shannacompton.com: blog

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Thu, 03 May 2012 12:43:00 +0000

I think this (whatever it is) has turned into an actual piece of writing, so I am not going to continue it here, for the moment. But yes, continue. I want to see where this goes.

Of course, I need to get back to the book that's supposed to come out in October. Waiting for my readers' comments to finish arriving. Waiting to feel not just a sort of longing to get back in it, but to feel its necessity.

I will keep coming back here though. Certainly I'm juggling some things, but in this space I have new things to say, I think. Now that I have cracked the tall, dusty barrier I'd piled in front of it.

Also, I think I'll redecorate.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:10:00 +0000

I hardly know what I'm saying. I'm not even talking. In my mind I can feel the shape the lines will take before they take it. It can be tedious. I abuse your attention. Description is a sort of tyranny. See how this hangs together while it pretends to be dissolute? Dissolving in a glass a bluish white powder, glowing like a television. The kid carved his initials into the picnic table as an attempt to impress the little girl who lived next door to his grandfather. Was that his grandfather, the man with the horses we let graze out back? B. W. 1978. Or something like that. The horses had names like Lightning and Thunder and Blaze. A little Shetland called Honey. We jumped off the barn with umbrellas, shrieking as we slapped into hay, bare-thighed and itchy, not as soft as we'd thought. Till someone broke an arm, Darla's brother. A smaller television sat on top of a larger broken television. Memory has its own agenda, I suppose. And then there are the bits that insert themselves, without regard for any year or location. There was blue carpet in the living room. A waterbed mattress in the yard we squirted with dish soap. I saw him hit you, but you didn't know I saw it. There were stars on the ceiling of our bedroom. And there was no store to go to, no highway, no town to speak of at all. The whole time we lived there, we visited hospitals. We brought home deer they'd killed in the truck. We made fires in the back, to burn the trash, to cook on, just because. We picked up stones each time we mowed. I climbed the same tree most afternoons, and went in to look at the rabbits. No, there weren't--there were never any stars. On the map, it's not even there.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:54:00 +0000

I could argue, I guess I will, that what it is and what it feels like cannot help but converge. We never wanted a family. Take an active interest in melodrama, because realism is anyway impossible. My devices include the trite, the classic, the worn, and certainly the lie. At the same time there is weather there is this climate of thought. I quote myself, without citing my source. The chapters collect in the manuscript boxes. The boxes collect in the spare bedroom. The spare bedroom collects dust. Or I can haul. I had a conversation, years ago. So many things would have gone better had I worn these batteries behind my ears. Well now I've chosen to amplify. Didn't I confess it is my way? The scholar said she was writing about her life, but then I understood her to mean My Life. I caught her thread then. We talked about the blocks of text and the repetitions. I remarked on the unforgettable line about McDonald's and the beef eyeballs. Her face changed. She didn't remember it. Yesterday the trees on the ridge were interrupted with strips of sky, so pale it was nearly white. I wrote about them again. I've replaced them for people, at least sometimes. Turns out they have as much to say. Our configuration suits us. If we'd tried something else, we would have done something else. So there's that kind of confidence in the making of the story.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:27:00 +0000

I knew it wouldn't last, my illusion. I promised myself something I never meant to deliver. So, words on a screen conjure readers, I knew that. Fain to deny my performance. I bow before I begin. The poems are happening in the background. Thank you for your emails, your backchannel notes with blue borders, the intimacy and push-nudge of strangers' eyes along the curves, the fleeting status updates we live by. I already anticipated the flush of my cheeks as the curtains closed, before they closed. The way I glistened, before I ever did, under the hot lights of your unshaded attention. Who's feeding whose lines against the awkward hush? Everyone's the understudy planning to twist her ankle. Everyone's in the balcony fingering a greasy bullet. Already I regret the footprints I'm yet to leave in the generations of dust on the boards. We've both entered the theater, see? And now there's nothing else to do. This mark is where I stand. That one's for you.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 13:43:00 +0000

What I guess I'm saying is that I got to the point, despite the things I loved about my life, when I realized I didn't want to be medicated just to be able to continue it. Since when was I the kind of person, the kind of woman, who went around trying to feel less? Less of what? My life. So it had to be elsewhere in order to be the life I wanted, and one I wanted to feel. I still don't have everything I want, but I am a lot happier, having given up the numbing sort of struggle to get back to an invigorating one. Yes, I wrote two books there. (Actually I wrote three, or maybe four, but I published two.) The new one I wrote here. I don't know if it's better--I guess it is--but more importantly, it's very different. I'm tired of talking about myself (for) now. I want to tell you about some things I've been reading.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:04:00 +0000

