Empire of Jargon

physician
writer
playwright
---
Anton Chekhov

The title of doctor, nurse, technician all disappeared, and we all became providers. All those patients in our waiting room suddenly became consumers or clients. My grandfather ran a grocery store and had a lot of customers, and my father was a lawyer and had a lot of clients. None of those customers or clients would come to see me as their doctor with their illnesses today if I were a provider. The use of the terminology of “providers” and “customers” lowers all health care staff to the lowest common denominator and demeans the concerns of my patients.

When I sit in my examining room across the desk from my patient I face a human being who has come to see me as a doctor because they’re in search of the treatment of a real illness or concern. --Sidney Goldstein, M. D.

These issues are not unique to doctors, alas; administration burgeons in many places (universities and hospitals leading the way), and administrators are prone to an only-too-understandable postmodern confusion about what is meaningful and who is doing the essential work. This interesting tendency allows them to put administrators first, to eliminate meeting spaces that once belonged to doctors, to increase demands for paperwork so that there is less time for face-to-face communication between doctor and patient, etc. As a poet and novelist married to a physician, I see many changes in how medicine is practiced but also detect parallel changes in my own realm. In mine, the canon of great literature is abolished, all writing is "product" on a "platform," the strength of the writing is no longer uppermost in the minds of publishers, and the idea of a publisher supporting a writer's ongoing work is increasingly absent. In both fields, tradition and the opportunity for plain old human warmth continue to be on the wane.

Precipitous slippage

Once upon a time I was a new-made Associate Professor with tenure; my answer to that lovely promotion was to quit academia entirely because I wanted to be a poet and novelist, not an academic poet and novelist. I felt that I would be a stronger, better writer outside the land of ivory towers. What I did not grasp at the time was how completely the academy would take over the world of writing, particularly the realm of poetry, and make it into a near-monolithic enterprise. (Simultaneously, both poetry and literary fiction began to move toward being minor arts--well, poetry was already on the way.) This change has meant that academic writers support one another and give one another various helpful privileges.

Those of us outside the academy are somewhat in the cold, particularly if--as I do--the writer believes that the diminishing returns of Modernism are upon us, and that the way forward is back through tradition and form. Free verse and an obsession with originality (I don't see how that works, given that we're more than a century past modernism's birth--Modernism hasn't been modern for a long time) have become a kind of ideology in our university system. A large number of journals are associated with colleges or are founded by MFA graduates. Most of these are primarily interested in free verse. Meanwhile, I am not primarily interested in free verse, although I do have a recently-finished collection containing poems that derive from a foreign chant tradition that looks free but contains many rhetorical flourishes allied to that tradition.

Do I regret my decision about leaving the academy? No, I don't. I am a better writer because of that choice, and I also had the luxury of having three children, which I probably could not have managed if I had stayed in college settings as a writer and teacher. I find that it is hard to do three major things well, but two--well, you can give up a lot of things that are enjoyable but not essential and so make two big callings work.

I still have a few writer friends who are in the academy and make their living there; I think it's fine that they made the choice to stay in. Most people who gain a perch there do, after all. I just think that I made the right choice for me. What else can we do but try to make right choices? I admire people like poet-professor-mother Luisa Igloria who grasp after mastery in three realms. The late Doris Betts (professor, dean, writer, mother) comes to mind among novelists.

We live in a time when very few poetry books sell in reasonable numbers. I've talked to various editors about sales and found that some poetry books don't break the 50-mark. That's pretty sad, isn't it? I hear that Copper Canyon books sometimes make it to 600; those are the sorts of little numbers a poetry press depends on. (The funny thing about a poetry book is that it can become the sort of book that you return to again and again. So in that way it's a better bargain than most books.)

My picture of how my own poetry books are doing is a bit fuzzy. I know that Thaliad continues to trickle (or seep, maybe!) along in sales for Beth Adams's Phoenicia Publishing and is heading toward the 400-mark in combined paperback/hardcover. [Update: I was pleasantly wrong! 425 copies so far, as of January 19th.] The Foliate Head has sold out its first and second hardcover printings at UK's Stanza Press, though there are still a few copies available on line. I'm don't know the paperback or hardcover numbers at Mercer for The Throne of Psyche. Those are my three books that can be called "in print," though The Foliate Head is technically out of print.

Interior illustration by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for The Foliate Head

If you care about poetry, please consider buying books. While I would like you to support mine, I tend to be pleased when I see anybody buy a good poetry book. And I always remember the quote taped up on the poetry shelves at the Bull's Head Bookshop (UNC-Chapel Hill shop, now defunct) run by novelist Erica Eisdorfer: People who say they love poetry and never buy any are cheap sons of bitches. --Kenneth Rexroth. It's not polite, but it gets at something. I just looked it up online and found a different version that says, I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book. Maybe both are right, as Rexroth didn't hold back and may have been muttering variations on the theme for years!

Yes, poetry is rapidly losing its status. Yes, what was once an important art is now a minor one and in danger of going the way of lacemaking. Times change. Television and internet make inroads; well, that's just how it is, we say. What we add to culture changes culture.

But if you care about poetry, do more. In fact, all of us need to support what we love in a time when what is seen and praised and supported is heavily-marketed, commercially-validated books, film, visual arts, etc. And we need to remind ourselves over and over again that we can choose. We can choose roads less taken. It will make all the difference.

Snips of tinsel and gold

Follow Marly's board Glimmerglass on Pinterest. 

Life and trala: Here's the hot Facebook post of the morning: "Sometimes it's just great to be a teenage boy. Child no. 3 driving to school by himself for the first time (new license!) and last night pinned his opponent in the wrestling dual with Unatego--third meet, fourth pin. Rah!"

Highly important Yankee gossip (aka the weather): Everybody's talking weather after two snow days off from school... And evidently we are already at 25 inches for the season, which is supposedly 8 inches above where we would be normally at this time of year. I've been here for the last 15 years (plus an extra stray year earlier), and this is the slipperiest winter I can recall.

