Buy a Book from Salt. Then go buy a book from No Tell Books. Then go buy more books.

We all know that small presses have been taking a serious economic hit. A number of Poemeleon contributors have works published by Salt: Catherine Daly, Annie Finch, Cheryll Floyd-Miller. Please take a moment to help out this small press in crisis -- I just did. 

Ultimately, it benefits us all. 

***

From Chris Hamilton-Emery, via my Facebook inbox, via the Poetry Society, and the No Tell Motel Blog (where I also spotted this note). I suggest you also check out their list and buy a book from them, too.

As many of you will know, Jen and I have been struggling to keep Salt moving since June last year when the economic downturn began to affect our press. Our three year funding ends this year: we've £4,000 due from Arts Council England in a final payment, but cannot apply through Grants for the Arts for further funding for Salt's operations. Spring sales were down nearly 80% on the previous year, and despite April's much improved trading, the past twelve months has left us with a budget deficit of over £55,000. It's proving to be a very big hole and we're having to take some drastic measures to save our business. 

Here's how you can help us to save Salt and all our work with hundreds of authors around the world.

JUST ONE BOOK

1. Please buy just one book, right now. We don't mind from where, you can buy it from us or from Amazon, your local shop or megastore, online or offline. If you buy just one book now, you'll help to save Salt. Timing is absolutely everything here. We need cash now to stay afloat. If you love literature, help keep it alive. All it takes is just one book sale. Go to our online store and help us keep going.

2. Share this note on your profile. Tell your friends. If we can spread the word about our cash crisis, we can hopefully find more sales and save our literary publishing. Remember it's just one book, that's all it takes to save us. Please do it now.

With my best wishes to everyone
Chris
Director
Salt Publishing
http://www.saltpublishing.com

Random things I think you should know --

About our contributors:

North Carolina Poet Laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer runs a blog called My Laureates's Lasso on which she recently ran a feature on Poemeleon's NC-based contributors, spotlighting Malaika Albrecht and Alex Grant.

Sherman Alexie's humorous piece, Innapropriate, appears in the first section of his latest poetry collection, Face, which is the number one best seller on Small Press Distribution for the months of March & April. He found Poemeleon while looking through the Best New Poets anthology in which Alex Grant's "The Steps of Montmartre" appeared.

About Poemeleon:

Poemeleon has a Facebook group page, with this blog listed on Networked Blogs. If you're on Facebook, check us out so you can receive periodic updates.

The 3d Mystery Box contest is off to a strong start with seven entries. Check it out and post your entry today.

About our editors (who apparently wear many hats):

Associate editor Maureen Alsop is also a fiction editor for Women Writers. Also, check out Alchemical Flamingo, where she posts her collage art, old photos, and other fascinations. 

Book review editor Tom Hunley is also editor of Steel Toe Books. They are currently accepting manuscripts for a contest to be judged by Denise Duhamel. Deadline: June 30.

Our newest associate editor, Judy Kronenfeld, in addition to her collections of poetry, is the author of a scholarly work on Shakespeare, King Lear and the Naked Truth. 

Associate editor Ren Powell is also editor of the online journal, Babel Fruit, for which I, Cati Porter, am also an associate editor. The companion blog, More Babel, runs contributor news and interviews and other fun stuff. As there is definitely some overlap between Poemeleon andBabel Fruit, I urge you to check it out.

And lastly about... strangers?:

On a very random note, in researching capitalization questions I found this hysterical site, Ralph's Manual of Style. I am especially curious about the Hello Kitty Style Manual referenced at the top of the page. Also, his comments on poets and punctuation are pretty funny.

Oh, and if you haven't already.... submit submit submit

(If you are a past or present contributor and have something you would like to share send an e-mail to editor (at) poemeleon (dot) org.)

Fluidity, hybridity and the modern poem

I’m going to start by saying that I know nothing. What I mean is, each issue of Poemeleon I produce out of a desire to explore a particular topic that has captured my interest. Working on prose poems? Put together an issue on the prose poem and see what people are doing with it. Investigating ekphrasis? Put out a call for ekphrastic poems. Realize you have two metrical left feet? Invite submissions of formal verse. Then wade through it all, and by the time you’re done you’ll know a heck of a lot more than when you started. Maybe this isn’t the conventional way to run a journal, but I’m not one for convention. 

In my own studies I’ve been reading a lot about Gurlesque poetics. The term was coined by Arielle Greenberg, and is used to describe works that combine elements of the grotesque, the gothic, the burlesque, the carnivalesque, and the riot grrrl movement. I’ve written a bit about it over at my personal blog, and wrote my short paper (about seven pages, a precursor to the long paper, which will be about twenty-five when it’s done) on Gurlesque poetics. The Gurlesque interests me because it is so firmly rooted in the body, third-wave feminism, and the exploitation of the ultra-girly and the frou-frou. But because it shares some -- in fact steals some -- qualities and tactics that are already being explored within these other movements, how to distinguish it from the pack? In my paper I write: 

“...Greenberg cautions that not all grotesque girly poetry can be considered Gurlesque. In our exchange, Greenberg elaborates: “There are also younger women poets who write about the grotesque and girly -- things like freak shows, mermaids, Victorian poisons, etc. -- but in ways which still feel ‘safe’ or decorous, rather than genuinely disturbing”. So, then, is it not enough for a poem to be grotesquely girly? Apparently not. If it is too crafted, too decorous, then it is not Gurlesque; to be so is to do all these things while also “stretch[ing] one’s notion of ‘the poem’”. The poem must feel “... relatively messy, sloppy, genuinely uncomfortable.”