I don't want to leave that sounding like a complaint. Work is essential, and has never been anything I resented in and of itself. At least in my reality it's a simple fact, nothing anyone chooses or chooses not to do. I've worked since I was 15, with only three breaks (including two layoffs), usually more than one job. I worked to help my mom. I worked to buy myself a car. I moved out at 18 and never went back, working to pay for my everything. I worked to pay my public university tuition, or I wouldn't have been able to go. I worked to pay for my grad school too. Then I worked to pay on all the loans. Work is what people do. If you don't work, you don't eat or have a place to live. So that's not what I meant. I mean, it could have been worse. I could have arrived in the city without the education to get the jobs or get into grad school. I could have been the strung-out prostitute. I could have lived in the projects instead of next to them. What I mean is that the city, despite what it seemed to us before we moved there (never even having visited!), did reveal itself to me as being mostly about making it. Except making it turned out to be making a living, rather than making art. Making rent. Making bills. Making it to the office before nine. Making it out of the city somewhere in the godawful stank of summer, someplace green and cheap, or with an actual view of the actual ocean. (For years it shocked me we lived on these islands that felt nothing at all like islands!) But the painters and playwrights and most of the novelists I knew then could say this stuff too. Unless they arrived with money, and could afford the return on the jobs that ate away anything you were hoping to do with them. I'm still not saying it right. It was the first time the work I did wasn't enough to feel secure, I mean, after I left home. (At home sometimes no one's work was enough.) I'm thankful (to what?) that I didn't have anything except what I went to get, and that I went to the city to get it. But I did get exhausted, struggling. I'd like to say there's nothing romantic about it, but that's not true. It was just less romantic than I thought it'd be.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:35:00 +0000

Sandra sent me this article yesterday.

I cried so much the first year we got to New York. That was October 1995. Our apartment in the Lower East Side (after 2 weeks of sleeping in a studio apt on the floor next to our friend's futon, which had him and his girlfriend in it) was $650 a month--$250 more than our palatial apartment in Austin had been--with a bathtub in the kitchen and the toilet in a closet (with no light), a nonworking oven with a warning tag from the gas company, and huge rats. Some thug kids shot out our window with a BB gun (and I retaliated by throwing Collected Poems of W. H. Auden out at them) and it stayed broken like that all winter, including through the biggest blizzard of the decade. I walked 3.5 miles to work (once I had a job, at a "big publisher," it paid 18K) or recycled bottles for subway money ($1.50) when it rained. We sold a lot of books, and all our CDs, since we didn't have anything to play them on anyway. I printed out my poems to send to all the magazines I could find in the Barnes & Noble and got rejected by all of them, regularly, till I just stopped sending them.

At least I wasn't single on top of it. We were a team, at least. (I dislike crowds/strangers and I'm not a roommate person--that always ended in disaster! God, what if I'd had to date?)

Several jobs and raises later it was better, and we made a lot of great friends, and I figured out how to freelance, started getting poems accepted. We'd moved to Williamsburg when it was still strung-out prostitutes (1996), who used our doorstep, living in a converted storefront with plywood floors. This place also had occasional rats. Our landlord evicted us for no reason in 2001, and never returned our deposit, and our swanker jobs mostly went toward the debt we'd accumulated. I bought a used book at the Strand on how to correct our credit scores by getting debt reduced or forgiven, negotiating by letter, in case we could ever afford an apartment broker who might check them. Eventually I went to grad school, and that was good for me, put me in a context. Watched the towers fall without the mediating screen of a television, just plain like the sky, from the piers in Queens (where we rush-moved after being evicted, and lived for just under a year). We moved again shortly thereafter no longer able to stomach the view, back to Brooklyn. We got married in New Orleans, felt somewhat stable, after 9 years in the city. I published a chapbook, made a blog, then my first poetry book came out, then my gaming book. I made a pretty sweet spot for myself hosting reading series and editing other people's books. But I was still stressed out and drunk all the time, insomniac with panic attacks, medicated. At the time we left (five years ago), I had been working two jobs and S was working 50-60 hours a week at something he loathed. Our apartment was "nice" finally, but still too small to comfortably hold all our shit (books, mainly and two desks), our neighbors were noisy-boistrous, and the sirens from the projects went off every night. (It was $1800 when we moved in, going up to $2200 when we left.) We fought all the time. We spent too much money going out, coping. Getting groceries from the store to the house in a little granny cart was still a nightmare, but at least I didn't have to haul the laundry anymore.