Life-in-letters: Next up event is December 16th, 7:30 at CANO, the Community Arts Network of Oneonta at The Wilbur Mansion on Ford Ave. Oneonta, New York. Here's a public invitation. Please send a link to friends in the area if you have any... If you're on Facebook, you can invite friends directly.

from the deployment series

Thank you x 3: To the many readers who have shared Glimmerglass and other recent books on facebook, twitter, and other sites--I've been very happy that you did so. Also thanks to some people who reviewed on Amazon or goodreads. I am grateful, as those things are critical for a writer now playing in the world of university and small presses. Even indie bookstores use Amazon for research. And thank you to those locals/regionals who turned out for recent events in Delhi and at the Fenimore and the Village Library and for the open house / book signing / open studio with painter Ashley Norwood Cooper, as a good crowd is much appreciated. It wouldn't have been nearly so much fun without you!

Marketing: I've just updated my Pinterest board, and it now gives a good, sweeping look at the new book, along with a lot of the gorgeous artwork by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and immaculate design by Mary-Frances Glover Burt. Please take a look by clicking the images above. And there are some interesting Amazon customer reviews and blurbs from writers and publishers here. Sample from a writer:

 Beautiful Inside and OutBy G. S. Thompson on December 2, 2014Format: HardcoverThis novel is beautiful inside and out. The story feels like a modern fairy tale with writing that dances on the pages in a way that can only be created by a spectacular writer. If you read this book you will know that Youmans is one of the most gifted writers living among us today.If you enjoy the twisting and building of words you will love this author's beautiful writing. If it can be called writing, because it seems more like she's pulling the whispers of angels down from a place we haven't been to yet and gently placing them on paper.

Here's good St. Nicholas of Myra,
who has just saved three boys
from the bad butcher--
now they need clothes
and a good book
for Christmas.

Dreaming better dreams--

Minotaur study by Clive Hicks-Jenkins 
for Glimmerglass

BOOKHOOKERY

Writer bounces out of bed at 6:30 and scurried about making lunch for her third child, packing track-snack in a sack (can I toss in another rhyme?), fixing breakfast, and tossing books in the backpack (there you go.) Mid-way, the writer turns on NPR and hears that 45% of teens read no more than 1-2 books a year. Or did they say less than 1-2? At any rate, not much of note. Writer plunks down at her laptop to have a cup of tea. First thing she sees: novelist Darin Strauss on twitter, mentioning a new book that uses "Jewish man" as a slur: "Nobody cares / even notices." The Author aka "Ass Queen" is featured in Salon (a coup for a writer, right? like her treatment in Slate or on NPR) with an interview about being a porn star and drug abuser--smoking crack in a BSDM dungeon, anybody? Hey, now we know what kind of lively, appealing-to-the-curious book the almost-non-reading 45% might possibly read! Because that's a book-with-a-hook--we writers are always suppose to have a hook that we are willing to share with the world--that will sell, even to non-reading teens, I expect.

WHO KNEW

Who would have guessed that this would one day be the writer's world, back when she first gave her years to making something true and rejoicing in putting words into new shapes? A world where teens don't read and professors complain that their students don't crack open their books. A world where a clever volume reveling in unabashed porn and drug use has more of that desirable quality, hook, and will get more coverage than a first-rate novel (and infinitely more coverage than a good book of poems.)

ASPIRE

All you lovers of reading and shapeliness in words, defy this crazy world! If hopeless, still be brave. Read better books, make better books. Encourage taste, a human achievement that used to support culture. Online or in-person, recommend what's best in the arts. Make the better world, even if you fear that you are the only person who inhabits it. Dream of a better culture, a more worthy gift to hand on to our children.

Sir Marketer, thank you--

UK: Stanza Press, 2012
Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Design by Elizabeth Adams

Having three books out in a year is a fearsome thing for a poet and writer. It means a lot of jumping up and down and waving of the arms. It means zooming about the world, as I am about to do once again, visiting Wofford College and Hub City Books. While I knew that the Mercer novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, could gather some readers, I felt uncertain about the Stanza Press poetry collection, The Foliate Head, now in second printing (hurrah!), and especially about the Phoenicia Publishing long poem, Thaliad. Would anybody these days read a long poem, however adventurous? How could I ever manage a novel and two books of poetry at once?

So I'd love to thank David (whoever he is--a Halethorpe Marylander and "top reviewer") for a lovely long review of Thaliad on Amazon. I've been pleased that the book is still collecting website reviews a year after publication--the most recent one (brand new) is here. In addition, I continue to be pleasantly surprised that a long poem is finding reviews on Amazon (US site, and a few at the UK site), since so many collections of poetry go without any reviews there. Reviews for fiction? No surprise. Surprised by reviews for a long poem? Definitely!

And David of Halethorpe is a first-rate marketer, starting like this: "This is one of those books that is special and unlike anything you've read before, and I urge you not only to read it, but to buy it, because there should be more books like this."

He knows how to end as well: "This is a beautiful work, probably destined to be obscure and under-appreciated, though it should be in classrooms around the country as an example of modern and relevant poetry. So please buy it and read it. It's one of those occasional treasures you are only likely to stumble upon by chance." Please buy it and read it. It's the kind of thing I'm entirely loathe to say, but it's those sorts of words from a reader that save a book from being wholly "obscure and under-appreciated."

In between, he says interesting things about the narrative and gives a sense of what it is like. I've never liked the selling part of publishing books very well, and have always felt rather shy about such things. But he makes his claims well! Now if only I (and every poet) had a mob of such reader-marketers!

The Foliate Head. Now in second printing.
UK: Stanza Press, 2012. Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Design by Andrew Wakelin.

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage
Mercer University Press, 2012.
The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction.
SilverAward, ForeWord Book of the Year Awards.
Design by Burt and Burt.

Book of labor, book of dawn--

Walden Pond. Courtesy of Bekah Richards
of Snellville, Georgia and sxc.hu.

Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.  --Thoreau

Thoreau once joked that he owned a library of 900 books; they were all his own and all the same, for Walden had not sold. The pages uncut, they slumbered on the shelf, unread. Perhaps the book was too singular in its wordsmithery (despite kinship to Emerson, who was a much-admired speaker of the time, as well as a writer) and too bent on veering away from the laboring realities of his time. It is hard to picture Henry David Thoreau as a contemporary mid-list writer, vigorously marketing his book and chatting on twitter and facebook, and it's not just because the neck beard would put us off. For Walden whispers to us that book marketing is not an "effort to throw off sleep" and so will end with labor, rather than the "poetic or divine life."

And Walden is certainly right.

I am glad that some book marketers manage to make a living, and that some fine books manage somehow to sell in our age despite the noise of the day. I recognize the need for horn toots to announce books and the need for helping friends bring their books from the invisible world to the visible. I do for my own new books what I can and have no Franzenian pride in scorning encounters on twitter and Facebook (such pride comes easily to the luck-kissed writer of books that a publisher chooses to push as lead books. And I enjoy chatting with writers and readers, so that's luck for me.) No mid-list writer desires to own a library of 900 identical books because a small first run did not sell. Very few resist the publisher's call to market and promote.

But Walden is nevertheless right. Marketing is one of those activities not of the dawn but of labor.

And yet the book Henry David Thoreau didn't market and that readers rejected has become a cornerstone of American literature, while works that could speak only to their time have been flung away, tumbling into the waterfall of oblivion. Thoreau's pure, demanding voice, full of love for the awakened, whole man and woman drifted on into the world. Walden multiplied wildly and fed and awakened many with its light and lovely singularity. How rare and sweet that is! Would that have happened in our over-busy and chaotic world, or would such precious things be lost? The paper and ebook Niagara of published and self-published books roars, deluging us with words of labor and occasional dawn light.  Does the singular and the beautiful still find its way through the labyrinth of time, heading toward the center? Can we still distinguish the book of labor from the book of dawn?

Reading the tea leaves--

Here's a second post for Wednesday, this time of clips and links to thoughts related to changes in the book world--if you have thoughts of your own in response, please leave them in the comments! And please don't forget to drop by ladywordofmouth.blogspot.com, where a new author is featured.

THE END OF ATTENTIVENESS

Tina Brown: You said in an interview that you don’t think novels are going to be read 25 years from now. Were you being provocative or do you believe that to be true?

Philip Roth: I was being optimistic about 25 years really. No, I think it’s going to be cultic. I think always people will be reading them, but it’ll be a small group of people—maybe more people than now read Latin poetry, but somewhere in that range.

Tina Brown: Is there anything you think that novelists can do about that or do you think that it’s just that the narrative form is going to die out? It’s just the length of them or what? Is that what’s dictating you writing shorter books now?

Philip Roth: It’s the print. That’s the problem. It’s the book. It’s the object itself. To read a novel requires a certain kind of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading. If you read a novel in more than two weeks, you don’t read the novel really. So I think that that kind of concentration, and focus, and attentiveness, is hard to come by. It’s hard to find huge numbers of people, or large numbers of people or significant numbers of people who have those qualities.

"ARTISAN AUTHORS" 

Successful writers understand the marketplace they are working within, and they understand that digital copying and file-sharing, like all disruptive changes wrought by technology, create as many opportunities as problems. The digital economy operates on the model of the long tail, and copying is part of how a book or any digital creation moves up the tail. Copying and file-sharing are the internet's word of mouth – and as all good booksellers know, it's word of mouth that really sells books.

It's at the confluence of file-sharing and self-publishing that a new kind of "artisan author" is emerging. In his guide to self-publishing, Guy Kawasaki with co-author Shawn Welch coins the term APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur. Kawasaki argues that by fulfilling all three roles, writers open tremendous new creative opportunities for their work that major publishers are too slow and cumbersome to meet.

FILE-SHARING VS. CREATIVE COMMONS 

On his webpage, the Left Room, Steve Mosby argues that Doctorow's status as a pioneer in the field means there is no way any subsequent author can hope to have the same impact, especially as so many people are now giving their work away. Over at Tor, Niall Alexander roundly agrees with Damien but feels the piece overlooked the plight of mid-list authors. Bob Lock at Amazing Stories has a different response: that for authors who don't make a living from their work, piracy is a way of putting their name out into the world, at least while building their career. Clearly, the issue is complex and sensitive. For me, the piece overlooks a third approach: Creative Commons licensing.

* * *

Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See page tabs above for more on those brand new books, The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and others.

Lady, lunar, etcetera--

The Lady has visitors

Lady Word of Mouth progresses... Glad to say we are getting lots and lots of visitors on the first post to feature a writer's new books. Please take a look, as it's meant for readers or writers, and if you are here you must be one or the other or both at once. (If not, you are a Spam Bot and will be eaten by roaming Balrogs.) I am contemplating Lady Word of Mouth as a twice-weekly activity but am still unsure about many things.

Lunar book madness

I've agreed to judge another contest. You'd think that being on an NBA panel last year and reading 316 books (plus the rereads) would have done me for life, but evidently not. I must have looked at the moon over my left shoulder some time in the past month. This one will be a poetry contest, and I'll only judge the finalists, so I'll only see a few books. More about that later.

What I am writing

A number of people have written to ask what I am doing at this juncture. I'm a bit stretched right now with a very active teen at home (ferrying, sports, etc.) plus my adult children returning to the nest for a year. After they fly, I'll start a new novel. At the moment I'm writing a poem (or sometimes more) each day. All day I'm fishing for poems while drudging or gather taxes or helping children, etc. I do have some prose work to revise, if I ever get the time--if unexpected minions rush in and relieve me of all drudgery! As I am dubious that minions will appear, that's all the writing I'm doing at the moment. Fiction in fall, I imagine.

