Writers Friendship, David Alpaugh cheers the soul

My friend David Alpaugh, author of “Counterpoint,” “Heavy Lifting,” and widely read and discussed essays on "The Professionalization of Poetry" and "New Math of Poetry," responds to my new poem, “Legacy: Muse Neglect,” which opens

We’re comin’ up to my birthday./I’m seventy-seven—twenty-three more and I’ll be a hundred!/So what’s it all about, sixty-odd years of writing, scribbling?/Etc.

Hello, Robert:

My apology for taking so long getting back to you on "Legacy: Muse Neglect." Been tidal-waved by late days of summer, gearing up for fall obligations (Coolbrith, Valona, etc.).

"Legacy" is a brave poem. You certainly touch a responsive chord in this poet, as I, too, am starting to wonder if I've lost the muse, have been treading water post-Counterpoint. Didn't old man Wordsworth and young man Byron have similar doubts? ("Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream?").

I love the concrete "eye to eye" confrontation with your "first mutt," that "first published poem." The metaphorical sense here is as sure as it is quiet. The paradoxical reversal of the dog becoming master and wagging the man is richly comic, and most poignant in that manly dogly reproach, "Bad poet, bad poet!" Unpretentiousness that comes from truly having the goods rather than just the flash has always been one of your most appealing qualities.

Cheer up, Bob. "Legacy" is proof that you're poems have not lost their canine magic. Dogliness was and is the metaphor for what you continue to aim for in your work. Falling a bit short much of the time is inevitable. (When Samuel Beckett was asked if he had a favorite work he shook his head and muttered: "Something wrong with all of them.")

The more I look at the history of poetry the more I believe that our mission is (in Frost's words) "to lodge a few poems where they will be hard to get rid of." You've done that with "Uncle Dog," "God is in the Cracks," "Heavenly Sex" and a dozen others, and now "Legacy" will be in the running (or, as you would say, trotting!).

The only question is the crucial one for our Po-Busy time: will the gatekeepers get out of the way and allow poetry to live not by status and accreditation but by love? Here, I'm afraid that "the worst are full of passionate intensity." Let's hope we can overshoot their papier-mâché palace and land a few good poems on the other side!

With deep respect for your generous, generative humor,

David

Poetry Workshop(s) #2, Professionalization

With Roy Mash, Events Coordinator
for Marin Poetry Center.


The Professionalization of Poetry - Thurs., Feb. 21, 7:30 PM - Falkirk Cultural Center, San Rafael.
Panelists include Becky Foust (above), David Alpaugh (top right) and myself.

Given the topic, The Professionalization of Poetry, David Alpaugh begins by turning to Wikipedia for a definition of Professionalization:

"Professionalization is the social process by which any trade or occupation transforms itself into a true 'profession of the highest integrity and competence.' This process tends to involve establishing acceptable qualifications, a professional body or association to oversee the conduct of members of the profession and some degree of demarcation of the qualified from unqualified amateurs. This creates 'a hierarchical divide between the knowledge-authorities in the professions and a deferential citizenry.' This demarcation is often termed 'occupational closure', as it means that the profession then becomes closed to entry from outsiders, amateurs and the unqualified: a stratified occupation 'defined by professional demarcation and grade.' The origin of this process is said to have been with guilds during the Middle Ages, when they fought for exclusive rights to practice their trades as journeymen, and to engage unpaid apprentices.

"Professions also possess power, prestige, high income, high status and privileges; their members soon come to comprise an elite class of people, cut off to some extent from the common people, and occupying an elevated station in society: 'a narrow elite...a hierarchical social system: a system of ranked orders and classes.'
The professionalization process tends to establish the group norms of conduct and qualification of members of a profession and tends also to insist that members of the profession achieve 'conformity to the norm' and abide more or less strictly with the established procedures and any agreed code of conduct, which is policed by professional bodies, for 'accreditation assures conformity to general expectations of the profession.'

[from Wikipedia]

- Someone at the Poetry Center later commented on our panel, "Rebecca Foust was thorough in her objections and rebuttals (like the lawyer that she is); Robert Sward gave a sweet, scruffy flavor to the event as someone who's been around the poetry scene for 50 years..." okay, but still trying to figure out what "scruffy" means... physical appearance? Presentation?

- The crux of the matter is this, that writing workshops end up teaching poets to write poems that will pass muster in the workshop, the little "hot house..." writing poems to please the other students. More than anything else... it's insecurity, that's a constant in every workshop I've sat in on, taught, been a student in... too often that's the emotion than overrides all others... so, out of fear, so it seems to me, people too often are too willing to write to please. Love me, love my poem. Love me, love my poem.