I do realize that there is significant overlap between the movements, and to try to apply a definition that would box a poet in as being part of the Gurlesque movement is futile -- many of the women who've fallen under this heading weren't deliberately setting out to do so; they just happen to be writing work (not all the time, but at least some of the time) that fits (generally) under this umbrella term. And how to write something that is messy, sloppy, uncomfortable, and still be a poem that one wants to read? 

I suppose it's all in the craft(wo)manship. I recently read Chelsey Minnis' Bad Bad, and I have to say there were sections of the book I had trouble getting through. So many little.................... Lines and lines of them, just ................................................................................................................. ...............................................................................................................(You see what I mean? What do you do with that, for line after line? .................. Scan it .................................... is what I ended up doing ........................................... and skipping to the juiciest parts............................ -- which were, incidentally, worth the time and effort to excavate.) 

This “stretching one’s notion of ‘the poem’” is something that interests me greatly, in that there seems to be a general trend toward hybridity, toward innovation that incorporates various modes seamlessly, toward a synthesis of experiment and tradition. In the Gurlesque, there exists an impulse to ‘“regularly incorporate and reject confession, lyricism, fragmentation, humor, and beauty” while also “... act[ing] as the charm bracelet to bring all of these styles together.” 

I may be drawing from too many different sources today, but I was recently reading Ellen Bryant Voigt’s book of essays (which are all drawn from lectures at Warren Wilson), finding myself especially drawn to the title essay from the book, “The Flexible Lyric.” There is much overlap between genres, and the notion of lyric poetry has come to incorporate other modes within itself as well. And as for labels such as “prose poem” and “flash fiction”, Voigt quotes Auden as saying “it is a sheer waste of time to look for a definition of the difference between poetry and prose.” Some people will try to define the two, argue they are two different animals (admittedly, I am one of those), but when it comes down to it, is there really that much difference? Boundaries are constantly being pushed out, and innovation outranks tradition in many courts. The essay contains a quote by Carl Dennis, “the impulse to modify the tradition... is built into the tradition itself.” It's Darwin's theory of evolution applied to poetics.

I’ve read a book recently that seems to be genuinely “stretching one’s notion of the poem”: Jenny Boully’s The Body: An Essay, which was described by Arielle Greenberg as a “ text on absence, love, ontology and identity -- minus the text”. The book consists solely of footnotes at the bottom of blank pages. The publisher, Essay Press, publishes (no surprise here) essays -- yet this book was recommended to me as a book of poems. Boully, who’s body of work is primarily concerned with genre fluidity, sat on the “Genre Bending” panel during this year’s AWP, the intro to which read: 

“Nonfiction capitalizes on the formal structures of poetry and fiction, drawing energy from hybridity. How do the genres inform and influence each other? What does it mean to write against—both in opposition to and in dialogue with—the expectations of genre, the conventions of form?”

I've also been reading lately from the American Hybrid anthology, also on my Antioch reading list. From the Amazon entry: 

"In their introductions, editors Swensen and St. John, both accomplished and forward-thinking poets, outline the contention that spurred this anthology: for a long time, poetry has been divided, or has divided itself, into two basic camps, traditional and experimental. In contemporary American poetry, the editors argue, and the poets collected here demonstrate, these distinctions no longer make sense, as poets now draw equally from both traditions, often in the same poem."

The notion of hybridity and fluidity is not just limited to genres. During my last residency period at Antioch I attended a lecture by Dodie Bellamy on gender fluidity. This is something that is also explored in some of the Gurlesque works. Which brought me to thinking about gender and how it informs our own poetics, not just the obvious fact of our being one sex or another, but how preconceived notions are exploited, acknowledged, ignored, or otherwise busted out of. No surprise I suppose that Bellamy has also expressed an interest in the Gurlesque. And that she is also a groundbreaker within the New Narrative movement...

Which brings me back to a discussion I had recently, primarily on the Gurlesque, but also on New Narrative, with Catherine Daly at my reading at Skylight Books. I believe she’s getting ready to teach a course on this? (Catherine, if I’ve mis-remembered please correct me!)

I’ll end this by re-iterating: I know nothing. Or, maybe more accurately, I don’t nearly know enough about any one thing to call myself an expert. But I’m not afraid to tell you that. (And don’t be afraid to correct me when I’m wrong; I’m all for learning new things.) 

So much is going on in poetry -- a constant evolution with an occasional revolution. So much overlap -- between genres, between movements, between the circles we move between; a venn diagram cluster that is beginning to look suspiciously like an organized cluster of cells.

Happy last day of National Poetry Month!