Elsewhere, in related work

I am trying to help my 2012 books--the wild adventure of Thaliad, the novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, and the collection A Foliate Head. All three are from small press or university presses, and I am finding it somewhat a challenge to get the world out about so much at once. I'll be doing more events later in the year but right now am more dependent on the internet and word of mouth. Here's one of the innumerable how-to-be-a-book-minion lists available on the web for those of you who like assisting Lady Word of Mouth.

I like transformation...

“And the walls became the world all around.”
        ― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

Trala / Unterecker / Wings

In which I am dutiful

At last, outfitted Thaliad pages for Amazon appear--at the link, and another here--at least for the paperback (hardcover, available through Phoenicia Publishing.) Anything to wish for, anything to dislike?

More Unterecker

"The achieved form, the symbol which the poem itself is, useful to the reader, but not useful as a motive for action, gives him a 'vision of reality which satisfies the whole being.'"

An otherworldly poem for the Sabbath

Here's a poem from the collection called The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012.) The "foliate" head is a leafy head, a green man head, and the book contains many leaves and many strangenesses. Here's one suitable for the thin part of the week, when our time impinges on sacred time. The poem was originally published in qarrtsiluni, and if you go there, you may listen to a podcast and read comments as well.

 “I HEARD THEIR WINGS LIKE THE SOUND OF MANY WATERS”

In the dark, in the deeps of the night that are
Crevasses of a sea, I heard their wings.
I heard the trickling of tiny feathers
With their hairs out like milkweed parachutes
Floating idly on the summer air,
I heard the curl and splash, the thunderbolts
Of pinions, the rapids and rattle of shafts —
Heard Niagara sweep the barreled woman
And shove her under water for three days,
I heard a jar of fragrance spill its waves
As a lone figure poured out all she could,
Heard the sky’s bronze -colored raindrops scatter
On corrugated roofs and tops of wells,
I heard the water-devil whirligigs,
I heard an awesome silence when the wings
Held still, upright as flowers in a vase,
And when I turned to see why they had stilled,
Then what I saw was likenesses to star
Imprisoned in a form of marble flesh,
With a face like lightning-fires and aura
Trembling like a rainbow on the shoulders,
But all the else I saw was unlikeness
That bent me like a bow until my brow
Was pressed against the minerals of earth,
And when I gasped at air, I tasted gold.

Thaliad / surprise / artist and reader

The week past

was a pleasant one for Thaliad, with wonderful things said privately and on the net. As a number of people have asked me if there is anything they can do for Thaliad or another of my 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, The Foliate Head, and Thaliad), and as I seem to be irredeemably shy about asking people to do anything at all, I am linking to a pretty good list (from somebody who is not a bit shy about telling us!) of what anyone can do for any newish book they want to help. It's accurate enough, though I think that the importance of "likes" and reviews for Amazon's secret algorithm is underestimated. Those things change how (in)visible a book is, and determine whether it comes up as an alternative in searches and "you might like" lists, as well as in such things as Amazon newsletters.

A surprise 

that I hope people will find pleasant is on the way! If you want a hint, go here, although it won't be quite like what has gone before. I'm feeling pleased and glad that other people like Thaliad and want to celebrate it. I'll be recording a portion of the poem this week in advance of this interesting surprise...

Addendum: I wasn't so sure that people would be lured by surprise, but now that I have seen some immediate remarks by people at twitter and facebook, I feel pressed to add here that the work at the link was done by the marvelous Paul Digby, who is a fascinating man--UK-born composer, videographer, photographer, painter, bespoke framemaker, carpenter, etc. He has an artistic sensibility that affects everything he touches. Thank you, Paul!

I left a quote

on poet Dale Favier's blog yesterday, in response to some comments on his second post on Thaliad. I remembered the quote this morning and add it in here, as I think it sums up something I believe and also pays tribute to readers as co-artists:

If an author interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility... Ultimately meaning in art--both meaning of literary symbol and of that greater symbol the work of art itself--is a joint achievement of artist and audience. As the artist pounds into his symbol all the richness he can summon, as he 'takes a word and derives the world from it,' so to the symbol the intelligent reader brings all of the past he has been able to gather into himself. --John Unterecker, from his guide to Yeats

A marketer and a poet weigh in--

"Building community one stanza at a time"

Despite the rumor that I loll all day in my golden bubble, dreaming and eating bon-bons, that bright imagination man Gary Dietz has included me in one of his 6by7 Reports as an example of a writer adapting to the changing world of publishing. Though I am sure he has been extra kind here, I am curious to see how writers in general and I in particular appear through his marketer's lens.

Here's a clip from the piece: "On her blog, amidst the wonderful discussions of her and others’ work you will find some of the best discussion and perspective of marketing challenges you can read from the persona of a successfully published writer in the midst of major changes in the markets." There's more, interesting to anyone who cares about the vagaries of publishing and the adaptation of writers.

Because I don't think of building a seaworthy craft of "readership" in quite this analytical way, I find it especially challenging. Writers area always interested in the gaps between one view and another, and here's one related to me and what I do. I can no doubt learn from it.

Mole continues looking at Thaliad

Poet Dale Favier has lodged a second installment in his thoughtful series on my epic adventure in verse, Thaliad, this time about a major loss in Chapter IV that shades the entire poem and the changes in Thalia. (His first post was a lovely introduction to what he called "a rapidly running, easy-to-follow narrative poem.")

I won't cut into what he has to say about "Gabriel the Weeper"; please take a look for yourself and see what you think. One small thing I especially like about this post--he's the first commentator to point out that the small, additional voice in the header glosses is different from the rest of the poem. I certainly meant it to have the feel of a later addition.

He ends with this sharp-tipped thought: "The deepest kinship of this epic, formal, emotional, and moral, is with the Aeneid. There comes a time, reading that poem, that an acute reader suddenly realizes that Augustus Caesar was sold a bill of goods, and that Virgil, despite all his show of politically correct patriotism, was not really sure that Rome should ever have been founded at all. A similar dismay and foreboding runs through the Thaliad: its beauty is wounded and dark, from beginning to end."

