Like many others, I feel rather strange using the word "career" in relation to poetry. Frost's uniting of avocation with vocation says it better. In any case, Tim suggested I be available to discuss career issues and I thought I'd begin with one tiny suggestion here.

Editors will often say that they are swamped with poetry, but what they really need are book reviews. I think there are several good reasons why poets might write reviews:

1. To test their own ideas in progress about the art.
2. To contribute to the larger discussion of the art.
3. To advance the careers (or increase the visibility) of poets they admire and raise questions about poet they do not admire, who have perhaps been overpraised in the past.
4. To establish some sort of personal connection with editors who might later be willing to look at poems and associate them with a name rather than the anonymity of the slush pile.

The most virtuous editors are always combing the slush pile, of course, hoping to make a discovery. But even the best of them can't see or read everything that comes along, depending on the magazine, and must rely on readers who are also fallible. So some hint of name recognition achieved by reviewing books might just help.

How to get into the reviewing biz. For my own part, I just started small and kept challenging myself to try better magazines. I reviewed many books for a xeroxed newsletter for poets who lived in Upstate New York. This was edited by Judith Kitchen, a writer who has been a steady reviewer for the Georgia Review over the years. When friends told me about tiny magazines looking for reviews, I tried them. In the early days of Nebo, edited by Paul Lake, I contributed several reviews, as well as fiction and poetry. Probably nothing I'd cherish now, but Paul was kind enough to give me a start. I also reviewed for a little magazine called Abraxas in Minnesota. I wrote a couple of restaurant reviews and even wrote the "headnotes," as it were, for my father-in-law's restaurant menu (this in a now-defunct marriage, so I can't make many promises). Eventually I inquired with George Core at the Sewanee Review whether he would consider a review on spec of two poetry books (I might by then have had clippings from the Seattle Times and other papers to show him). I reviewed Lake and McDowell. That review was seen by Fred Morgan at Hudson, who wrote me a nice note. I wrote him back immediately saying I wanted to review for him. He later called, offering me the Fagles translation of the Iliad. I said I had good Modern Greek but no Ancient, and Fred said I could just compare the new translation to others of that book. So I did. I worked my butt off on that review, revising it nine times as a mini-essay, and it was accepted. For years I reviewed anything Hudson would send my way: fiction, poetry, criticism, etc., and never missed a deadline.

Anyway, all of that is a long-winded synopsis of how one set of relationships with editors was established, and I'd suggest to anyone else out there that you might try reviewing on spec for newsletters and very small magazines, reaching higher when you feel you've got the confidence to do so.

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited August 30, 2004).]

David:
I agree that reviewing is a good way to enter the poetry community, as it were, or to find out whether you're likely to feel at home there. In addition to your points in its favor, consider that as a reviewer you're involved with poetry even when you don't feel much like writing your own stuff. You're obliged to study verse rather carefully, think hard about your opinions, try to substantiate them (all of this in a perfect world, of course: I'm assuming that you want to be conscientious about it). Like (good) teaching, reviewing can make you a better writer, better poet, because at its best it helps you get past the superficiality to which most of us are slaves most of the time just because of our native laziness.
My career hasn't blossomed as your has, David, but I have worked steadily these twenty years, with several hundred reviews in the Seattle Times and many dozens in Light, Sewanee Review, and American Literature, among others (and far from all of them poetry reviews). I don't doubt that many editors have given my poetry an extra moment of consideration because they recognised my name. It doesn't take long until you feel you're part of a big conversation about literature, sometimes as creator and sometimes as commentator. It's a pretty good feeling, if you care deeply about literature in the first place.
RPW

Richard,
You have to fail as often as I have before you can talk about not blossoming. You've got a ways to go.
Dave

Dave: I adamantly agree with reasons 1-3 for doing reviews, but I'd suggest an asterisk beside number 4. I've done at least a half a dozen reviews in the past five years, but always at the request of editors with whom I'd already had a strong relationship. I believed that reason 4 was true for many years, but when I wrote to journals that I wanted to get closer to with very polite and professional queries, I never once got a positive response, and even got two fairly nasty ones, including one from an editor at one of the magazines mentioned above.

It feels to me that there is a clubby aspect to all of this--and, mind you, I know I obviously benefit from being an associate member of sorts of the formalista club--but I'm not at all persuaded that a nonacademic off the street can send samples of good work and a polite query to an editor of a major journal and get "admitted." You can for a few of the most desperate and obscure journals, but they tend to go out of business shortly thereafter without your review seeing the light of day.

