I find this sort of thing to be rather interesting because we’re often told that the Internet and social media have “leveled the playing field” so to speak between the big cheeses and the “little guys”. Fascinating!

It seems in this case, the big cheese won.

A Summary Of Big And Small
I usually hear about the battle between David and Goliath in business circles where I spend a great deal of time as a small business marketer. But I’m going to steer this discussion in the direction of the author-editor-publisher troika.

I believe I have some unique insight here because I fall into all of the above categories. I own my business and have people working for me, which makes me somewhat of a big cheese. Yet, my business is small enough to be considered a small business so I’m still a little guy. In the literary world I am an author, an editor, and a publisher. So I’ve got all the bases covered.

But this isn’t about me. It’s about power.

Here’s the question: Has the Internet truly leveled the power structure between the “haves” and the “have nots” or has it simply provided opportunities to succeed and to fail that before were not available to people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale?

You should probably read that question two or three times and let it sink in. I believe if you ask a question the right way then you can get any answer you want. So I’ve specifically worded this question to ask it in such a way that it might shed some light on what’s really going on in this newfangled techno-revolution.

But I’m going to try and apply the answer to the publishing field and see where it gets us.

My Response As An Author
I see the world through multiple lenses. Sometimes those lenses are at odds with one another and I must find some way to reconcile them. Such is the case with my literary aspirations.

As an author, I’m excited about the unique opportunities the Internet affords. But there are just as many pitfalls as there are opportunities. It isn’t all a bed of roses.

Before the Internet, before newsrooms and forums, and even before e-mail, if an author disagreed with a review, she could just send a private letter to the reviewer or pick up the phone and call the reviewer and give that reviewer a piece of her mind. No one had to know. I’m not saying that’s what one should have done, but an author could have done just that and no one would have known. Or likely cared.

Today, the temptation to respond to something someone writes online is so great that an author can embarrass herself before she comes to her senses. And everyone will know it.

That’s a pitfall. But it isn’t the only one.

Many authors are so excited about the opportunity to self-publish that they hasten themselves to do so long before they are ready. They could be hurting their careers before they get them off the ground. That’s another pitfall.

These pitfalls don’t diminish the opportunities or the rewards for success. But any author who is considering doing it all themselves should take note of them. Calculate the risks or they could get you in the end.

My Response As An Editor
An editor’s job is to give a work the best presentation possible in order to make the experience a great one for the reader. Too many authors do not understand the editor’s role.

Editors are people so we are prone to mistakes, errors, and bad judgment just like the rest of you. But a good editor can make a mediocre writer look outstanding. Trust me, I’ve made many a small town news reporter look much better than they actually were on paper. It’s not hard if you’re any good at editing.

As an editor, however, I’ve seen good writers make fatal mistakes that a little restraint could have saved them from making. I’ve made my fair share for sure.

Reviewers, too, have their challenges. It isn’t easy to read someone else’s work and pull out the good, separate it from the bad, and communicate one’s findings to an audience that may or may not give a damn. I am fortunate in that no one I have reviewed for World Class Poetry book reviews has responded to me in the manner that Alice Hoffman did to her reviewer. And I’ve said some pretty nasty things about some of those books – by independent authors nonetheless. The bright spot has been that some of them have thanked me for taking the time to read their work and comment on it. That shows a level of professionalism that can be admired.

So as an editor, when I see someone act publicly in the manner that Alice Hoffman has, it frustrates me. There really is no excuse.

My Response As A Publisher
My response as a publisher is much more bleak. But it really is from an author’s perspective as much as from a publisher’s.

When you take on the roll of publisher, you are assuming responsibility for all aspects of the publishing process, from selection of material to editing to printing, copyrighting, marketing, and distribution. You accept the failures and the successes for all of it. Period.

In all likelihood, you will not be good at all of it. I see too many self-published authors who are just downright awful at editing their own work. I have fallen prey to this myself. While I consider myself a good editor of other’s, I am no good at editing my own. And that’s a terrible tragedy.

By the same token, many authors are lousy at marketing. They could be great editors, but if you can’t market your book then what difference does it make? Your book won’t sell.

Many self-published authors have no problem outsourcing the printing of their book, but when it comes to handling the rest of the publishing process, they want to do it all themselves. And they fail miserably. No wonder. They’ve got bad judgment.

Bad judgment comes in many flavors. As a publisher, you can exercise bad judgment in your selection of authors, or more specifically in the selection of a particular project. As an editor, you can exercise bad judgment in the layout and design of a book. As an author, you can exercise bad judgment in any number of ways (choice of words, choice of editors, choice of publishers, subject matter, et. al.). And marketing. Who is responsible for that?