P. S. A thanks is due writer and seminary prof Wesley Hill

for re-posting a portion of my Athanasius (etc.) post in his tumblr log, Writing in the Dust. I've been glad to see a stream of readers coming from there logged in my stats. Thanks, Wes!

Reading and dreaming by Glimmerglass

The Feckless Marketer
I become one of Mary
Boxley Bullington's
exuberant people... 

Shakespeare and Sendak

Here's a clip from Stephen Greenblatt's lovely New York Times article on Shakespeare and Sendak:

But it is not in the early comedies nor in the great middle tragedies that I feel the most intimate connection between Shakespeare’s work and Sendak’s sensibility: it is in those strange late plays known as the romances. Here Shakespeare turned to stories of children stolen from their parents and then miraculously found again; stories of wicked stepmothers who take advantage of fathers in the grip of sloth or depression; stories of sudden, violent outbursts of mad jealousy; stories of terrifying loss and the sweet, autumnal experience of reunion.

During his lifetime, Shakespeare was ridiculed for this unexpected turn in his work. “If there be never a servant-monster in the fair,” Shakespeare’s rival Ben Jonson snorted contemptuously in the preface to a new play he was mounting, “who can help it?” Jonson was loath, he declared, “to make Nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such like drolleries.” Drolleries: it was for Jonson as if Shakespeare, near the end of his career, had started to write children’s books. But the author of “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest” did not care. He understood that to reach down to the deepest wellspring of creative power, he needed to explore the child that was still miraculously alive and intact within him. The courageous ability to plunge into that strange innermost being, as into a dark, fathomless pool, was Maurice Sendak’s special gift, and it is the indelible sign — like a birthmark — of his Shakespearean inheritance. That inheritance, so rare and so precious, commands our gratitude and our wonder, for we know that it means that Sendak’s work, like Shakespeare’s, will continue to give intense delight, long after we have all vanished, like breath in the wind.

Marly in the tower

Am I the sort of poet and novelist one pictures hunkered by the fireplace in a little tower? I'd like to live in our Kingfisher Tower, which I can see standing in the edge of frozen Otsego Lake (a.k.a. Cooper's Glimmerglass) from my writing window. At least I'd like to live there if it could be made warm and snug. I could live in Kingfisher and dream my dreams and occasionally emerge blinking in the sunlight, only to be bewildered by the mad, busy ways of the marketplace.

Why might I be that sort? Fecklessness, it seems--

I declared myself a marketing maroon yesterday. After 11 books, I finally grasp that the Amazon algorithm for sharing and promoting work depends on Amazon reviews! And that's despite having had several agents and lots of book friends and so on. That's what comes of dreaming up stories and poems in an ice hut, a snow hill, a positive igloo in Utter Boondocks. So this is a thank you to those who have posted reviews on Amazon--I was pleased, but all this time did not realize how much they mattered. I hope some of you who wrote me lovely letters or notes on facebook and twitter about my three 2012 books may wander over as well.

Capote

Did you see Kevin Helliker's Wall Street Journal article about Truman Capote's evasions and fabulations on the little matter of facts and In Cold Blood? While I find things to admire about Capote, In Cold Blood has never been one of them. For me, it is one of those books that feels like cold iron burning the soul. I read the book long ago, and would never reread.

Paula Byrne on NPR: Jane Austen

I expect Janeites will be interested in Paula Byrne's entertaining interview about her biography of Austen, traced through emblematic possessions. The biographer says that she was inspired by character Fanny Price looking over the objects--her small, special treasures--in her modest room.

Interview clip:

The topaz cross was a real-life present, it's her own cross I used, that Charles Austen, who was in the Navy, gave to [his sister] Jane Austen. ... And she repays the compliment in Mansfield Park when Fanny Price is also given a topaz cross as a present from her brother. And there's this amazing moment in Mansfield Park, when she wants to wear it to go to the ball, but she doesn't have a chain for it. And she's given a chain by Henry Crawford, and the chain won't go through. And she's secretly delighted because she doesn't like Henry Crawford and she doesn't want to marry him. And then Edward gives her a chain, and the chain goes through the cross. It's a wonderful symbolic moment. But you know, it's also a reflection of the fact she was a Christian. He didn't buy her a locket, he bought her a cross. So these objects lead us into all sorts of different alleyways...

THALIAD and lake monsters

Luck has riotous marketing skills: it didn't occur to me until just now how odd it is that a post-apocalyptic epic in blank verse was catapulted into the world just at the solstice close of the Mayan calendar. Timing! It's a thing marketers are always going on about, and for once I have it--alas, if only I had realized, had thought ahead and made the requisite Mayan Calendar Apocalypse Marketing Plan, and established a post-apocalyptic marketing event...

Would have been helpful to arrange for a gigantic stone statue to shoulder its way from Lake Otsego, waterfalls pouring from its chest and thighs, followed by reeling birds and the coils of our lake monster. He might flog books door to door like a big Fuller Brush Man who can't take no for an answer. Would be good. Effective, at any rate. And everybody local wants to see what the shy lake monster really looks like. (One of the characters in Thaliad does catch a glimpse of the monster.) Imagine a basalt army of golem-like book salesmen, each with a Santa-pack of books, led by a stone captain, lake monster flung around his neck as a living scarf.

The air is dark and pouring outside, lake blurring into louring cloud and ground and sky... Could be a scene from the start of Thaliad.

* * *

On a less silly note, and just in case you want to get your copy before it really is entirely too late, Thaliad is available: in hardcover (limited edition) and paperback from Phoenicia Publishing's online store; in paperback (stocked via Ingram) for bookstore orders; in paperback from Amazon here and abroad. For more information, hop to the Phoenicia Thaliad page.