What if we'd had a kid, kids? Impossible. I really don't know how people do it, unless they leave. I mean people who are also trying to make art and also working all the time. Do they sleep? Do their heads collapse from the sucking moneyhole?

I guess I don't miss most of that.

But I guess I wouldn't undo it, either. Pointless to wish it had been easier.

Oh the enviable luxury of the annual interns, who could afford to work for free!

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 21:47:00 +0000

Still rolling with the April poetry experiment (though I haven't written one today yet), and as usual I'll probably keep some of these, discard others, or mine them for lines. It's really good to be writing something other than the long poem, I think I already said that. (Though I'll be ready to turn my attention back to that with the readers' comments in mind in another week or two.) I accidentally wrote another sonnet yesterday, meaning I didn't count the lines or try to make it a particular thing, but that's how it came out anyway. It shaped itself and I let it.

We've hiked already 6 or 7 hours this week, obviously I've been dying for the weather to turn, so now that it has I'm wanting to be out in it all the time. I guess I'll start my garden this week. We rent our house, so we can't dig up the yard. I use Earthboxes, which are great because it's all pretty much automated once you get them set up with the potting soil and the organic fertilizer, so long as you remember to water them. I even do that on a timer when we go away during the summer. I am going to plant some cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, jalapeños (my usual salsa garden) and also a bunch of greens: deer tongue lettuce, heirloom spinach, lacinato kale, champion collards, and some mache. It'll be my first time growing that. I may need another box.

I went to a poetry reading out here the other night and could hear pretty well. I still have trouble with very low-pitch male voices. Maybe I can get the audiologist to adjust for that when I see her in May. I guess I haven't talked about the "new ears" here, just on FB. Well, maybe later.

Oh I'm thinking we can go kayaking soon, on the Delaware. We still haven't done that here, just on the canals, or up in Maine. It looks like there are some good places though. I'm reading up on it.

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:51:00 +0000

Sometimes I miss this blog. I was answering some questions a week or so ago for a student who was writing about my poems for her thesis, and she asked about an old interview I gave several years ago. I don't remember what I said in the interview exactly, and have no interest in going back and listening to it, but it was about blogs and stuff. In the questions she asked me though, I had to explain how I thought things had changed, how blogs had been replaced by other social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. I don't tweet. I can't even stand to read Twitter feeds. Sometimes I'll try, if there's a particular poet who isn't "talking" anywhere else. But visually I find it a mess. I get pretty instantly annoyed that (at least without my own participatory account) I can't easily follow a conversation, all on one screen. The real-time blur is the exact opposite of how I want to read anyway. This is the same reason I ignore the real-time feed on FB.

Anyway, I'm off track, something FB posts and Twitter (I guess) would not even lend me the luxury of space to do. What I meant to say was that in answering this woman's questions about the role of blogs for poets I remembered what mine used to be for me, and how it was so exciting at first, that people were reading what I was thinking about, and then how suddenly it felt oppressive to be scrutinized. I became a spectacle. This feeling had to do with particular people and the way they read what I wrote here, and how they behaved about it. It was all very weird. But there were good things about it too. Maybe I've been quiet here so long this no longer matters. Marking books as "read" on Goodreads and snapping phone pics of poem passages to share on FB is OK--I enjoy doing those things. But... Oh also then Craig Santos Perez wrote this on Harriet and it made me laugh. I post a lot of vegan food pics on FB too.

So I've been writing mostly sonnets for April, as my daily writing. I didn't go into it with a plan to write sonnets but because I'm doing this with Sandra and she did sonnets last year, I wrote one, then a couple days later another one, and I just keep doing them. For one thing, fourteen lines is definitely feeling a lot different than the long poem (which turned out to be 81 pp in manuscript in the latest version). It's cozy, but also freeing, to have a room exactly that size, fourteen lines. I'm not rhyming or measuring them, but I am keeping the turn at the end most of the time, as a sort of structure. As usual, most of them will not "make" but maybe some of them will. I worry about that later. In April the point is just to go with the experiment and see what happens. I don't know why some people get annoyed or uptight about posting drafts. I guess we're back at the spectacle. Public is a constraint that can be useful. Maybe I mean that.

I'm not going to make any effort to wrap this up, like some kind of essay, as if I have any point I wanted to make. I'm going for a hike before it rains. Then I have to finish the taxes. We get till the 17th this year, you know. I forget why.