Well, honestly, everyone is responsible for marketing. Many authors who opt for traditional publishing think that just because they have the name of a big publisher behind them that their job is done. When the marketing fails, it’s time to complain. But ask them if they gave any readings, sent out any press releases, or hired a publicist and the answer is almost always “No.”

Fail!

If you are a working author then you have to take responsibility for your own success, whether you do it all yourself or publish through a large publishing house. If you want to succeed, you’ve got to learn how to market yourself. And that requires more than a strategy based on hope.

It’s hard being a publisher. You have risks. Financial risks, legal risks, editorial risks, just to name a few. The risks don’t change if you are a self-publisher. Their magnitude may change, but at the heart of it all is risk. Real risks. And I’m talking more than the risk you took to expose your innermost, darkest secrets. Those are minimal compared to the risk that your publisher is taking on you.

The competition is stiff. Consumers are fickle. Production costs are rising. The budget is tight. Those assholes in Congress are in session again. Someone put chocolate in someone else’s peanut butter.

You get the picture. There’s always a reason (or an excuse) to fail. Do it yourself and you have no one to blame.

The Most Important Part Of The Publishing Process
You have your strengths. I have mine. Quasimodo has his. And they are all quite different, yes?

Yes.

My strength is editing, though admittedly I am lousy at editing my own work. I’m a not-so-bad writer. A better than average poet. Good at certain aspects of marketing, and getting better. And the verdict is still out on my skill as a publisher. I’m banking on adequate. If not profitable.

But this isn’t about tooting my horn. It’s about knowing thyself and to thine own self being true (thanks, Shakey).

Do you know your strengths? Your weaknesses? Your biases?

I’m surprised at how many authors enter into self-publishing without taking personal inventory and counting the costs. Were you aware that marketing is the most important aspect of the publishing process? It isn’t the writing. No one cares how good a writer you are until they’ve bought your book. But for that to happen, someone has to “sell” it. It has to be marketed. Are you any good at marketing?

As mentioned before, too many authors are willing to outsource the printing, but not much else. Why? You should outsource every part of the process that you aren’t any good at. You know why? Because your success is at stake. And as a publisher you’ve got to make good decisions. That means hiring the best person for the job.

This is why most self-published authors don’t get very far. I wrote a blog post in March in which I discussed the vanity of self-publishing online. Several readers took me to task on my stance, which I expected. But the majority of the comments were made due to a misunderstanding of my intent. That was likely my fault for not communicating clearly about the subject matter. I can take those hits.

But what I can’t take is an author who fails and blames it on someone else. I don’t think for a minute that Alice Hoffman’s apology is all that sincere. When an author list’s a reviewer’s phone number and asks her readers to

“Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

it indicates to me that the author clearly thought that such a request would be honored and vindicate her by popular opinion. It stems from the misconception that the Internet has “leveled the playing field”. Such moves are done as a power play. In this case, it backfired.

Lousy marketing.

Hoffman took a calculated risk and failed. So own up to it. The fact that she deleted her Twitter account seems to imply that her embarrassment runs deeper than a mere publisher’s statement. It likely means that she was ordered to remove it by her publisher or she has realized that she does not know how to use social media and removed it for fear of retaliation, or some other concern. I’m not trying to crawl into Hoffman’s head, but I know that she now is a liability to her publisher and that her publisher would be right in having concerns about Hoffman’s future marketability.

Marketing is the most important part of the publishing process. Do it right, do it wrong, or not at all. The payoff is a sonofabitch for somebody.

Why You Should Think Twice About Publishing Your Own Book
Hoffman’s faux pas is not unique. For every successful author or artist doing it all themselves (and there are some) there are 10 Alice Hoffmans with heads planted firmly up asses.

Hoffman’s response to a critic could have been made by anyone – even a self-published author. But it gets media attention because Hoffman has achieved a certain level of success in the past. However, future success is not dependent on the past. It is dependent on the present.

Do you know how to use the marketing tools at your disposal? Do you know how to conduct a feasibility study or find the audience for your book? How about social media marketing or search engine optimization? Understand how it’s done?

This blog achieved high traffic and high search engine rankings within six months with hardly any marketing simply because of my skill in search engine optimization. But readers have continued to come back because I can write with their interests in mind (or at least with enough fisticuffs to keep their voyeuristic eye open). In the past eight months I have written less often, but my rankings are still present at the search engines and while my traffic has declined somewhat my subscriptions are going up.

Again, I’m not tooting my horn for ego’s sake. I have made certain editorial decisions that have contributed to this blog’s success. Some of those have to do with my “snarkiness”, a quality not appreciated by everyone. My sarcasm on this blog is partly due to temperament and partly due to a marketing “concept” to make myself unique. It works. People read it and respond to it, sometimes negatively. Boo hoo.