ORDER FROM PHOENICIA'S ONLINE STORE

ORDER FROM AMAZON.COM

ORDER FROM AMAZON.UK

ORDER FROM AMAZON EUROPE

Mayan Apocalypse or Mayan Party Day report:  First it poured so hard that the lake and sky became confused. Then it sleeted a while. That was when I did my errands and took the forgotten mushrooms to school (part of a book report, if you can believe it), as my youngest remembered scales, lemon drop, peasant vest and hat for "The Balek Scales." But not mushrooms. Now the roofs are white, and the snow is sticking despite the soaked ground. A three-story sparrow frolic is going on at the feeder just beyond the window. The least upset, and they whirl into the ravel of rugosa vines and sit for a moment before flitting back. But the little kestrel will be too fast for them if he comes . . . poor little party-sparrows.

Gary asks a question...

Marly, here is your assignment for the week now that you have signed your contracts and judged your contest. 

In your life and career as a poet, are you writing for yourself, for an existing audience of poetry fans, or are you tying to help expand those who appreciate poetry (and yours, specifically)? 

I think that this is a question, if answered thoughtfully by any author (or any builder of any creative output for that matter) could be a good guide to how successful they feel. In other words, does their idea of what they WANT their output to do for the world match their approach in how they deliver that output to the world -- and how far along are they to reaching their particular goal (and what could / would they change to help better achieve their goal). 

I expect my answer in sonnet form. In French. 

Thanks, Gary 

BEING 14 BURBLINGS (14, as in lines of a sonnet) 
+ SALTED WITH FRENCH for Gary

Sacre bleu! Writing is different from marketing or promotion--very different. Poetry and business do not often go together. Even on the rare occasions when they appear to go together, they don't go together. And writing poetry is different from writing prose. Usually people who find joy in playing with words aren't the same people who find joy in playing with business. (Gary Dietz, you may be the exception.)

When I draft a poem, I am not in the least concerned with readers. If the poem is any good, I am concerned with an alien, vertical infusion of force passing through my body and soul. I'm trying to capture some of that for my very own. (If it's not good, I'm just fiddling. Fiddling for a long time can be enjoyable and produce some quite pleasant work, but it's not the same as being struck by a metaphysical asteroid--and that's the strange sort of thing that a poet ought to desire.)

So, no, I have absolutely no thought of any possible reader here or in any other world when I make a poem. I am in the grasp of word-pleasure, a certain sort of intense, self-obliterating celebration.

That means I am not even thinking of me as a reader. If thinking of myself or of readers, I would not write as well as if I let myself be cast away by the tide of the poem. No poet would. Not one. All poets desire to be that kind of castaway. (Well, maybe not what we used to call the avant garde. They're up to other things.)

Poetry is evidently one of the weirder activities a human being may devote him- or herself to pursuing. Because the Muse wants all. Whenever the Muse visits, she seeks to seize.

Not only that, the proper stance toward the poets who wrote memorable poetry in the past is one of humility. So a poet's desires must demand a kind of humility toward the past and a kind of self-obliteration in the present. What a weird pursuit!

Do I have "an existing audience" of poetry fans? Yes. Is it large? No. It is composed of, insofar as I can tell from observation and what people say, writers and painters and bloggers and friends and kind strangers who love poetry and like to own poetry books--particularly people who love form and force in poetry. Because I do a certain amount of collaborative work with artists and designers, I collect a few readers among their fans as well.

How do I know such people exist? Some of them write email notes or leave facebook messages or blog comments or twitter messages or some such. Sometimes a publisher tells me what fans say. Sometimes I get a letter on paper. I get comments on places like Eratosphere or blogs, particularly when I publish in an online journal like Mezzo Cammin or qarrtsiluni, which has a large readership and an editor who sometimes lets me know how many readers show up. Those places may be where I have the most readers; certainly far more than in a paper journal or even a poetry book.

Do I worry a lot about the number of readers? No. Saperlipopette! That poetry no longer sells the way it once did is a hard pebble in the shoe, impossible to remove. I have mentioned before discussing with an editor the dropping of a line of poetry from a well-known press with well-known poets. Why? Because not one book they had published in the past ten years broke the mark of selling 300 copies. Holala. That's fairly sad, given the number of potential readers in the U.S. We lost readers in the very long wake of Modernism, and I alone will not bring those readers back to poetry. Easier entertainment has replaced the arts for many, many people in our culture. So I am glad that there are people out there in the world who make it a friendly goal to try and get young people and others to read more poetry. It's not my calling. Nevertheless, I'm always glad to talk to people about poetry.

And what do I do about such things when I have a new book?  I make a plan with my publisher (unless said publisher is on the other side of the ocean, in which case I do a rather less) and try new ways of reaching readers. I tour. I do various things on the internet. I go to West Chester. I record and let the wondrous Paul Digby make videos of my poems. Etcetera.

But the best way a poet of genuine ability and sufficient obsession can improve the status of poetry, including her own, is to write good poems without the least worry about the status of poetry. The only way a poet can lodge a poem in longterm human memory is to pursue the Muse with sufficient stamina and passion and joy. Period.

Luck helps. It's always a mistake to discount sheer blooming luck in a culture that is as jammed with garbage (zut!) and diamonds as ours. If the poet is true to the chase, eventually he or she will find readers.

How am I doing? Well enough so that my second, third, and fourth poetry books were not submitted but solicited, sometimes by more than one publisher. Enough to get magazine requests. Enough to have a little band of readers. Enough to be asked to do panels and events. It's something. Sure, I'd like more readers. What poet and writer would not?

But those are just facts that leave out the joy and word-frolic and metaphysical asteroids. And that's what the goal always is: the joy, the word-frolic, the metaphysical asteroids. And in those measures (un jeu de mots!), I am a happy poet.

On the calendar

On July 24 I'll be talking about A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and The Throne of Psyche with Bill Jaker of "Off the Page" (WSKG, Binghamton.)

Listen live at 1-2:00, sign up for the podcast, or listen here.

Unpacking Ms. Penelope's trunk...

Clive Hicks-Jenkins,
vignette from
The Foliate Head 

Last night I tootled off to Crumhorn Mountain with child no. 2 to see no. 3 dance with The Order of the Arrow. Must say that being 1/16th Mohawk must help because he looked long and elegant and graceful. And that faux-Iroquois mini-dress and feather bustle looked pretty grand! Alas, it was quite hot dancing around summer fires, and an unexpected need to jettison dinner came strongly upon him...