I'm probably guilty of being whiny, self-centered and immodest by raising this point, but a similar argument seems to go also to whether your books get reviewed too.

Sorry for being difficult.

No umbrage taken. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that the editors I had luck with are the ones others should try, or that editors can't get cranky now and again. Wouldn't you? Look further afield, but keep trying.

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited August 30, 2004).]

I've never written, let alone published a book review, but Alan has. George Core took his big essay on Wilbur, and had no idea who Alan was. Tom Fleming at Chronicles took his essay on Hope and his review of Wilbur's Mayflies. Now, Tom had published Sullivan's poetry. But it proves that over-the-transom submissions can work if your criticism is as good as is that of the EfH.

I just send poems, and now I have a stable of sympathetic editors. But that wasn't the case eight years ago. Then it was what we salesfolk call cold calling. Again, I met with a good deal more acceptance than rejection. Sure, I had some friends like Dave and Dana who might have helped me with a couple of venues, but the verse pretty much had to stand on its own most places it went. I try to repay those early favors by putting in a good word with editors on behalf of a great many Spherians.

Which takes us to networking. Something we do here. But there is no better place in the world to network than the West Chester Conference on Form and Narrative. Go there.

Oh yes--the poems must be good. I wish I could take back a lot of poems I've published. No sense rushing that. Publishing for publishing's sake is not the goal, but rather, hopefully, to lodge the really good poems out there somewhere.

I agree with Tim that West Chester's the best networking place I've ever seen, but that doesn't help some of our far-flung friends. I've seen lots of postings about sharing resources with fellow poets (magazines, etc) and think that would be a great idea.

Michael,

I want to add to this, the clubby aspect. For years I have thought about it, and it is the way it ought to be. They must be clubby! They don't have a choice. When people jump up onto a a chair and crow, they don't want to get off the chair, they can't help it. The power to choose is addictive. Nothing makes any difference but to write poems people can't refuse. Few people can see beyond arms length, which holds their own poetry and their own ideas. Networking leads to ego. The battlefield board game is set, play the game with fantastic poetry and the little men will come to your side.

Paint beautiful paintings and they will sell; a simple thesis but true.

Also; "Editors will often say that they are swamped with poetry, but what they really need are book reviews."

They are swamped with <u>bad</u> poetry. But I think they need more book reviews too.

TJ

I'm just questioning how open most editors are on reviews--I think most of them are reaching out to poets they already know for their volunteer workforce. I do agree with Tim, however, that few people are writing thoughtful, readable essays on major poets, and in particular writing on poets who tend to be admired here. Not only is that a potential opportunity for someone willing to work a little harder, it would be good for the cause if people did what Alan Sullivan has done so well and were writing essays on topics like the dark side of Dana Gioia, or comparisons of Dave Mason's narratives with Andrew Hudgins', or for that matter the fine piece on Fairchild I referenced above that connects Pete's poetry with his jazz training. I think even left-leaning editors are tired of 28 year olds writing incomprehensible pieces on the transgressive postmodern techniques of Anne Lauterbach viewed in the light of Foucault and similar dreck.
Rising tides...

Perhaps that's due to the verb form of the word. Many poets don't go at full speed, but spend decades moving forward, like Whitman: as Emerson said, Whitman must have had a long ascent, though he appeared out of nowhere. Or like ED. Or even like Frost, who didn't begin to write until later in his life.

We now have poets, though, who begin at 18 and expect quick results. Millay did it, but...

Having published a fair number of essays and reviews myself, I agree with all four of Dave's points above. It's good for the art to have intelligent criticism about it. Dana Gioia makes the point that we need more negative criticism--that is, honest assessments that don't puff bad or mediocre poetry. If you can write decent prose and deal intelligently with poetry, it's somewhat easier to publish reviews and criticism than poetry. And as Dave says, it helps establish a relationship with an editor.

Except for a two year stint as an occasional reviewer for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, our state's major newspaper, I've almost never written an essay or even a review because an editor asked me to. I generally write what I want and then shop it around till someone takes it, which usually isn't too long compared to poetry, where even a really good piece can get rejected twenty times before some perspicacious editor takes it.