At some point in your life as a publisher, you’ll have to make decisions that, as an author, you’ll simply hate. If you don’t make them then you won’t succeed, either as an author or a publisher. In a word, you’ve got to exercise good judgment.

Many writers don’t have good judgment when it comes to editing or publishing. It comes from knowing your strengths. Simply being in control of your works of art is not a benefit. You decide to self-publish because you hope to profit from your writing. Otherwise, why would you shell out the expense? Printing isn’t cheap. And controlling too much can mean putting the stranglehold of death upon your talents.

To bring a long story to a quick halt, the most important quality for an author, an editor, or a publisher is good judgment. And that judgment manifests in different ways depending on the hat you are wearing. But if you don’t have good judgment in matters of publishing then you should fire your publisher and find a new one. Because bad judgment is a killer and the last thing you want left in the morgue is your writing career.

It’s the kind of poem that some people will read and say is too wordy. But they fail to see the form for what it is. I’m not sure I can describe it adequately. You could call it an epic burlesque and that would be accurate. But I hesitate to use the word “burlesque” as you might get the wrong idea.

At 2,568 words, the poem stands at 524 lines. Not a bad clip, and from beginning to end it reaches to nearly 12-1/2 pages on 8 1/2 X 11. Certainly not a Canterbury Tales and no Homerian apple pie, but a long poem nonetheless.

So What Took So Long?
One may be wondering why it took so long to complete the poem. It’s a good question. I couldn’t tell you how many hours that is in real time. If one asks a pilot how long he’s been flying you might get an answer like “35 years”. Well, we all know that his 35 years didn’t consist of continuous flying. He slept, spent time with the family, golfed, traveled as a passenger a few times, and likely drove a car a number of times as well. He may have only actually put in 10,000 miles hours of flying time over the course of that 35 years.

This is how poems are written. A poet who has been writing for 20 years may spend 10,000 hours of writing time penning hundreds or thousands of short poems or may spend that time writing a few long ones. I guess I’ve done both. But “The Sandbox” is the longest to date.

How I Know It’s Finished
I suppose I could go on revising. It is really easy to find a few imperfections, and the longer the poem the more of those there will be, but this poem says what I needed it to say and says it in all the ways I intended for it to be said – and then some. There were elements that I’d planned and I worked on until I got them right, then there were those I hadn’t thought of that just fell into place. Que sera, sera.

The poem started out – if you saw my first draft you’d say it was a different poem altogether – in a completely different form. It was rather contrived. But I allowed myself to break out of the “planned” version and to just let the poem work itself into what it wanted to be, so to speak. I think that is the best way to go about writing anyhow. But when I did that the poem took off in unexpected directions. Sometimes those new directions were compelling and interesting and other times they were mere distractions. But after countless hours of revising, ruminating, regurgitating, scrapping, taking things out, putting things in, taking back out and putting back in, I’ve finally arrived at a stopping point. The end is here. How do I know?

I’m reasonably sure I can take nothing out and improve it. If I put anything else in I’ll ruin it. The poem says what it needs to say. Nothing more. Everything I wanted in it is in it. What didn’t need to be in it has been removed. Is it perfect? Likely not. But I feel it. I’m satisfied.

To me, the end of the poem is intuitive. I feel it in my gut. It’s done. Now it’s time to start marketing.

By Elizabeth Kirschner

This is what I’ve been up to lately, mentoring poets of all ages and stages through a program called: Wise Eye: Creating Poetry That Soars. In this way I become the student of words that are not my own while seeking to kindle passion in those who bring poems to me. I believe, after writing for some thirty-five years, in Eugene Montale’s dictum, “that genius is one long passion” and that the harvest which comes from cultivating that passion is rich indeed.

As mentor I must teach other lovers of the poem to let it have, as Juan Ramon Jimenez insists, both roots and wings. These roots must have wings and the wings must have roots. A good poem levitates just above the page with lines that delicately delineate its root system thus letting the words fly in. That’s when it sings. A paradox then, the poem is silence that sings.

I also think that poems are embodiments of soul and our souls need to be in motion in order to cause movement, a waltz of words across the page. Roots and wings, song and dance, all done via the scripture of language. This scripture can be taught, must be taught because the illusion of poetry is to make it look effortless and sound like natural speech. This does not come naturally. Thoroughly crafted entities, simple or ornate, all poems are little houses of prayer.

Poets are the givers of attention to the least of things: moths flying into the flame, tiny mirrors reflecting deep, deep waters. I awoke last night thinking about what I deem as the articulate detail, one that speaks within and beyond itself. Details are fireflies alighting on the tip of our tongues. Thing-ness is all-ness and the difference between statement and implication is a crucial one to understand.

