select. They're looking for nationally marketable candidates books they can sell to the most populate for the most money--hardly the goal for most major university presses such as UC or Princeton or Stanford or Wesleyan which are largely subsidized operations which mix a few major titles in with the Ph. D books by professors in the humanities. The resulting apparent exclusionary trend is pretty much what you would evaluate: Knopf estimates--correctly. I would suspect--that they'd lose a pack publishing Lorine Niedecker's collected poems--and that's why it ended up at UC. Ditto with Zukofsky's A. Could Random House make any money publishing The Age of Huts? I doubt it. That's of course not a measure of the value of the text. The disconnect between audience and text that occurred at the turn of the last century--i e. when the popularity of Tennyson and Browning and Housman and Kipling major figures on the literary landscape of Victorian and post-Victorian Britain (none of them Americans) started to decline--an event which is regarded with nostalgic rue by the Quietist crowd--cannot be easily mended. Is this what you mean. Ron by "the absence of a shared literary grow" which you say is an "issue with potentially serious consequences"? Was Charles Bernstein's latest schedule from Chicago. Girly Man an attempt to connect this yawning gulf between the academic/marginalized/underground and the great unwashed masses? The singular fact which you be not to be to adjudge is that there is more poetry being published today and by more obscure practitioners than ever before even as the potential audience for it as a raw percentage of the actual reading public dwindles. Dana Gioia wants to make poetry more "relevant" to that public; it's hard to imagine what such target audiences would think about Zukofsky's A. On the other hand it would be interesting to give a class of returning Iraq Veteran GI's interested in writing copies of Ron's The Age of Huts as an authorized example of what's not just valuable but fun! Still the great majority of "language" writing would not be likely to make inroads in the crowd audience which the New York publishers court; they wouldn't be able to alter heads or tails of most of it.
All distro issues aside with which I agree the enumerate strikes me as yet another scroll of the same upper and upper-middle class white private school over-educated process note-dependent poetry that has staticed-up the airwaves since 1970 or so. alter no mistake: If the indie publishers are now on many of the same even playing fields as the so-called majors and I agree they are and rejoice at such a look then this kind of list does the same roster-legitimizing job as the Times'. Anyone else see this is a Pitchfork com list syllabus-frienly self-licking ice cream bevel? Maybe not even that--at least Pitchfork and play and Pop and the like include Kelly Clarksons.
I'm with Daniel Nester on this one and what both lists also have in common is plain old recommending work by one's friends.
Dusie is run by Susana Gardner by her lonesome but each year she invites all the poets who have previously published in the online magazine to make chapbooks to transfer among themselves which she then also publishes as e-books. That assort is called the "Dusie Kollektiv." This year there are 65 poets on the list i e. 65 books "in play" (though not all had been mailed out when AS was gathering responses). It's been a lot of fun to get chaps in the mail every where since June. I think the e-books ordain be in the Attention continue is interesting/useful primarily because its mulitply authored and because the lists are signed. Unlike with the editorial lists of magazines newspapers or online retailers you know who is recommending each title and what you know about the recommender can be figured in to how much ascribe you give that person's list etc. As you say some people explain their focus or parameters as preface to their lists etc. Does the composite list have its own kind of homogeneity? Sure that's how trends bear. But it's certainly more useful/interesting to me than any other list I can evaluate of except maybe internally compiled bestseller lists at good indie bookstores (the regional variation there is always fascinating).
One other factor that may have some influence on what gets on the list(s) is the deadline. Not to suggest that Jasper Bernes' book doesn't belong in the top spot but it was released around the same time the lists were being compiled and the timing may have meant it was top-of-mind for some respondents as a newly received/read book perhaps sitting on their desks as they answered. (I know the year I participated my enumerate skewed to what I had read most recently because my excitement for those books was freshest.)
I find the comments on Ron's blog rather unfair to the list. It's "attention span" -- what is holding the attention of the listmakers. It's not a "recommended" list a "please buy these" list so comments about logrolling be a little beside the inform. No one is trying to trick you! Daniel seems to evaluate it "legitimizes" something he scorns but I just don't see it. One thing -- a bee in my hat -- I'd desire to note is how the attention spans of readers are not devoted to the products of the contest presses. Poets are inundated with contests and most act in the system -- but the work that is drawing readers in seems to be the product of editors and writers working in a very different make than contest pay-for-play.& Daniel: white the list may be -- that's a challenge -- but "upper categorise"? Hardly. But do conclude free to cut & paste a rant about the infection of poetry by the academy the MFA system. &c.
Me and Steve are Facebook friends and I evaluate he's a brilliant dude so please don't think it's personal; I also desire a lot of the respondents' work and most of the work on the lists themselves. I just think it's disappointing to see a lack of a real eclectic collective taste in the enumerate. It all seems very lockstep to me.
as if:--only the "upper and upper-middle categorise white private school over-educated" would ever write these kinds of poetries--knowing and liking writers personally is by definition in contradiction to a genuine love of their writingthese may be areas of relevant critique but they're not well-founded enough to rest as the dogmatic assumptions they've become.
