[Julie Steiner]

[Ack, Kate and Rose, I got interrupted while writing this and ended up cross-posting with both of you. Anyway, I'd like to help coordinate volunteers to compile Maz's definitive bibliography, as outlined below. I was an academic librarian before I became a homeschooling mom.]


Would anyone like to help form a Bibliography Committee?

Someone should start compiling all those "Her poems have appeared in A, B, and C Journals, among others" references in Maz's contributor bios. These will then provide the starting point for tracking down actual bibliographic citations (and then full texts) of her officially-published stuff, both in print and online.

As for workshop-posted texts or other ephemeral stuff (such as poems that Maz included in private e-mails), we should create bibliographic entries for these sources, too. That way, if there are multiple versions of the same poem, the collection editor will have some basis for deciding which version is the definitive one. Another advantage is that we'll create a "paper trail" for work from online sources that eventually become defunct or, heaven forfend, have data catastrophes like Gazebo did; even if we have the full texts of those, it would be nice to know what appeared where, and when. And we'll also be able to document our good faith in case we make attribution errors (such as innocently assuming that Maz's quotation of another author's work is actually her own, as has already happened).

I would hesitate to officially post the full texts of Maz's works via a website at this point, both because of the legal ambiguity and because doing so might be detrimental to the success of a print compilation. (If I were a print publisher, I'd be nervous about taking on the production and distribution of a book whose entire contents were already available for free in one handy spot online.)

However, Rose's idea to at least archive the full texts is an excellent idea, so that a backup copy of each poem exists in one convenient place for either a print publisher or an eventual website, whichever is deemed the best course of action in the long term.

And it would be VERY helpful to have a website presenting Maz's bibliography, as it gets gradually assembled--containing links to the full texts of poems that Maz herself officially published online; full citations for poems published in print format; and titles only (citations created, but not publicly displayed) for poems Maz never officially published. Such a bibliography would save a lot of duplicated work, because we'd each be able to see what work's been done and what still needs doing. And I'm sure a print publisher would appreciate having this necessary legwork already done, too.

Rose, how does this sound to you? Would you like to be the one to get such a bibliographical website off the ground, fairly soon? If so, I'd be happy to help with the actual creation of the bibliography, and to map out various assignments for volunteers, including to a.) create citations for the poems already identified on this thread, b.) compile and document Maz's contributor's bio statements, c.) contact the editors of all the publications she named to ask for help indexing any works they published by her. Editors' response times being what they are, it might also be good to try d.) asking poets who have back issues of these journals to search for her listings in the tables of contents.

It's a huge task, but many hands make light work! Rose, I'll PM you so we can chat by phone or e-mail. Then we can put out a call for volunteers, once we've agreed on a plan of action.