This, too, does not come naturally to the poet. Detail enlarged into image enlarged into metaphor takes mega-power. Plath called poems “monuments to the moment.” Those monuments are not abstractions, but intuited by the senses as they are what make the universe tangible.

I know I can help other poets create their own wings without neglecting the need to be rooted. Simone Weil wrote, “to be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the soul.” Yes, yes, indeed. As one little girl stated, “silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go.” Soul-traveling then sets the poem in motion.

The white space surrounding our words is, ultimately, our piece of sky to soar in and may it be heavenly. These words are very near us. They are in our mouths and in the roots of our heartstrings. Let us tug and pluck, sing and flap like fledglings into the proper dwelling each poem mitigates. In essence, we are all writing God’s poem created by roots that fly and wings that take root in the forever fecund field of the pure, white page.

Author Bio: Elizabeth Kirschner has published three books of poetry, Twenty Colors, Postal Routes and Slow Risen Among the Smoke Trees, all by Carnegie-Mellon University Press. In addition, she has a CD released by Albany Records with her own poetry set to Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, now titled The Dichterliebe in Four Seasons. She’s now participating in a WOW Blog Tour with her latest book. My Life as a Doll is a survivor’s tale, a memoir in verse about child abuse, madness and recovery. To learn more about Elizabeth’s work, visit www.elizabethkirschner.com, and for upcoming dates on her blog tour visit www.wow-womenonwriting.com/blog.

Unfortunately, most of what is published online in the way of poetry, just as in print, is poetry rather than commentary on poetics, or essays. That is one of the reasons why I spend so much time on World Class Poetry Blog discussing poetics. There just isn’t enough of it and that’s a problem.

What there is plenty of instead is the publishing of poetry. It might seem strange for a poet, and someone who enjoys reading poetry, to say that free and accessible poetry is a problem. But it is. The reason I say that is because much of what is published online, just as in print, is rubbish and ought not to be read at all.

Why Single Out Online Publishing?
The first and obvious question I know I’ll get from readers about making this statement is, “If most poetry published in print and online is bad poetry then why single out online poetry as a problem?” That’s a good question and one well worth asking.

The reason I single out online publishing is because there are fewer barriers to entry for the self publisher (and the bulk of the problem is with self publishing).

Print publishing always bears an expense. Even a small chapbook costs the self publisher something. Online, however, self publishers can open up an account at Blogger or WordPress – and many have – which is free, and publish their full portfolio of poetic works for the world to see. No expense. No barrier to entry. The learning curve for using Blogger and WordPress is nil. A basic ability to read and comprehend a keyboard is all that is necessary.

So there are really two basic barriers to entry for self publishers that make it easier to publish online than in print:

1. Financial
2. Technological

Then there are two more barriers to entry that I would call indirect barriers to entry to publication in the broader sense:

1. Market Demand
2. Built-In Gatekeepers

Poetry is deemed a low-value item by most people in our culture. For a print publisher, even an independent press or self publisher, that is itself an indirect barrier to entry. In many respects, this is a larger barrier to entry for independent presses because there are always more expenses than the mere cost of printing (marketing, delivery, payroll, etc). But the publisher must always recoup expenses in order to continue publishing, and for the self publisher with no name recognition or reputable publishing house behind him, that can be an issue.

Which brings me to my next point. In order to get published by a reputable publisher, a poet must go through at least one gatekeeper. If one seeks publication through a journal, there is an editor (and even small journals have at least one). At larger publications there may be an additional gatekeeper who is a reader and whose job it is to read through a slush pile and recommend the best picks to the editor or publisher, who then selects from the best of those. Other publications use a “checks and balances” system that require multiple decision makers, co-editors usually, to give their input. Even book publishers have a system that requires one or more people to read manuscripts and approve them, so for a poet that has no name recognition and few publication credits this is another barrier to entry to the world of publication itself.

To get over the hurdles of these barriers to entry, many poets have succumbed to the temptation of online self publishing and that’s the reason for this discussion.

Why Online Self Publishing Is A Form Of Vanity
Vanity publishing has traditionally involved an independent publishing house providing a service for authors who pay to be published. In essence, the author pays for the manufacturing costs of getting published then they are faced with the ardent task of recouping their investment through marketing and sales of their product. Most do not recoup their investment. But they feel good about being published and have bragging rights.

Some vanity publishers exist in the form of a contest where the poet sends in a submission along with an entry fee. This is a more subtle form of vanity because it acts under the veneer of respectability. If the poet “wins” the contest, she is “honored” with publication. Most of these vanity schemes, however, publish all contest entrants so there isn’t really much of an honor other than the warm, fuzzy feeling the poet gets in the pit of his stomach for being suckered.