I've been trying to stop writing criticism for the last few years to focus strictly on creative work. Sill, I was surprised and pleased at the last West Chester conference to have so many people recognize me as the author of an essay they liked. Nothing quite beats writing a good poem, but think of the great essays by contemporaries you've read and how grateful you are to poet critics like Dana Gioia or Dave Mason and think how you too might delight and instruct readers on some poet or poem you admire. It's rewarding in its own right and might even spread good taste and sense in a field where there's often too little of either.

David,

Your: "Like many others, I feel rather strange using the word "career" in relation to poetry. Frost's uniting of avocation with vocation says it better. In any case, Tim suggested I be available to discuss career issues and I thought I'd begin with one tiny suggestion here."

Vocation is money, isn't it? More or less? So what should a poet do? Teaching, reviews, books on poetry, talks, seminars, etc, are good, but do poetical aspirations relate to ambition?

I see poets heading to the poorhouse when they get older. University pensions? Tenure? Not exactly avocation/vocation, is it, if you can get it?

Poets seem so anxious to be published they let 'editors' push them around.

Don't almost all of the other arts pay? I happen to know a couple poets who would like to make it happen.

What should a poet do, and how can they make poetry pay?

If you have any good ideas, PM me. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/wink.gif

TJ

Though our submissions page doesn't mention it, and the annual format hurts the currency a little, I'd definitely throw The Eleventh Muse out as a place interested in short or mid-length reviews. We're likely not a "career-building" venue yet, but maybe I can get us there. http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

------------------
Steve Schroeder

I'm glad to see Steven's post about the Eleventh Muse.

As for TJ's notes on poetry and money, well, I'm not sure I agree, really. The market bears what the market bears, and it's worth noticing what the market offers for our art in realistic terms. You can make money by bringing poetry to other media if you figure out the problems of distribution and advertisement. But in terms of living one's life, I think it's a good idea to take responsibility from the start for earning a living. I say this as someone who was very, very slow to do so, and ruined a marriage in the process. Get a job. Pay your bills. It won't kill you. Dana Gioia used to work sixty or seventy hour weeks in business, but hold two or more hours per night four nights a weeek for his writing, and some portion of his weekend, and he produced more than any of us.

I'm always happy to get a check for a poem, true, but I've made much more money as a film writer and book editor (not to mention manual laborer and college teacher) than I ever expect to make from poetry.

There's something to be said to devoting yourself to an art that can't make you rich, isn't there? So you've got to really love the art and pursue it for the sake of perfection in the work rather than for riches.

That aside, anything we can do to bring poetry to a wide, discerning readership is fine by me.

[This message has been edited by David Mason (edited September 03, 2004).]

David,

Excellent response. I think we are agreeing. I just like to provoke things now and then.

I have so many ideas about making money with poetry I pee half-way down the street just thinking about them.

I took RF's advice literally, which advised to marry late and get the art in control first. I lived in a house without central heat of any sort for ten years, with missing windows, birds flying in and out, and wrote lots. Now, now I'm not even published by wnyone else other than me. Talk about slow.

Often, people have much more energy and ability than they think they do.

One of my points is that it is fun to think about and plan for combining avocation and vocation without entering before and standing before the 'judgement' of others--career-wise. I don't want prizes, I want to relate to people. Of course, people always judge/like-dislike, but that is the challenge. You demand nothing you get nothing.

TJ

The Susquehanna Quarterly is very interested in good book reviews, thought-provoking ones. Any takers? Contact me.

(robt)

You've got to test yourselves, folks. I urge you to do so at SQ or EM. Janet--why don't you inform the readers at these places about Aussie or Kiwi writers? Others among the far-flung--do your bit for poets most of us have never read--write a review-essay about them.

David:
Janet--why don't you inform the readers at these places about Aussie or Kiwi writers? Others among the far-flung--do your bit for poets most of us have never read--write a review-essay about them.
David,
I'll try. Australian poetry is so super-fashionable and post post everything that apart from a very few who receive the blessing of the King, Les Murray, it has driven me across the ocean to this forum. The size of the country and the paucity of worthwhile outlets has defeated me on the whole. If I had more money I might be able to do the forensic investigation necessary.

I do know one particular poet whom I think is sadly neglected in Australia, Dennis Greene. He suffers from the increasing effects of early onset Parkinson's but has found a depth and measured thoughtfulness which I am convinced is due partly to his condition.
I can love the writing of Les Murray and his voice has the quintessential Australian accent.