NaPoWriMo & forthcoming

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:56:00 +0000

Ten years? Can you believe it?

I'll be playing at the Bloof Blog.

Find other participants or sign up yourself: NaPoWriMo 2012, hosted by Maureen Thorson.

& in other news...

I have a couple of poems forthcoming in the next issue of Barrelhouse.

And copies of the new book manuscript--including the finally-at last-oh thank goodness-it's really done-whew long poem "The Seam" are going to readers this weekend. (The Spouse is currently mulling it.)

I'm thinking of changing the book's title again.

I have an idea for the cover design.

Shooting for an October release.

Also appearing

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Court Green is consistently one of my favorite lit mags. The dossier this issue is on the short poem, 10 lines or less. Subscribe/purchase.

TOC includes all those pictured above, plus...Evan Lavender-Smith, Charles Jensen, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Sandra Simonds, Erica Bernheim, Benjamin S. Grossberg, Stephen Danos, Steven Toussaint, Maggie Nelson, D.A. Powell, Bo McGuire, Tim Dlugos, Graham Foust, Bernadette Mayer*, James Schuyler*, Ron Padgett, Shanna Compton*, Mary Ann Samyn, Elise Cowen, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Laura Kasischke, Andrew Hudgins, Rachel Zucker, Nicole Wilson, Jan Bottiglieri, Casey Thayer, Susan Cataldo, Jordan Stempleman, Jim Cory, Scott Keeney, Tim Dlugos*, Kathleen Ossip, Larry Sawyer, Margo Pappas, Guillermo Filice Castro, Albert Goldbarth, Richard Fox, Tara Betts, Gregory Brooker, Jo McDougall, MRB Chelko, Guy Rotella, Charles Jensen*, Aaron Belz, Craig Cotter, Mike Topp, Jeremy Halinen, Suzanne Buffam, Elizabeth Savage, D.A. Powell*, Patrick Culliton, Jeff Tighchelaar, Joseph Massey, Robert Creely, Elaine Equi* (* in both sections)

Also, see you at their launch reading in Chicago next week.

Appearing, an excerpt

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Link

Momentous

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:44:00 +0000

March 1-3 in Chicago

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Also, I will be reading for Court Green (same night, before I go to this). And most of the time I will be sitting at a table (R 12) eerily similar to this one, at the bookfair:

Please come say hello. I'll have 2+ weeks of practice with my new hearing aids under my belt by then, so I will actually be able to hear you!

Virtual Bloof Books tour...

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:49:00 +0000

...with audio, video, & photos galore. See how we roll. HERE.

Some things, appearing

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:15:00 +0000

An excerpt from "The Seam" in the new RUIN issue of Women's Studies Quarterly
"Sometime I'll perfect my adoration" today in the Advent Calendar at Delirious Hem (audio)
Another excerpt from "The Seam" in the current issue of Eoagh

~~I think that's it for now.~~ Another excerpt from "The Seam" will be in the next issue of ElevenEleven, in January, and some of the other poems from the book will be in the next Court Green.

[Update] Whoops, I forgot one:

On this page and also in iTunes, you can listen to a recording of the reading I did on November 9 at the Emory University Barnes & Noble. (Also there are lots of other recordings available there, including my Bloof buddies Peter Davis & Sandra Simonds, and Maureen Thorson & Patricia Lockwood, who also read with us that evening.)

Bloof Tour begins this weekend!

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:39:00 +0000

**Even if you're not in one of these towns, you might support our tour by buying a Bloof book or sending a gas-money-diner-grub PayPal donation to sales[at]bloofbooks[dot]com. Everyone who helps out this way will receive a surprise package from the road.**

***UPDATE: A couple of folks asked about pre-ordering the forthcoming books. Yes, you can do that! PayPal $16 (each, we'll throw in free shipping) and include your mailing address and title in the "special instructions" box. JOAN by Anne Boyer and The Blank Verge by me will be available in Spring 2012. Thanks for this great idea!***

Friday, November 4 in Brooklyn at 7:00 PM

ANNE BOYER, David Blair & Ryan Eckes
Hosted by Dorothea Lasky
The Multifarious Array
Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Stree
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
FB event page

Saturday, November 5 in Philadelphia at 7:00 PM

ANNE BOYER, SHANNA COMPTON, JENNIFER L. KNOX & MAUREEN THORSON
Hosted by Debrah Morkun & Kim Gek Lin Short
The General Idea Series
Fergie's
1214 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA
FB event page