Thanks to Blogger and WordPress, a poet can get that warm and fuzzy without an entry fee or paying for publication costs. The poet may not have any more readers than before, but she gets all of the same benefits, including bragging rights, with none of the expenses or drawbacks to other forms of vanity.

One can refer to online self publishing as “independent publishing” or anything else for that matter, but I consider it vanity publishing because, with a few exceptions, most poets publishing themselves online would probably not be able to get into print through traditional means of publication. Unless they paid the entry fee or the manufacturing costs, many of those poets would simply send in poem after poem after poem and get nothing back but rejection letters, if that. That hardly classifies someone as a member of the esteemed literati.

Now I’m not saying that self publishing is itself a vain pursuit. Many fine poets and writers were self publishers – Dickens, Whitman, Poe, and I could spend days going through the list – but there is something about the nature of vanity publishing in general that tends to take away from the value of and credibility of being a published author or poet. But what is that exactly?

How Vanity Destroys Value
Vanity destroys value in a number of ways. First, by masquerading as something of value it pretends to be the thing that it imitates. That’s always destructive. Just ask any Christian who considers the arch-nemesis of Jesus, Satan, to be a faux “angel of light”.

Secondly, vanity destroys because it really doesn’t bother with the task of self improvement. This is a bigger issue because art always retains its value by being something that is in possession of admirable qualities. Those qualities vary from work to work, but in general they consist of

• Uniqueness – Any work of art, be it poetry, photography, sculpture, dance, et. al. must bear a mark of individual originality. People who see value in any art form see an intrinsic value in the uniqueness of the work itself. No one wants to see a copy of something else. Everyone values originality.
• Connectivity – A work must also connect to some audience. It may not connect with the entire human race. It may hold some value only for a particular subset of humans based on race, religion, nationality, gender, or some other identification class. But a work of value must connect with some audience.
• Experiential Compensation – Finally, a work of art must provide an experience that acts as a form of reward for the audience. This is the subjective element of art. One person’s experience may be entirely different than another person’s experience, but the value in literature comes from this experience. Whether it makes one laugh, instills fear, or creates catharsis in some other way, a positive or negative reaction can be valuable enough in and of itself to prove a work of art as something worthy to be recognized.

So when we apply these three general values to poetry we can easily see the problem with vanity publishing. These three values may exist in great abundance but generally speaking exist only for the author, or primarily for the author and self publisher, but generally not for anyone else. The vanity publication is valuable to the publisher because the publisher believes that these three values exist and that others will recognize them; unfortunately, that rarely happens.

Fixing The Problem Of Vanity
There is only one way that I’m aware of to fix the problem of vanity. The vain must achieve an element of self awareness as it applies to that vanity. Calling oneself an independent publisher when no one else sees you that way does not make you an independent publisher any more than a man walking into a room and announcing himself a bag of raw fish makes him a bag of raw fish. A thing is what it is, not what it claims to be.

The value in a publication comes from what the reader, or the audience, of that publication walks away with. That may never be spoken or shared. But it’s there nonetheless.

Vanity self publishers should seek publication through other means prior to publishing their own works. Validation of one’s ability as a poet is important, not for the sake of ego but for the sake of value in poetry in general. When one poet improves his craft, the entire pantheon of poetic expression improves along with it. The tide rises all ships. This is the mystery of the value of literature. One man’s improved essence is the improved essence of all men.

The problem with vanity is that it seeks value in itself for itself. But poetic expression was not meant for that kind of valueless value. Poetic expression was meant to provide value by connecting with others through a unique mode of expression for the purpose of delivering a personal experience to the reader by way of the writer. When that happens, vanity vanishes and the poet’s audience will grow.

Poets who wish to be recognized as poets should first learn the many tools that poets use in the craft. They should practice them. They should then, after crafting a poem in which they have some pride, share it with others who are in a position to reject them. That does not mean your cat or the mailman. Although you may include the mailman by asking him to deliver your poem to a journal editor. You should put yourself in a position that promises you gain or delivers you pain. Publishing your own poetry on a blog may provide that if you are willing to accept honest feedback and accept when you get it. But the real essence of this type of gamble is in asking a gatekeeper to review your work and provide feedback or to submit it for publication and risk rejection. Then, when rejected, immediately look for ways to improve and go through the process again.

Why? Because print papers are dying. Meanwhile, online distribution is growing. What’s 2+2?

Well, literature is pretty much moving in the same direction, only slower.