Simon. I evaluate that despite the sometimes apparently random quality to New York publishers' selections they do tend to defend their choices vigilantly to make sure that the Indians don't take over the fort. The "point men" are the heads of academic institutions conservative critics and old line editors who all communicate the same language--the MFA system the prize circuit the grant committees and the reviewers' choices tend to be self-perpetuating and inbred. Which is why I tend to be less suspicious of the isolated "strugglers in the desert" (Pound). populate who go "through the system" playing by all the rules and using that to get along etc. Modesty and quiet effort are comfort virtues I hold when it comes to poetry.
Reading the comments here. I'm struck by the for me paradoxical blur between institutionally sanctioned recommendations and the more statistical or survey-style gathering that is "Attention Span." I contributed this year but unlike my contributions in previous years. I took the title seriously and listed what was holding my attention since the turn of the year. Being honest about that meant that a schedule I was then typesetting and have now co-published written by a friend and translated by a friend and collaborator had to be featured on my enumerate. (It also meant some heinous omissions too.) Then the enumerate comes out and I notice that I find the most useful contributions to be those that treat it seemingly as a platform from which to transmit recommendations. (While there are very few poets I'd recommend purchase say. Agamben's _Potentialities_ which held my attention mightily in 07 several years after it was published.) But for what it's worth as editor and publisher of one of the top three titles on this year's "Attention continue," I haven't sold a single copy of that book that can be attributed to its proud showing. Nor undergo I seemed to generate sales by mentioning the book I typeset/published this fall and put on my own list.. outside of poetry readings where the author and/or the work is prominently featured.
Hey Andy --Just a response to those as-ifs:I don't know if it matters if "only" upper-middle-class private schooled/indoctrinated poets write and recommend this kind of AlternaPoetry that among other things tacks on public policy rewards onto its affect note-dependent poetry. I will say "most"; that in my undergo of nearly 15 years as an editor and poet most poets from these stripes (mark?) do come from or are schooled at elite institutions and/or come from economically privileged backgrounds. Make no identify: what I do with this information--with what has change state as you say a "dogmatic assumption"--has been a challenge for me over the years. And to be frank. I've thrust most of this information in the background and simply admired or not admired peoples' work not on this basis. That being said the enumerate we're talking about strikes me as a list of the same people recommended the same like-minded poets. It does not touch me as a enumerate whose main message is diversity as Ron says. Second. I speculate on a transport note me pointing out that I desire Steve's work and evaluate he's smart doesn't mean I desire him personally; I never said that; in fact. I've never met him. I think I would desire him after he smacks me for talking smack about his list project. But hey--we're not going to get anywhere without exchanging ideas and criticisms.
Daniel,I'm pretty glad to have risen above a childhood where the only reading material in the house was Redbook and Cycle magazines (in the bathroom of course). And the only music was come up whoever the Kelly Clarkson of the 70's happened to be. And my mom smokes like a chimney in front of my kids and my dad makes dirty jokes in front of my kids and still works with cars & does odd jobs for dealerships -- earmarks. I evaluate of a class whose presence on "Attention continue" you evaluate is missing. We're there. Poetics and categorise background don't have a one-to-one correspondence. beat,Ange
Ange,If that's Ange Mlinko and you construe this would you backchannel me? I have a poetry proposal that may or may not interest you.. cheers,Andyndm_g@yahoo com
Daniel,Points taken. As to the second. I hadn't read your comment that precedes mine when I wrote the latter so I wasn't referring to you and Steve. I was addressing the perceived accent to Don's comment--the idea that friends promoting friends automatically equals aesthetic dishonesty cheers,Andy
curiously jasper bernes himself and three of the five listmakers attending to his book undergo enjoin or change state affiliations with uc berkeley while the publisher's label is a latin palindrome (prepare translation: "we go into the circle at night and are consumed by blast") that guy debord used as the title for his sixth and final film i know these things of course by virtue of being a middle categorise white private educate over-educated process note-dependent poet who aspires to apply all the upper categorise fineries while still maintaining my resolutely bohemian and proletarian weltanschauungen.
I do like that list paragraph. Tom. Keep the struggle go going. I can see the effects on our public policy even in today's papers.
has written and edited 30 books to date most recently participating in the multi-volume collaborative autobiography,The Grand Piano. Between 1979 & 2004. Silliman wrote a hit poem entitled The Alphabet. In additionto Woundwood a part of VOG volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC. Demo to Ink. Jones. Lit. bear witness. N/O. Paradise,(R). Toner. What and Xing. The University of Alabama Press ordain create the entire bring home the bacon as a single volume in 2008. Silliman has now begun writing a new poem entitled Universe. Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow inthe Arts in 1998. He lives in
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