A minor blogosphere dust-up over reading fees has made me think a lot about the economy of money and attention—particularly as it relates to poetry. The blog battle went something like this—The New England Review had announced that it would be charging $2 to read submissions that were sent via the internet. The NER has been struggling financially, and I daresay institutionally. I responded to a call to write letters in the summer of 2009 asking the administration of Middlebury College not to withdraw their funding, and Middlebury College did not close the doors… but it did demand that The New England Review find a way to become solvent.
My initial response to the reading fee was chagrin. I’ve told students in no uncertain terms that they should never pay someone to look at work for publication. You should pay teachers who offer the service of helping them with their craft—but it should not be someone holding the promise of publication over their heads. And the proof should be your own experience. You know if a teacher is helping you or not. And if you’re in a program—well, the school works out who they think deserves to be teaching, and you work out if you want to stay. You should also get paid either in cash or contributor copies. So now, my advice has been wrong. NER is a legit magazine. They still read paper mail submissions for free, and frankly, if you submit by mail, between the stamps and the printer and the envelopes, you’ll be spending close to $2, depending on the number of pages in your submission.
I actually only read a little of the venom being spewed against the NER—I’m consistently amazed at the kind of invective that passes for reason in the blogosphere—although it’s hardly limited to that realm. I certainly understand the desire to see the most extreme versions of opposing ideas battle it out, but I can’t understand the desire to have poetry conversations turn to mud wrestling. In fact, I thought that this interchange between Sarah Manguso and Rachel Zucker is an excellent model for what it looks like when people articulate their opposing perspectives without dishonesty or invective.
The Paris Review recently revoked its decision to publish a number of poems they had accepted in order to give the new poetry editor more control over the magazine’s poetry more quickly. Considering that many journals have backlogs of a year or more (I’ve waited three years in some cases for poems to be published… it’s not that unusual), the backlog only becomes a problem if you have a book coming out and the question of copyright starts to loom. Usually it can be sorted out. But then, would you feel differently if you had paid to be read? If the Paris Review had charged, would there be a possible legal claim? Might one demand a kill fee-- as non-fiction writers get when their more lucrative writings are accepted but then go unpublished?
The money/time economy is supposed to distinguish between professional and amateurs based on whether you pay for your time or whether your time is paid for. Remember back in the days when Soviet Bloc athletes were “amateurs” only in the sense that apparently, no one in the Soviet Economy was a professional? The prestige of the Olympics was such that western athletes would often put off earning money from tournaments and advertisements so that they were still on the amateur side of the money/time economy. A friend of mine—one trying to keep a journal afloat—told me with horror that his teachers while he was getting his MFA boasted about how they subscribed to no journals. They only read journals that were sent to them (either as contributor copies or just cause they were famous). I think, and not having been there I can’t be sure, but I think that they were boasting about their having made it to the professional side of the money/time economy of poetry. They ALWAYS got paid for poetry time—whether reading or writing. They NEVER paid for anything poetry related. It’s an ugly refusal of collegiality with their students—one might as well say, “Who gets paid to be in this classroom, and who is paying?” In a certain way, it enforces the consumerist model of education (which ultimately leads to passive students asking teachers to get learning on them). It makes it clear that money is the unit is the value—a problematic notion for a poet. All over the place, one finds angry accusations that poet today have a profession and not a calling. But haven’t there always been professional poets? Wasn’t Homer a professional? Certainly, the terms of apprenticeship, training, publishing and distribution have changed, but lets not pretend that poetry can be divorced from money in our current circumstances. Let’s not pretend than that’s there’s an outside to capitalism. I’m not being paid for this blog entry—but I paid for the computer, I pay for the internet service by which I’ll access the server to post it, and I paid for the copy of Microsoft Word in which I’m typing. With all of our interactions (and this is the complaint that concludes Lady Chatterly’s Lover), money circulates. Even if not in the ways we might like it to. This morning as I type this is generating a huge amount of capital transfer-- just none of it to a poet.