I don’t think paper literature will ever die. There will still be newspapers in print. There are still radio programs that deliver the news, right? Old systems don’t just die off. They find their niche and hold on. So too do I think print editions of poetry will stick around even as the masses move to online delivery of a dying lit.

It’s already happening. How many poetry blogs are there? They’ve become sort of a cliche, a bit like family memoirs. The only people who care enough to read them are distant cousins. But the good ones really stand out. And it’s just a matter of time before a real literary “blockbuster” takes off in the digital world. There have been a few successes, but nothing yet really stands out as a true blockbuster in the NYT best seller sense. But I see it coming.

What do you see as the future of publishing for poetry and literature? Is there a new Gutenberg on the horizon?

But this isn’t all about me.

Rather, it’s all about you. Artsy living and stuff.

Someone I admire who has gone before and blazed a trail of artsy living online is a lady name Marney Makridakis. Marney is teaching a course this Thursday – a free course – titled The Complete Idealist’s Guide to Growing a Creative Business: 37 Ways to Really Make an Artsy Living. The class is this Thursday, February 26, and you can sign up for free. Just click the link below:

If you don’t already have plans this Thursday, check it out. The time is on the other side of the link. Don’t forget to click it. And did I say the class is free?

1. The struggle is in maintaining a balance between the narrative and the poetics
2. Too much narrative and the poem becomes prosaic
3. Too much poetry and the poem will lilt into lyrical patterns that kill the narrative
4. Employment of fiction writing techniques are necessary, but they can get in the way of the poetry if you let them
5. Double risk of saying too much or leaving something out

The essence of narrative poetry is such that you have a story to tell, but the way in which you wish to tell the story is not traditional. In other words, the poem becomes a story without becoming fiction. If it were fiction then it wouldn’t be a poem, but it must contain fiction, or fictional elements, in order to achieve the narrative effect. Even lyric narratives must incorporate some element of fiction telling or the narrative is no longer narrative.

I am currently struggling through an experimental narrative poem that is causing me to think more deeply about what a poem is, how a poem should be structured, and why the narrative form is necessary. The poem is based on my experience as an Iraq War officer who was against the war on moral grounds but chose to participate rather than break the law in an act of civil disobedience as so many others have done. The story itself is fictional; the “truth” part is the emotional-philosophical basis upon which its message is communicated.

My Current Narrative Poem Struggle

Initially, I wrote the poem in three-line strophes and it felt contrived. I thought the poem was too stilted and therefore restructured it. I am now taking it into a totally different direction, using experimental techniques, backward lines, angled verses, concrete elements, and formal line units interspersed between free verse lines. It’s working much better, but I’m still not satisfied.

I have a particular style of writing that is unique. I didn’t develop it. It comes naturally. I’ve always been able to tap into this style in one way or another and draw from different parts of my being (intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and intuitive) in such a way that they play nicely together. Sometimes they struggle against each and sometimes they compliment each other, but they are always all involved. What I’m trying to achieve with this poem is a message, a philosophical proclamation that doesn’t come out preachy or didactic. That’s a tough thing to do in any work.

The narrative is necessary for POV, a fictional technique embodied in my natural lyrical style. But it’s a long poem.

As it stands now, the poem is 13 full 8 1/5 X 11 pages with normative 1-inch margins all around. Some of the lines are short, some long. Some are merely one word in length. The stanzas are all different lengths and there is no set metrical pattern throughout the poem. The meter often changes and changes often. Furthermore, there is a setting as in fiction and several characters, each with their own POV and developed personalities. Then I toss in some metaphors and traditional poetic devices like rhyme, near rhyme, internal rhyme, assonance, consonance, repetition, synecdoches, etc. You get my drift.

The problem I’m having is this: Keeping the narrative moving through execution of action (both narrative action and action of language) without making it look and sound ridiculous. I suppose it’s the same struggle that many fiction writers find themselves in when they reach a chapter or a point in their story where they don’t know where to go with it any more. You know it’s not finished but you’re not quite sure what it needs. I’m at that point.

I think it may actually be that I know what it needs. I just don’t know how to give it what it needs, if that makes any sense. Like a man who knows his wife needs a hug but he is incapable of allowing himself to give into the temptation to share that emotional moment with her, be it out of pride, insecurity, or just lack of know-how. I am there and I’m not quite sure why. The poem needs an injection of something but I cannot say what kind of injection because I haven’t diagnosed the problem properly. Have you ever been there? What did you do?

The Too Much-Too Little Dichotomy

I am trying my hardest to maintain a balance between saying too much and telling the whole story. With any narrative, whether it be fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, you have an obligation to the reader to tell everything that is important. You don’t have to tell everything there is to know, but you must tell everything that is important to the story. Otherwise, the reader won’t have a good experience.