Monday, November 7 in Indian Springs, AL (near Birmingham) at 7:30 PM

ANNE BOYER, SHANNA COMPTON & MAUREEN THORSON
Hosted by Jessica Smith
Indian Springs School Library
190 Woodward Drive
Indian Springs, AL

Tuesday, November 8 in Tuscaloosa, AL at 7:00 PM

ANNE BOYER, SHANNA COMPTON & MAUREEN THORSON
Hosted by Daniela Olszewska
Green Bar
2209 4th Street
Tuscaloosa, AL

Wednesday, November 9 in Tallahassee, FL at 8:00 PM

ANNE BOYER, SHANNA COMPTON, SANDRA SIMONDS, MAUREEN THORSON, PATRICIA LOCKWOOD & JOSEPHINE YU
Hosted by Grey Book Press & the Nighthawk Review
Fermentation Lounge
113 All Saints Street
Tallahassee, FL
FB event page

Thursday, November 10 in Atlanta, GA at 8:00 PM
ANNE BOYER, SHANNA COMPTON, PETER DAVIS, SANDRA SIMONDS, MAUREEN THORSON & PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
Hosted by Bruce Covey
Emory Barnes & Noble
1390 Oxford Road on the Emory Campus
Atlanta, GA
FB event page

Friday, November 11 in Water Valley, MS (near Oxford) at 7:00 PM
SHANNA COMPTON, PETER DAVIS, SANDRA SIMONDS, MAUREEN THORSON & EMILEIGH BARNES
Hosted by Tim Earley
Bozarts Gallery
403 North Main Street
Water Valley, MS
FB event page

Saturday, November 12 in Fayetteville, AR at 7:30 PM
SANDRA SIMONDS, MAUREEN THORSON, PETER DAVIS & SHANNA COMPTON with CHRIS MARTIN & MARY AUSTIN SPEAKER
Hosted by Matthew Henriksen, Kaveh Bassiri & Roger Barrett
Improved Lighting Series
Nightbird Books
205 Dickson Street
Fayetteville, AR
FB event page

Sunday, November 13 in Kansas City, MO at 4:00 PM
SANDRA SIMONDS, PETER DAVIS & SHANNA COMPTON
Hosted by Jordan Stempleman
A Common Sense Reading Series
Cara & Cabezas Contemporary
1714 Holmes Street
Kansas City, MO
FB event page

WHEW!

Upcoming, outgoing

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:40:00 +0000

First on Thursday, in Our Nation's Capital, there is this:

Then in two weeks or so, in NYC, there is this:

For a finale, I will be driving a rental car of poets in shifting configurations through the south, beginning November 7 (slightly different order now than shown, but still in that distinctive b-for-bloof shape):

Details here.

If you're out there somewhere, please come say hi. This is my favorite part.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 13:05:00 +0000

Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA THIS DOCUMENT WAS ACCEPTED BY THE NYC GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization. [Also protest this by choosing a natural whole foods diet, denying your $ to makers of processed foods.]

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices. [Also protest this by going vegan, denying your $ to animal agriculture's factory farms, slaughterhouses, and packing facilities--which also notoriously abuse their workers.]

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit. [Also protest this by choosing a natural whole foods diet, which will likely reduce dependence on the products of the Insurance industry and Big Pharma.]

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Bloof Books tour in November

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:49:00 +0000

Lincoln, NE

Washington, DC

New York, NY

Brooklyn, NY

Philadelphia, PA

Birmingham, AL

Tuscaloosa, AL

Tallahassee, FL

Atlanta, GA

Oxford, MS

Fayetteville, AR

Kansas City, KS/MO

YES

Featured as today's poem by the Academy of American Poets

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:25:00 +0000

Here is a new poem from my forthcoming book, The Blank Verge :

You can also view the poem today on the Academy of American Poets home page, and via their subscriber email list.

If you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, download the FREE PoemFlow app, which features a new poem each day.

(Thanks to the AAP and Hanna Andrews, Poem-a-Day editor!)

What's next: Bloof Books 2012-2013

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:16:00 +0000

New list up now. (& more to come.)

The way we work...

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:43:00 +0000

...at Bloof Books, explained here.

A reply from BlazeVOX

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:39:00 +0000

...to supporters and detractors alike is now up on their blog. So please read that.

Yeah, this is exactly the kind of discussion/response we need to have, any of us who care, all of us who do these crazy-ass things.