I spent some hours in my New Zealand student days, chatting at social gatherings with James K. Baxter and I have just seen a magnificent biographical documentary about another great New Zealand poet (now dead) Allen Curnow.

My own scattered background with a huge interruption spent in other countries and time consuming vocations, means that I am a little lost and lack confidence.

I'll see what I can muster.
Janet

James K. Baxter


Allen Curnow

Les Murray

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited September 07, 2004).]

Curnow is one of the finest English-language poets of the past fifty years. I mean it!

Clive

Clive, I agree.


This is the Allen Curnow video I watched the other day. It is superb.

Allen Curnow video

Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited September 08, 2004).]

Would it be too nervy to suggest you create a thread for him on Mastery? I've googled but couldn't find any complete poems by him, only snippets.

Rose,
He's still under copyright. I will try to post some. There are some early poems online I think. His best ones are very long and I have a sore finger. I'll see what I can produce ASAP.
Janet

I've just read some Curnow anthology pieces and agree that he's very fine.

On Mastering the Muse I just typed in almost the only pantoum I have ever admired. Curnow wrote it as an old man in protest against the French nuclear bomb tests in a Pacific atoll. We all took this very badly down here and New Zealanders feel especially close to Polynesians in general. As I typed the poem I began to experience something like awe at the way he exploited the pantoum form to pile on the effects. It is like music. In the hands of a master no form is beyond maximum expressive, poetic effect.

I found it in "The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English", edited by Michael Schmidt.

Janet

I agree with both parts of this, and glad David brought it up. To this I might add a corollary: 3.a. To increase the visibility of a group of related (in the broadest sense) poets who are unjustly neglected.

I like the idea about raising questions, which I feel is necessary, but I want to ask: Is it possible to be too "negative?" William Logan clearly comes to mind. I must admit, I do get perverse pleasure from his criticism (I say that now with the knowledge that I'm in no danger of being Logunned in the near future), and when he does praise someone, his praise is really worth something. But I can't disagree with those who feel he goes too far, arguably to the point that his reviews become vehicles for displaying his wit and erudition rather than thoughtful examinations of a poet's work.

Arguments against negative reviews I've heard include: Life is short, and there are works we shouldn't waste time on; It's better to build [the first part of 3 above] than to destroy [the second part of 3 above]; Better to expend the energy on one's own poetry; etc. I don't think these are invalid arguments, but what do people think?

Jodie,

I think your question is valid, but there are many view points from which to ask the question. In other words,
Logan goes too far, but he serves a much needed purpose, because so much of poetry is fatuous and empty frill, and he says what he thinks. It is always surprising to me how many people, in reviews or not, don't say what they think.

Good poetry stands up to acid baths, but appreciation and enjoyment of poetry is as varied as the subjects and the people writing the poems. So a purpose is also filled by someone like Gioia, who writes much milder appreciation. Did someone here say that Gioia said we need more negative reviewing on poetry? I think so.

A negative review can only be negative if it is wrong. If it is right, it is positive, isn't it? I think your first question is, 'an unflattering review...'

It is hard to take the time to write a negative review. Who wants to bother, but when the Billy Collins' go skipping down the sidewalk playing poetry charades, I'm tempted. But the best defense is to write the best poetry.

So I say, thank goodness for William Logan, who I first heard described as the most hated man in poetry for his 'negative' reviews, which I consider overdone but honest--not necessarily right every single time, but at least he isn't some wormy blurb writer. I will always read his reviews.

Robert Frost said "..don't draw anyone's fire.." in other words, don't be critical of others, it will cost you. It is a good rule, and one hard not to break if you crit in a workshop.

David said above that editors need reviews more than more poems, and that is probably true as it is, but what they really need are lots of better poetry.

I think the pattern I see is, the better the poet the less they criticize, and seldom if ever write negative reviews, if reviews at all.

All in all, I see things balancing themselves out.


TJ

Thanks, Tom. I pretty much agree with your assessment.

There are people Logan has Logunned about whom I feel he was wrong. And there are those I think he should have Logunned by now.

I do think he is very sharp. My favorite prose of his is "Five or Six Motions Toward a Poetics" in the Gioia et al anthology. It has none of his flamboyance, and is very well-articulated.