Nevertheless, you’ve got to keep it short. Brevity is key in any writing. Say what needs to be said and get out. So my struggle is there, how do I keep it as short as it needs to be and still say everything that needs to be said? In general, a story should tell itself. I’ve always believed that and still do.

I’ve had hard poems to write before. I’ve have some poems so easy to write I couldn’t believe they were actually poems. But this poem is hard. I think it’s hard because of the narrative imperative. It won’t work simply as a lyrical poem, but as narrative it works splendidly. I just wish I could get it off my chest and get on with living.

The reason she asked was because she had read an article Gioia had written in which he argued that poets are the gatekeepers (my word, not his or hers) of language and that we should preserve language, not reinvent it. I told her that, while I respect that view, I don’t agree with it.

I have a huge problem, first off, with anyone telling me what I should be doing with my mode of expression. I am what I am and you can like it or not. But even more importantly, the world is in a constant state of change. As such, culture itself is always evolving. Art and literature are not only reflections of culture, but also co-creators of it. As the culture around us changes, we must be willing to change along with it, and that change manifests itself in two ways.

1. As recorders of culture and history, poets and literary artists struggle to paint the world as it is. There may be ideals communicated in the practice and pursuit of this, but even in the most fantastic of tales and verses, you can often find hints and evidence of the cultural influences that go into an artists work. This is as it should be.
2. The other way in which culture manifests itself in literature is through the personal eyes of the artist. Writers often come up with ideas before anyone else and communicate them in such a way that they leave a mark. Readers pick up a certain phrase or borrow an idea and share it with their friends. There are countless examples of writers who have coined a phrase or injected a culture with an idea that went viral.

You could easily call these two manifestations of culture in literature as impression and expression. First, the literary artist receives an impression of the surrounding culture then writes about it. The expression resulting from this can range in form from the very creative to the technical, from obscure to plain. But the expression is the writer’s way of giving back to the culture what the culture has fed him. The culture in turn rewards the artist with acceptance and approval. Sometimes, rejection can be its own reward as communicated in this quote from Normal Mailer:

There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you. (from Armies Of The Night)

Even rejection can be a form of approval for a writer.

My point is that language changes. As culture changes so do the modes of expression. This is natural. Once, man drew pictures on the walls of caves. Now we digitize nearly everything. Our cave is a worldwide network of machines, not far from the Borg. Someday, it will be something else.

I respect the idea that artists are in the business of preserving language because, in a certain sense, it is true. We can’t just go around willy-nilly changing the meanings of common words and expecting people to understand what we are saying. If we use words in a different way than what is normally accepted, there should be a good reason for it. Otherwise, it’s just gibberish.

I don’t know if that’s what Dana Gioia meant. I haven’t read the article that my friend mentioned (though I’m quite familiar with Gioia’s ideas).

All of this is to say that I recently discovered that Webster’s New World Dictionary has selected its word of the year as it does every year. This year’s word is a newly coined word and isn’t in the dictionary at all. “Overshare” is a word that could only be used in a culture such as ours that is infatuated with making the personal public. Here’s a video that gives a little insight into the choice of the word. It’s interesting to hear what college students are saying and how they express themselves in struggling with a definition for this word. It will be interesting to see just when “overshare” makes it into the dictionary and how many different definitions it will garner for itself by that time.

This question has been at the forefront of literary analysis for most of history. That we are still discussing it is a testament to the difficulty of an answer. All of us, to be sure, have our tastes, our preferences, even our prejudices. We know what we like and we know what we don’t.

Perhaps we can say there is some kind of Akashic record that tallies all the ‘yea’ votes in the hearts of lit lovers from eons back to eons forward and at the end of time we will know who has received the most tallies. But would that be fair to those in late-coming centuries? Perhaps we can divide those tallies by an appropriate time measure and record an aggregated average.

This all may seem silly, but it’s a complicated matter. How much should we make technical considerations a part of the calculation? How about creativity? Imagination? Passion?

Quantifying a subjective is about as simple as picking up a handful of water. It may be that these are all the wrong questions. Is Shakespeare better than Homer? Will Walt Whitman win the award for most unique voice in history, or should that go to Aesop? Comparisons such as these, in literature, make about as much sense as playing baseball in zero gravity. But that is not to say that judging the value of poetry is impossible. I believe it is. Though that value is not computed by ordinary means.

How To Judge The Value Of Literature

There will always be someone who doesn’t like a great work of art. One person detests Moby Dick; another reads it cover to cover once a year. Someone else swears by Dickens while his sister-in-law calls him a senseless hack. Jane Austen may be brilliant to one reader, but quite nuts to another. Literature is, at its most basic, a subjective experience. As such, its value is personal.