We all stayed up late, all except Mike, whose plane was cancelled last night.  He got up by three in order to catch a plane at 4:00 a.m. and arrived in Chicago just in time to have a danish before running a workshop.

And now I am avoiding the mountain range of books in the guest room and frittering my precious time. Thanks to @tedgioia on Twitter, I just read Penelope Trunk's article, "How I got a big advance from a big publisher and self-published anyway." I have some fascination with these barn-burners who leap into self-publishing. I suppose my response would have to be "How I got little-to-decent advances from big publishers and small and university presses and published with them and didn't have time to worry about it a whole lot." In the comments she replies to someone with a question about fiction:

Nonfiction is about earning money. The author is writing the book to generate some sort of action that will earn the author more money than any book can earn.

Fiction is about art. The writer is looking for some sort of authority on this art to say the book is art. The publishing industry actually still serves as a good gatekeeper for this sort of thing.

The publishing industry probably would have rejected Fifty Shades of Grey as trash even though it became a self-published bestseller. But in general, the publishing industry establishment has a good eye for good literature. That’s why self-publishing fiction is so different.

So let's see. Considering self-publishing and poetry is absolutely pointless; I've had and will have gorgeous productions with publishers--The Foliate Head coming out soon and Thaliad in November being even more special as physical books than any I've had before thanks to Clive's artwork. I've had as much impact on the shape of each of the forthcoming books as if I had self-published. That is, I chose certain publishers (both asked for a manuscript) who allowed me to have input and to work with an artist. In the case of The Foliate Head, the choices in the book were 99% made by me, the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and especially the wonderful designer Andrew Wakelin, who was not an employee of the publisher but a friend who worked with us out of sheer love for books.

"Action that will earn the author more money than any book" is certainly a nonfiction idea for those looking for fat speaker engagements and other mysteries. But what about fiction?

Johnson said that "nought but a fool" wrote for anything but money. Of course, I just wrote a very long series of poems about a fool... And what I really care about is the deep pleasure of writing, and also the frolicking with readers that comes afterward--dancing my dance of words with readers. At the moment I particularly care about novel readers dancing with me on top of an imaginary boxcar: A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. 

Anyway, I could hardly be paid for a lifetime of pushing words around the page for the joy of it. Who could afford it? And I have done that perfectly unwise for sales yet delightful-to-me thing of writing in many genres--novels of many sorts (realist, irrealistic, historical, coming-of-age, multi-genre, etc.), short stories, novellas, lyric and other poetry, long narrative sequence of poems, extremely long poem (i.e. epic), and stories and novels for children.

And I have certainly not given up on publishers, even though I'm one of those writers who turns in a clean copy that does not need a lot of editorial scrubbing. What I do ponder is what my publishers can do for me that I can't do for myself, and how to best use their limited marketing time. What is effectual, rather than just an exercise in treading water? It seems to me that a great deal of labor is misdirected, mine as well as theirs.

One question pops up; now here come a thousand. Mostly I don't mull these things because I'm more interested in what I'm writing. Perhaps I should think more about these issues, now that I'm committed to a summer and early fall of major reading. But just this instant I must go to the book mountain and grab another book and climb into a dream.

Novel-slaying: a clarification

Amusing account of the semi-botched NYT review of Patrick Somerville's new book here ('Thank you for killing my novel.") One might say that this is an account of making lemonade out of lemons on a grand scale. Of course, even a pan in the NYT is something of note, although I have a friend who cried mightily for several days over hers. And why not? A piece of her life was captured in the book, and I'm rather afraid that the reviewer had a distaste for Southerners in general.

The Somerville case: the truth is that an error in a review led to another mention (hurrah!) in the NYT for correction, and then to a correspondence with a NYT writer (hurrah!), and then to the Salon article (hurrah!) and others (more hurrah) about what happened, including this little post. So it's all a happy ending in the guise of an unhappy ending.

What is not a good outcome and slays novels is something very different than what is known as a "mixed review." A bad outcome is to be simply ignored by reviewers, and not to have anything to be botched or corrected or mentioned or bewailed in an amusing fashion. That's the really bad outcome.

Marly talks to Seth Godin

Update: Perhaps I'm not very clear on the tone for this one because people have taken the introduction far more seriously than I meant! No worry. A couple of podcasts (okay, maybe I exaggerated--so I exaggerated!) will not magically transform me into a market-minded maniac. But I am rather fascinated by the slant of view and think he would make a good character. He even looks like a character...  A Dickens character, I think, one of the active and colorful "flat" characters.


* * *
When I decided that I really must think about marketing, I listened to Seth Godin while I folded the laundry. He’s an informative guy, and he has quirky ways of looking at marketing. They are not my ways (I am afraid that marketing and I are a strange pair), but I find him weirdly revelatory of the way of the world.

I don't imagine that I will ever get to chat with such a well-known marketer as Seth in the flesh, so here I’m going to talk to an e-Seth, using some clips from an interview with real-Seth, along with my responses.

Usually when Seth talks, I just listen. This being my blog, I get to say more than he does.

* * *

Seth:

Mostly, though, I think it’s a fading of the power of a published book to influence the conversation. When anyone can publish an ebook, anyone will.

Marly:

The Tower of Babel Redux, and we have to deal with it--that's a fact. Our tongues are divided and swinging like mad, and the cacophony is increasing. 

You describe "a fading of the power of a published book to influence the conversation." How terribly poignant. But that is life a century after the crack-up of Modernism, it seems.  And one must tilt with the facts. 

Nevertheless, Seth, I still believe that there a secret world tucked inside our big, fat, hyper-materialist, and often-tasteless world--a world of people who care about beauty and rightness and all the golden things handed down to us by the Gawain poet and Shakespeare and Herbert and Austen and Dickinson and Dickens and more. And maybe that hidden world is enough to sustain a lot of us who are seeking to make something worthy.