It's the last day of National Poetry Month 2009. How many of you participated in NaPoWriMo? I did, though I'll admit that the last few days I've sort of fizzled out. But darn it all if I wasn't determined. 

Today is also Poem in Your Pocket Day. For me it's usually Poem in My Pocket(book) Day, as I've always got a book in my purse, but rarely remember to stick one in my pocket, but cheers and kudos to all who participated.

Yesterday we announced the winner of the 2nd Mystery Box competition. Congratulations to Amy Karsmizki for her winning poem, "A Pictures-Worth". Plus, the new Mystery Box is now up. This time we want you to go public. That is, we want you to post your poem to the page, in the comments box right below the photos, that way readers can admire the entries -- and possibly weigh in. (More about that later!) Hurry and be the first to post a poem! The first person to post a poem for the new Mystery Box will get... my gratitude? The chance to be first in line at the punch bowl? Okay, really I just want to see what you all come up with. So go write a poem, or two, or three, and post away! The only rule is that the poems must somehow relate to the box.

As a final hurrah, two-time contributor Robert Krut sent me announcement about his recording of "A thousand pieces, dancing" (from the form issue) for National Poetry Month for the NCTE. I would also like to congratulate Diane Seuss, who's manuscript, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts Press. Congratulations, Diane!

Hope you've all had a fruitful, poem-filled month -- keep up that momentum!

Are there too many online poetry journals?

A quick google search of the phrase "online poetry journal" brought back 15,000 entries (without the quotes, it was upwards of 24 million). Most of these had names I had never heard of: Prairie Poetry, The Pregnant Moon Poetry Review, Boiling River.... 

I've been wondering about the average lifespan of a literary journal. At least four of the online literary journals where my own poems have appeared are no longer operational (at first glance, the journals appear to be active, but when I checked the archives new issues have not been posted for over a year or more, usually more.) A quick trip through the Poemeleon links page found that 12 of the 66 original links (or about 18%) were either nonfunctioning or led to pages that indicated the journal had either closed up shop or were on a temporary hiatus. Now, I know at least one of them is gearing up to move from print to online (though that was supposed to happen in January and it's now nearly May), and another that I had worried might have gone under had just moved its site. It does worry me, though, when I see a journal that is obviously not operating and yet their guidelines page still indicates they are accepting submissions. 

The new issue of Poets & Writers magazine includes a special section called "The Lit Mag Moment", and within it contains a story by Sandra Beasley titled "From Page to Pixels: The Evolution of Online Journals". It argues convincingly for submitting our best work online, and makes a case for the viability and sustainability of online journals in general. As an editor of an online journal, I'm inclined to agree on both points, but I'm not entirely convinced.

"The notion that Web-based journals are easily launched -- and are therefore easily abandoned -- is central to the reservations of many writers."

-- Sandra Beasley

The fact is, it is rather easy to start a literary journal -- if you have a little time, are willing to shell out the cash for web hosting, or don't mind using one of the free blog-style formats available, a literary journal can be up and running in an afternoon. My very impatient son did so just last week, using Wordpress as his platform -- and, I'm afraid, he's already lost interest. When I think about how Poemeleon came about-- after an evening discussion about literary journals with my very rational husband, who, over a glass or two of wine, suggested I start my own. I knew I needed to jump on it before he realized what a mistake he'd made. Within a day I had a domain name and a crude version of the site. Within weeks the first submissions trickled in. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

No one can tell you up front how much time it will take to keep your journal running smoothly. It's not just about reading submissions. It's also about continually updating the site's content (my links page is an example of something that I have yet to do). It's about formatting each issue, which takes mondo amounts of time that I can't even begin to calculate (and I use something called Squarespace, which makes the formatting much simpler -- you don't need to know html to have a fully-functioning site). But editors have lives, too. It's easy to see how an online journal could get brushed aside in favor of more self-fulfilling work, like one's own writing. My poor husband had no idea what he was in for. He hasn't had a clean house since, unless he does it himself, after a day at the office. Editing a literary journal really is a labor of love. You have to love it, otherwise the labor isn't worth the effort. Other online journals that I admired at the time I was creating Poemeleon have since disappeared, presumably due to time constraints and other conflicts, like, oh, working for a living. But of course, during that time, new journals have cropped up, and other stalwarts have continued to publish stellar work. 

So, why publish online? Who can argue with being able to google a poet's name and bring up all of their work online, or having the ability to electronically (and therefore more efficiently and cheaply) send out notifications of new work published, complete with a link to the page where the work actually appears? Imagine trying to do that with a traditional print journal. 

So, my advice to those interested in publishing online: send out only your best work, because it's not going to disappear into a black hole; all it takes is your name in the search engine's happy little box to bring up that awful poem you wrote about suicide when you were thirty-one (oh wait, that was mine). And my advice to editors of online literary journals -- if you're forced or choose to fold, please have the courtesy to post something to your guidelines page so that nobody's time is wasted, and try to keep the archives online for as long as possible.

I believe in the power of literature to change people's lives, and I believe in the internet as a tool that can disseminate information quickly and efficiently to anyone across the globe who has access. 

So, the question: Are there too many online poetry journals out there? 

With so many potential readers, how can there possibly be?