And I say this believing that one of the most important achievements by the artistic community over the past century is the creation of the teaching artist within the university. I’ve traced the history of Creative Writing Programs elsewhere—D. G. Myer’s The Elephants Teach remains the best book length history of Creative Writng Programs. He believes that Creative Writing Programs are a terrible thing—although I find it amusing that teaching-poets training teaching-poets is often regarded as a pyramid scheme by the same people who regard teaching-literary-theorists training teaching-literary-theorists as a virtuous endeavor. At any rate, I think that the MFA system (and now the Creative Writing PhD system) is a very good thing. We professionalized ourselves, and the charges of exclusivity are ridiculous. The Creative Writing establishment within the Academy welcomes outsiders—the boundary between academia and its outside is extremely porous. Any time you see someone complaining about who isn't teaching, you can be sure they'll be invited to teach. I think that we should celebrate the fact that poets have found a way to make a living. The problem with the amount of exploitative labor that goes on in the academy (by which I mean adjuncting) is not tenure or academia itself. We should be working to lift everyone up—not trying to get everyone down. The Union that I belong to is working for the rights of adjuncts in the next round of bargaining.
Which brings me to the idea of citizenship. As poets—and as teaching poets in the academy—we have to take seriously our roles as citizens. We have to take the democratic ideal of being self policing and self governing realm seriously. In some ways art is a bad fit for the academy because it is driven by editorial, rather than peer, review. But what NER was doing was an act of citizenship. They believe that their staff should be paid—that their time is valuable. Reading fees become an act of citizenship and professionalization for the staff.
Poets decided a while ago that they didn’t want to be like novelists. Novelists, by and large, only publish novels when they get paid for them. It’s not uncommon to meet a novelist whose agent has been unable to sell their book, and now that book just sits in manuscript on their harddrive or desk or bookshelf. Poets on the other hand, tend to work in small-ish print runs, focused on a smaller audience, and being able to do work that won't appeal to a broad mainstream. Book contests change judges every year so that we won’t end up like novelists—without a chance at publication because every publisher in town has already said no. When we talk about the exploitative nature of contests (I know one writer who spent $8,000 on contest before finding a publisher), we should not forget that the system of contests exists to keep the endeavor afloat. It's not a system without a history or an upside. And if you want to only send your manuscript to major presses-- like a novelist--and then just leave it in a drawer after the top 15 or 20 presses say no-- well, you can. But for the most part, we don't.
In some ways, I’m sad that there isn’t a huge sea of poetry consumers. I wish that there were an audience for poetry that rivaled the audience for pop music or novels. But we couldn’t get that audience without fundamentally giving up what we love about poetry. And Poetry is also welcoming and inclusive in a way that few other forms of art are. Very few of the people who purchase a Lady Gaga album will finish listening to it and then feel compelled to start writing songs or designing hats. I would say that over half of the people who purchase a book by Frank Bidart (I would have said Louise Gluck, but I’m too lazy to find the umlaut) will finish the experience of reading it by picking up their own pen. In fact, it’s that act of picking up the pen and beginner’s enthusiasm that leads to journals being overwhelmed by submissions.
I don’t want to sidestep the question of amateur and professional—it’s a real question, and it has real consequences, and please, someone give me a tenure track job teaching poetry! But I think we would be well served by replacing that question: am I a professional or an amateur? with the question, Am I a good citizen of poetry? Do I support the magazines that I love? Do I read poetry? Do I attend poetry readings? Do I write reviews of the poets I care about? Am I honest in positions and opinions? We should all be asking ourselves what kind of poetry world we want, and then working to make that happen. And frankly, I’m speaking so inclusively, that I’m erasing the very real differences between the multiple poetry communities that exist in America. But if one has the choice between $2 for postage & envelopes & printing or $2 to the journal you’re submitting to… isn’t it better to channel the money toward the journal? Do we buy books directly from presses, or do we go through Amazon because it’s cheaper and easier? Could we work to channel our money to poetry, presses, and poets? I feel like there are a lot of other questions that poetry citizen should ask—I’d love it if you would add them to the comments. It’s also the case that the demand for attention (see yesterday’s post) far exceeds the available attention possible. I read about four journals regularly, and then I browse journals at Poet’s House or Barnes & Noble when I can. But it’s hard to keep up. I know that.
Curiously, the dustup over NER happened on two blogs—and as we all know, blogs are volunteer efforts. So the question of professional conduct occurred in amateur space. A good thing probably—as long as we maintain civility (alas, so hard). As long as we think of ourselves as residents with obligations and responsibilities. Let’s be Poetry Citizens. Capital P. Capital C.