But what if a million readers like a particular story or poem? Does it then have more value than the work that is enjoyed by merely one hundred? Not necessarily. Suppose those one hundred readers are contemporary readers to the artist and all personal friends to the author whose first book was published just last week. But in the former case, the million readers are readers that span the sequence of centuries for a timeless and well-known classic. There is hardly a comparison there now is there?

And that brings me to my point: The value of literature, though it be subjective, is intrinsically wrapped up in time. This, of course, must rule out those works that never see the light of day. If it is unpublished and remains so then no one can judge. But it’s entirely feasible, and has been done many times, that an artist can go a lifetime without receive the accolades of contemporaries only to enjoy achievements beyond imagination in the afterlife. Immortality may be in the realm of God, or the gods, but it is accessible to man by reputation.

Though time may be the variable involved, it would be a mistake to consider that value is based on some aggregation of fans. A million fans over the course of one hundred centuries doesn’t afford any special favors opposed to one hundred thousand fans over the same time period, or one hundred thousand fans over the course of one thousand years is no better than two hundred thousand over the course of three times as long. Rather, the time value of literature may be judged by how long a particular work or artist may enjoy a fanbase at all beyond their lifetime.

Writers who achieve great fame during their lifetimes then fade into oblivion may be good cultural artists, but their achievements pale in comparison to, say, Homer or Sappho. Literature may be subjective, but it is not wholly so, for it also bears a cultural imprint as well as an epochal one. It takes considerably more talent to be understood and valued cross-culturally during one period than it does to be understood and valued by a single culture of that same time period, but it also takes more talent to be understood and valued by a variety of cultures across time. Readers today understand Shakespeare because we understand courage, honor, deceit, love, and the human passions about which he wrote. But if knowledge of a particular culture or artifact is necessary in order to understand a literary work then when that culture or artifact is no longer alive people will find it difficult to relate. And that’s why I say that work which touches upon the human condition beyond a mere time and place is to be preferred over any other. It has more value to more people in more places and more times. It is that time value in which we can trust.

While all literature is in a certain sense targeted toward a particular market – try writing science fiction toward a general market or a romantic thriller aimed at whoever chooses to pick it up and read it – I’m not talking about smart demand-side marketing. I’m talking about creative juices flowing down the open vein. In other words, the creative muse doesn’t consult the aggregated public or take opinion polls.

I’m a firm believer in supply-side literature. This is lit that the artist writes without concern for what the market wants. I’ll leave that business to the large publishing houses, who have all virtually quit publishing poetry because “there is no market for it”. In actuality, there is, but it isn’t a profitable market. And profit is king. Isn’t it?

When it comes to truly lasting literature, the market is a white ghost. As faithful as Guinevere.

Markets by definition are transient and fleeting. Therefore, the literary artist who attempts to write for the market will produce literature that is transient and fleeting. It may sell today, but will anyone be able to give it away for free when the copyright expires? Likely not.

Writing For The Market – Good Enough For Will, Good Enough For …

I don’t mean to denigrate writers who write for money. I do that. It’s called ghostwriting. Or copywriting if you don’t believe in ghosts.

Digressions aside, though, the literary artist – as opposed to the ghostwriter, copywriter, and technical writer set – must decide if he is motivated by credits and residual income or by lasting value. Do you want your creations to stand the test of time or to test the standards of the time? You can’t have both (except by brutal accident).

I’m pretty certain William Shakespeare wrote for the market. It just so happened that his market was timeless. Is yours? Unless you are George Lucas, no.

The Only Kind Of Lit That Matters

This is not a rant against commercial markets or commercial literature. I have nothing against John Grisham or Nora Roberts. Billy Collins may have found his audience, but such success cases are rare (and getting rarer). The real issue is, What kind of literature do you want to produce? Are you interested in the temporal kind or name value eternal?

Of course, even aiming at the stars could end you in the gutter. Just because you write for lasting value doesn’t mean you’ll achieve it. You could still go down in history as a skill-less hack. But I still prefer to take my chances by writing the poetry that is within me rather than studying what might be “the next great thing”. When you write the type of literature I am talking about, the supply-side kind, then you stand a chance of being just as timeless as Shakespeare, but you are paving your own path. Good literature may ride on coattails, but great literature never does.

When Augusten Burroughs put Running With Scissors to quill and scroll, he wasn’t aiming for world-class marketing status. When Hunter S. Thompson shocked the world with his marvelous ride, he wasn’t shooting for most popular of the year. He was writing the story within. The only literature that really matters in the long run is supply-side lit. All else is here today, gone tomorrow. I’ll leave the markets for the birds without a perch.

And with that, Merry Christmas from the Supply Side!