Bitching with Nicole: On Becoming a Prick by Nin Andrews

Last winter, Nicole Santalucia, published her first book, Driving Yourself to Jail in July, a delightful chapbook full of the spunk and spirit and incredible life stories.  After its arrival, Nicole wrote and asked me, How do I get my book out there? Do I have to become a little prick? 

No, I wrote back. You have to become a big prick.  A big self-promoting prick.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since then, I have thought a lot about the pressure poets feel to promote their books.  To tweet them, to Facebook them, to blog them, to Tumblr them in order to get them reviewed somewhere somehow, and to find that illusive key to success.  You have to build your social platform, a media-savvy poet informed me.  But how?  And does it work?  Especially if we are all doing it at once?  And aren’t we all a little tired of the endless selfies and narcissistic posts about our latest moment in the sun?   Am I the only one who feels nauseated by it all?

It’s as if we are supposed to become our own personal advertising agencies, selling books as if they were common household goods.  But really, who, but a handful of other poets, are our interested buyers?  This isn’t Avon we’re selling.  Or Tupperware.  I had one editor suggest I join a church or the Y in order to find more people to buy my poetry.  I am not sure whom among the reverent would purchase books like Why God Is a Woman, Spontaneous Breasts, or The Book of Orgasms, but I suppose anything is possible.  I had another editor suggest I move to New York City because, well, who buys poetry books in Poland, Ohio? In New York, he said, I would meet the right people who would give me the right readings, write glowing reviews, and invite me onto the stages where real success happens. (If only such success were as simple as a move! If only I could move with a snap of my fingers!) I had another editor insist I retake my photo for the book jacket because my photograph wasn’t pretty. Should I go to Glamour Shots? I asked.  He answered simply, Books by pretty women sell better. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clearly the presses are as desperate as the poets.  I’ve had fellow poets show me contracts from publishers in which they have had to agree to review other poetry books by their publisher—as well as provide readings and audiences for poets published by their publisher.  I have had friends tell me that that their editors have asked if they could guarantee book sales.  And I, like most of my fellow poets, have filled out pages of information for my presses that might, just might help them sell my books.  And afterwards, I have felt pathetic.  Like a lost cause.  Or an ugly teenage girl at a high school dance.   I am not, alas, a social-media personality.  I try from time to time, but I stink at it.  I am naturally introverted. I feel overwhelmed by the prospect of selling myself.  I don’t like being my own cheerleader, pompoms and megaphone in hand, leaping and shouting to an imaginary audience—Look at me here!  Look at me there! Look at me everywhere!

And I am not alone. Even the most accomplished poets have emailed me about their distaste for this aspect of poetry publishing.  Recently, I blurbed the forthcoming book, Evening Train, by the well-known poet, Tom Clarke, a former editor of The Paris Review whose work has been widely published and anthologized and is included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry.  I wondered why such an accomplished poet would even need my blurb.  Tom commented that he is too ill to promote his books, so no one reads them. To give you a taste of Tom’s work, here’s an apropos poem from Evening Train:  

 

Blank (Don't Be Late)

A generation

mesmerized by

small screens

will always have
its own image

to remember itself

by

 

But even the most outgoing and media-savvy poets sometimes surprise me by asking for help.  The effervescent and outgoing poet, January Gill O’Neil, recently emailed to ask if I might consider reviewing her forthcoming book, Misery Islands. Her press, also one of my presses, CavanKerry, asked her to find reviewers.  A friend of January’s and of the CavanKerry Press editors, I would like to say, Yes!  I would happily tell the world to seek out her work.   I recently nominated her poem for a Pushcart.  Here’s a poem from Misery Islands that will give you an idea of January’s gift.

 

WHAT THE BODY KNOWS

The body knows it is part of a whole, its parts believed to be in good working order. It knows it’s getting older, years ticking off like pages on a desk calendar, your doctor’s appointment circled in red. Try not to picture the body sitting alone in the waiting room. The body creaks up and down like a hardwood floor, you tell your doctor this; he says your breast is a snow globe. He says, Inside there’s a snowstorm—my job is to decipher a bear from a moose in the snow. He flattens the breast with a low radiation sandwich press. The body wonders if its parts will turn into Brie cheese, if its fingers will fuse and become asparagus stalks. He says it’s possible, but don’t give it a second thought. He says insulate your body with spinach. He says true understanding of the body will enable it to live long and live well. But the body knows when its leg is being pulled. The body is a container of incidental materials. If it listens carefully, it can hear its own voice making the wrong sound.