Seth:

An author starting out today needs to pick herself, establish a niche, become truly the best at it and relentlessly and generously give it all away as a way of leading and making a ruckus.

Marly:

Seth, this is a bit discouraging, this niche business. I know all about giving away my words, but niche?

What if your sameness, your niche-ness, has always been never being the same? What kind of niche is that? Publishers never liked it--sounds as if you think the market won’t and perhaps can't either. 

Here I have to make a confession. I will go on dividing myself into poet and novelist (of various sorts) and children's book writer, and if my silver stream is diffused by the nature of the marketplace—by the way it considers all those things as being not from the same source (though they are, and seamless in some important ways), so be it. 

Further, Seth, I find that writing the strong, beautiful book I always dream of writing and that having a position of humility before the great masters of the past is more to me than having a niche and so gaining numbers.

I like “increasing readership”: yes, I do. But I love the tradition and the burning image of the strong, beautiful book more. And if I must choose, I choose the image and the masters.

You know that is unfortunate--you think that choice is in certain ways quite unfortunate. And in a worldly, blockbuster sort of way you are exactly right.

Seth:

Who said you have a right to cash money from writing? I gave hundreds of speeches before I got paid to write one. I’ve written more than 4000 blog posts for free.

Marly:

In the past, if you were mid-list who never got a "push" from a publisher, it was pretty much the same as writing for free--a dollop of money once in a very great while—and so that still means doing the work for love. Or love and pennies.

As soon as we finish this chat, Seth, I'm going to go read "The Artist of the Beautiful" one more time. Actually I am going off to a voice lesson, but in a metaphorical sense I will be reading Hawthorne.

Seth:

Poets don’t get paid (often), but there’s no poetry shortage. The future is going to be filled with amateurs, and the truly talented and persistent will make a great living. But the days of journeyman writers who make a good living by the word–over.

Marly:

“Truly talented”: what does that mean? I am a person often praised for tact (thank you, my Southern ancestors who don't allow me to say what I think!), but here I must veer toward the tactless. There's a kind of book we all know to be the equivalent of Twinkies--an easy dessert, a Ho-Ho of sugary cake wrapped around sticky-sweet cream. That kind of book is rising in the free and near-free e-book market, just as it rose in traditional publishing.

Often, then, the cooker-upper of Ding Dongs "will make a great living."

Just as in traditional publishing, there's a mix of good and bad in the future you predict.  Just as in traditional publishing, what’s not so great can be rewarded.

I'm not talking about genre here; I'm talking about quick, somewhat sensational or trendy or just plain junky books that have no soul, whatever their genre--literary or mystery or nonfiction or fantasy, on and on. (Besides, the only kind of book worth talking about is a good book; genre is nothing.)

Give me "a great book" over making "a great living." I have that choice, and I choose. The attempt to write true books is labor and play in the vale of soul-making. 

I've had decent advances, and I've had lousy advances, but the difference between decent and lousy money has never made one whit of difference to the work.

Seth:

It’s not the market’s job to tell authors how to monetize their work. The market doesn’t care. If there’s no scarcity of what they want, it’s hard to get them to pay for it.

Marly:

Absolutely true. The question is what people want, isn't it? And a lot of people don't want to sit down and read a good book, do they? We used to teach our children that thing called taste, didn't we?  But we don't anymore. And that's just that, a hard nugget of fact.

But there will always be scarcity of the best, Seth. Even among things (including books) touted as great or as works of art, only a percentage will make it to that pinnacle.

How will we know when books are great, Seth? Tell me that? When everybody has an e-book, and Babel is a nest of clamor, how will we find those voices?

Tell me that.

How to be a helpful book brownie--

P. S. Publishing, 2009
Books and Culture
Book of the Year

Mercer, 2011
"beautiful and brilliant"
Greg Langley, TBRA

In pre-order
The Ferrol Sams Award
Mercer University Press

Here's a list of 36 things you can do to help writers you like in ways that are not difficult and do make a difference--ranging from buying a copy at your favorite indie to yacking or blogging about the book, from making a review video to creating a mini-tribe in support of a book. The author is one of the fat cats of the world of marketing, and there are some great, effective things to do on the list.

I try and do some of these for other people, and I hope in turn that passers-by and friends and readers will do some of them for my books, particularly the ones that are new and hoping to find readership.

Afterthought for poet Jennifer Reeser, who liked no. 10:  I'm sure a tree would be glad to help my The Foliate Head collection when it comes out. However, most trees probably feel that they have done enough to help books already--unless, of course, we're talking about ebooks!

Sundry

PAPERWORK
Feeling a little weary after a kid-ferrying day, to be done again soon, and realizing that I simply must take some days off for disgusting things like taxes (not only like taxes but taxes--also other related things.) I like paperwork of a very particular kind, I fear.

FUTURE-BLOGGING-THOUGHTS
Meanwhile, I am pondering weaving something new into my blog. I have meant to transcribe my father's WWII journal about his European flight runs as a teenage tail-gunner... And perhaps I will do that some time soon.

Also thinking about some sort of fragmentary story, written in little bits (epistolary, perhaps?) to weave in and out the regular posts. Woman goes mad gathering taxes and flees to the circus?

BOOK PITCHES
I was reading an article (dutifully, in my I-must-learn-marketing-why?-because-it-is-the-way-of-the-world-of-books mode) about how one must be able to pitch one's book in approximately twitter-length in order to sell it. I'm not very fond of things like that, mainly because if I had wanted to tell a story in twitter-length, I would have made it that length in the first place!

Here's A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage: "A boy on a Depression-era sharecropper's farm, stripped of his last remaining connections to a secure past where he was loved, launches himself into the world of steam trains and migrants in a restless search for light." Hmm. Better as a novel than as a tweet! More summations here. 

For The Throne of Psyche, I'd probably just steal something from the flap copy: "In The Throne of Psyche, Marly Youmans sweeps back and forth between what is human and what is other, binding the two together or crossing the thresholds between them." I mean, poetry is impossible to sum up!