Oh vanity!

noreply@blogger.com (shanna) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 15:12:00 +0000

A bunch of people (including me) have written all kinds of things about the economics of poetry publishing, various solutions to its challenges, and the frustrations we feel about some silly yet pervasive attitudes re: legitimacy and brand names. Good, we can skip all that this time.

Please, everyone, stop saying "vanity press." It's a stupid term--pejorative, emotionally charged, insulting. It's a slur. (And if I may repeat myself, no author seeking publication is exempt from ego-involvement. Call that vanity if you like, but apply it everywhere.)

A neutral and more accurate term than "vanity press" would be "subsidy press."

But BlazeVOX is neither.

A subsidy press sells books to the author--vs. to an audience. The author is the customer, not a readership. The author pays for the entire cost of producing the books. The company offers little to no marketing or distribution support, or offers those things for fees. The most important distinction between a "traditional" press and a "subsidy" press, however, is editorial. Subsidy presses will accept any* manuscript for publication, so long as the author pays the fees. They may offer some editorial work in the form of copyediting and proofreading, but they do not collaborate with the author in the final shaping of the work in the way a traditional press does. Subsidy publication is a bought service, and the author is not paid any royalties for sales (since they are almost exclusively to her- or himself). An old-school subsidy press looks like Vantage (where a million years ago I interviewed for a copyeditor position, answering a mysterious ad in the back of Publishers Weekly that gave no clues about the identity of the company).

If we're going to discuss methods of publishing (hooray!) we should call each method what it is: self-publishing, subsidy publishing, cooperative publishing, collective publishing and/or any of the other methods of publishing that involve individuals and small groups rather than Official Institutions or Corporations. Let's be respectful, specific, and accurate with our terminology.

That said...

I don't know enough about BlazeVOX's publishing practices to offer a detailed assessment of how that press is run. I like a lot of their books though, and I plan to keep buying the ones I like. And I'm sure Geoffrey Gatza (whom I've met once but do not really know) and I would not agree on all things Poetry Publishing. But I can offer this general opinion: Unless Geoffrey Gatza is offering a financially contingent acceptance to EVERY manuscript that is submitted to the press, BlazeVOX is not a "vanity publisher." Because he is exercising editorial judgment in selecting manuscripts for publication. He is (as reported by BlazeVOX authors) working in a collaborative fashion with each author to edit and prepare each book, actively involved in helping it achieve its final shape. He is (as Google will confirm) supporting the books via promotional activities, such as review solicitation and other media-related publicity, and via distribution activities, including direct to-the-public sales via the press website, buying into the SPD distribution network, the Amazon.com distribution network, etc. Unless the author is paying the full cost of all of these preparation, printing and distribution activities for her or his book (and the author can't possibly be, for ~~$200!~~ $250!), BlazeVox is not a "subsidy publisher."

BlazeVOX, from here, appears to be working its little tail off. Their website says they also pay 10% royalties on net receipts to the author(s).

Apparently, BlazeVox has been using a financial model for some time that can fairly be described (from what I understand about its parameters) as COOPERATIVE. These models have a long-standing literary tradition. Ask Walt Whitman.

BlazeVox apparently began experimenting with this new model about two years ago. The press has also been transparent about the arrangement (in published interviews and acceptance letters/contracts), though the information does not appear in its submission guidelines. I'd suggest that the omission in the guidelines was a definite mistake, but certainly not one that makes the model automatically "unethical."

I understand it was perhaps a shock to some submitters to receive a "conditional acceptance," especially one that makes mention of money paid by an author vs. the other way around. But I think that's a function of which authors we are talking about, perhaps.

Writers who have already published with BlazeVOX would already be familiar with the practices, or be in a really terrific position to ask about them. If they have questions (or objections) about how the press is run, they are obligated to discuss them with the press, at minimum, before making a public accusation of any kind. (And here I'd say another mistake was possibly made, if the authors already published by the press were not informed of new practices that would be potentially controversial.)

The standard advice is that a writer should be familiar with a press before submitting a manuscript. Extend that advice to the particulars of how the press is run. If you are unaware of how a press operates, how can you know what kind of support to expect if your book is published by them? How can you know the press is the right press for your book? Publishers may not want to divulge detailed financial information (of course), but they should be willing to discuss (or point to an FAQ or set of guidelines that outline) the general gist.

ASK.

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* I'm sure there are exceptions to this blanket statement; for instance, I imagine even the most free-for-all subsidy press has Terms of Service that prohibit the publication of illegal, indecent, or objectionable material (however their lawyers define that, standard disclaimer language blah blah blah).