 

But I am anxious about reviewing friends’ poetry books, simply because they are my friends.  I don’t know if I could be completely honest or objective.  Poetry is such a small world, and I know most of the poets I would consider reviewing.  But I have often wondered if many bad reviews have been written out of pettiness, jealousy, and bad blood, while many good reviews have not been written for the very reasons that I state.  Am I only imagining this, or is it true that the more successful and high-profile a writer becomes, the more hostile the reviewers can become?

 But at least the high-profile poets occasionally get reviewed.  And sometimes they are actually read as well. The rest of the poets, the legions that fill the AWP conference every year, all desperately trying to connect and sell their slender volumes of poetry, go mostly unnoticed, unread, and certainly un-reviewed.  Though the more extraverted the poet, the more attractive, the more willing to post daily photos and ads for their beautiful selves, the more successful they become.  Or do they?  I guess that’s a question of how one defines success. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sometimes wonder what the social-media craze says about the state of American poetry.  I wonder who in the literary canon would have thrived in an era of social media. Which poets would have never seen the light of day? Of course, our beloved Dickinson would have nothing to do with the admiring bog—in her own day or this one. Whitman, I imagine, might have lived on Facebook.  I could see him posting new variations of his Leaves of Grass weekly, notifying his hundreds of “friends” of each revision, annoying every one of them. What about Frost?  Would the nature poet shun it all, or would he surf the web by on snowy evenings?  Whose face this is I think I know. Her house is in a Midwest town.  She will not see me stopping now/ To see she’s fat as a dairy cow. What about Bishop? Would she say, about the loss of privacy, This loss is a disaster. All the hours badly spent . . .. And Moore?  I think she might confide, I, too, dislike it.  And then point out the real toadies among us. And Eliot? Would he have written, Let us go now, you and I, to our Facebook pages?  Would he define his relationship status, It’s complicated? I don’t know, but I, for one, feel etherised by it all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[jim c]

I think you're pretty enough!

-- loyal fellow obscure Ohioan

[DL]

Terrific post. What you say about reviews is true. The better known, the more OK it is to criticize the writer. I call this the resentment index. And not reviewing books is a wise strategy for coping, and it means you have more time for other things, say I, who spent years making his living writing book reviews and other free-lance articles. I remember writing a few devastating reviews and then realizing that it was better for the soul as well more difficult (more usefully difficult) to avoid such bad books as you'd enjoy denouncing in favor of things you can praise even if with reservations. There is not a single American poet alive who is satisfied with his or her fate. That is one aspect of the state of American poetry.

[Denise Duhamel]

Nin, you are amazing! I share all your feelings--it is embarrassing to self-promote, and yet I feel like a slacker when I don't do it. I am not on Facebook or Twitter. I don't even have a website! It seems to me women poets should NOT have to have pretty photos of themselves on the backs of their books. I mean, one of the perks of being a poet is writing in pajamas and not washing your hair for a few days. It's kind of creepy to think someone buys a book because they like the author's photo. Isn't that what porn is for? Or TV? Or even fashion magazines? I love Tom's poem "Blank (Don't Be Late)." My sentiments exactly.

[jimmy fallon]

Ew, Denise. You don't wash your hair for several days? Ew.

[Halvard Johnson]

Methinks it's more to get them read than to get them reviewed. I can't think of any poetry I've read because of reviews. Finding readers--another thing entirely.

Halvard Johnson
[email protected]

[Nin Andrews]

Yes, I agree that getting read is the problem.

And I don’t know if reviews matter or not. Ages ago, my chapbook, Spontaneous Breasts, received a bad review in which the reviewer said, Nin Andrews is obsessed with breasts. She thinks they should grow larger and larger like penises. I have to admit, I liked the review. I wish I’d saved it.

More upsetting are reviews of books I admire. I remember a snarky review of The Oxford Book of American Poetry, long enough ago that I don’t remember what it said, but I do remember thinking, Oh, some poet thinks he should have been included in the anthology. The Oxford is my go-to anthology -- so much better and more readable that the thin-paged Norton’s. Did that review hurt? I hope not.

It’s funny to think that reviews of poetry might not make much difference, while reviews of everything from clothing to electronics to pet costumes on websites like Amazon matter so much that once, when I gave a bad review to a product, a representative from the company phoned and offered me money to take the review down.

And on another note—I think it was last week that I heard on NPR that the latest hair fad is oily hair. Women are spending a lot of money on expensive hair oils—that is, women who wash their hair more than every few days.

[Lady_bronte]

Nin, this is so good. It is new age, and I don't think you have to be media savvy, but boy does it help. You do not have to move to New York, though I'd love to have you in New York. This is an important post. Thank you.....

[Don Juan Carlos Aventura]

I agree with thee, Lady B.

[jimmy fallon]

I feel you. It's a Wen-Wen.