I started reviewing
poetry for Bookslut in 2006 for the same reasons most people start
reviewing; free books and a line on the old curriculum vitae. I
decided to focus on poetry reviews because I felt I had enough time
to give books of poetry the level of attention I believe books should
get from reviewers; basically, with a job, my own writing and
reading, and life in general, I felt I could read a book of poetry
twice in a reasonable amount of time before writing a review.
Knowing the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of hours that goes into a
writing a book, it only seems fair to read one twice before passing
any kind of professional judgment on it, and I just don't have the
time in the day to do that for longer works. This has changed a
little bit as I've learned what to look for when reading for a review
and so I now do novels and other longer works, but mostly just for my
personal blog.
So I had been
reviewing poetry for Bookslut for about four years when they
approached their 100th issue. I'd reviewed a bunch of
collections for them, read a lot of poetry on my own, and write it,
so I pitched a “state of American poetry,” essay for the special
issue. This essay was one of, if not the, highlight of my
critical “career.” (If I keep saying I have one, it means I have
one.) Some obsessive googling revealed that a few people in the
poetry world actually read it, thought about it, and discussed it.
One person even used one of my ideas from the essay as part of the aesthetic groundwork for a lit mag. Another person was Daniel Lawless. (Real name as far as I
know.)
Daniel got in touch
with me because he was starting an online poetry magazine and liked
what I had to say. (If you're wondering why anyone would start an
online poetry magazine, well, I asked him.) He asked
me to submit some poems and, because I'd been reviewing poetry for a
while and because I worked at a bookstore, he asked me for some
advice about getting the word out. I gave him some advice. He
accepted my poem “Johnny Damon's Vacant Stare.”
Of course, I wasn't
the only writer he solicited for submissions. Sometimes you've got
to cast many lines to catch few fish. I don't know what Danny wrote
in the other emails he sent out but he landed some prize winning
catches almost instantly. The first issue had works by Rae
Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, Alicia Ostriker and G.C. Waldrep.
Number two had Stephen Dunn, Thomas Lux, and Donald Revell. Three
had Tess Gallagher, six had Lydia Davis, nine had Andrei Codrescu and
Billy Collins, ten Sharon Olds, eleven D.A. Powell. The anthology
features works by those writers and more as well as stuff, like mine,
that didn't appear in the online journal. If you want to know more
about the process of going from an online lit mag to a print
anthology check out the interview I did with Daniel for the PorterSquare Books Blog. We've also organized an event at the bookstore
with Daniel that I'm going to host with readings from four of the
contributors who happen to also live in the greater Porter Square
area.
Getting something
you've written published (at least short stories, poetry and short
essays, hopefully I'll be able to tell you about how it feels to get
a book published some day) is a very strange emotional experience.
You work your ass off on the piece and then it's finished and then it
sits there until you get around to submitting it. Then you wait.
Then it gets rejected. So you submit it, wait, and it gets rejected
again. Over and over, often for years until the piece itself becomes
like someone you got really close to during one summer camp and then
never really talked to again. Sure that person is important to the
story of your life, but they've moved into a different emotional
compartment, one you only access when you're telling stories about
summer camps.
And then one time
you submit it, wait, and it gets accepted. Then it's like that
friend from summer camp showed up at your house needing to crash on
your futon. It's awesome and strange. Of course you let them, but
you no longer quite know what to think about them. With a poem or
story or something, you end up rereading and seeing everything that
is absolutely terrible about it as though it were a first draft all
over again. Furthermore, if it's been a long time, one can be a very
different (ideally better) writer from when the work was composed,
with different skills, different goals, maybe even different tastes.
But this was a
little different. In this case, Daniel asked me to send him some
poetry based on ideas I expressed about poetry. In some ways, it
couldn't be simpler. When someone asks you for work with an intent
to publish your work, you send them your work. (At least when you're
“career” is at the level mine currently is.) It would be one
thing if my essay focused on say, development of line breaks, or
asked for simple objects of conceptual-linquistic beauty or
celebrated the ability of poetry to capture abstract experiences, but
given the essay I wrote I had to ask myself, does my poetry do what I
ask other poets to do? Does my work have evidence of ambition? Does
it reflect a desire to write the next great movement? Is it even
just as good as what I ask others to produce? Could I walk the walk?
Of course, the real problem is that I can't answer any of those
questions myself. I write what I write with whatever ideas, goals,
and emotions are in my head, and it is up to the reader to place the
work in whatever context, evaluation, poetics, the reader believes it
belongs with.
Of course, if the
want to put what I write in anthology with some of my favorite living
poets and a few others who have won major awards, that'll be just
fine too.
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