- For me, the best thing about the three years I spent in Iowa City – I was later invited back to teach -
was the importance of poetry... that there wasn’t a day when I wasn’t writing or somehow interacting with others who were doing the same. And I had plenty of insecurity. I just didn't sign on to the prevailing aesthetic, Brooks & Warren, John Crowe Ransom, the New Criticism... this was half a century ago. Shit!

- I’m old enough (older than John McCain!) to have heard Robert Frost at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (c. 1960) say calling oneself a poet was a form of arrogance. Frost said a seat companion on a train once asked him what he did for a living. Frost answered saying he was a farmer.

- Never call yourself a poet, he said. That’s for other people to do. One has to earn the designation. You’re a poet for other reasons than the fact you've earned an MFA.

- But what do I know? I’ve been writing and publishing since 1957... I have doubts... I know at some level I haven't changed since I began scribbling aboard LST 914 during the Korean War. I'm a wannabe. Wannabe. Wannabe. Wannabe. Fine. I don't give a fuck. As long as I can go on writing.

[more to come...]


------

David Alpaugh’s essay “The Professionalization of Poetry” was serialized in the Jan/Feb and March/April 2003 issues of Poets & Writers Magazine and drew hundreds of emails and wide discussion on the Internet. Alpaugh's fiction, drama, and criticism have appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and anthologies. His first collection, Counterpoint, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press, and his chapbooks have been published by Coracle Books and Pudding House. One of the Bay Area's most popular featured readers, he has taught at the University of California Berkeley Extension and hosts a monthly reading series at Valona Delicatessen in Crockett. His second collection Heavy Lifting appeared earlier this year from Alehouse Press. "The Professionalization of Poetry" is available on-line at Huston Poetry Review.

Rebecca Foust, a former activist and grassroots political organizer for students with learning disorders, is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry in Warren Wilson’s low residency program. Her book about raising a son with Asperger’s Syndrome, Dark Card, won the 2007 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Award (Texas Review Press), and her full length manuscript was a finalist in three national book competitions, including Poetry’s 2007 Emily Dickinson First Book Award. Also in 2007, Foust’s poetry won two Pushcart nominations and several other awards and distinctions, appearing in Atlanta Review, JAMA, Margie, 2007 Marin Poetry Center Anthology, North American Review, Nimrod International Journal and many other reviews.
www.rebeccafoust.com

Robert Sward has taught at Cornell University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and UC Santa Cruz. A Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, he was chosen by Lucille Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award. His many books include "Four Incarnations" (Coffee House Press); "Heavenly Sex," "The Collected Poems," and "God is in the Cracks" (Black Moss Press). "The Collected" and "God is in the Cracks" are now in their second printing.
www.robertsward.com

Do poetry workshops do anyone any good? Iowa...

(University of Iowa campus, Iowa City)

Are MFA Programs Killing Poetry? Do poetry workshops do anyone any good?

Serving on a panel, The Professionalization of Poetry, with David Alpaugh, drawing on David’s essays in the Jan/Feb and Mar/April 2003 issues of Poets & Writers Magazine. Others on our panel include Michelle Bitting, MFA candidate at Pacific University, Oregon; and Rebecca Foust, winner of two Pushcart nominations.

Marin Poetry Center, Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission, San Rafael, CA. Thurs., 7:30 PM, Feb. 21.

Topics for panelists:

1. Do poetry workshops do anyone any good?
2. Are MFA programs killing poetry?

3. Would those who choose poetry as a "career path" benefit by getting a "real job"?

4. Is the poetry publishing scene a scam?


Starting with #1, the answer is, Yes... for me personally. Why? Well, need to back up for a moment.

I began writing while serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. A landing ship (LST 914, too small to warrant a name), large as a football field, lots of space, lots of privacy, lots of time to wander around in our bare feet... very casual duty... early 50s, McCarthy era, but we were something of a hippie ship, so, with access to a typewriter, a library (I was ship’s librarian), I got to read (Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, Melville, Carl Sandburg) and write.

I was 18, just of high school, and thought what I wrote deserved a larger audience. At the very least I wanted feedback from other writers, teachers, perhaps an editor... I had never seen a poetry magazine, had no idea there was such a thing, though I’d grown up in Chicago, home of Poetry. Our little ship had a subscription to Time Magazine and that’s the one magazine I read and that’s where I sent my first packet of poems. A playful editor responded with a rejection note in rhyming couplets. I took this as encouragement and, in truth, am still pro-Time.

My first experience with a poetry workshop was at the University of Iowa, which I attended with the G.I. Bill and a fellowship, courtesy Paul Engle, the Director. Engle had taken over from Karl Seashore who, as David Alpaugh notes in his essay, helped start the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (1936-- ).

John Berryman and Robert Lowell had taught there shortly before I arrived. W.D. Snodgrass, a graduate, had won the Pulitzer Prize for Heart’s Needle. Philip Levine, Donald Justice, Robert Mezey, Henri Coulette... they were the ones who sat in judgment on the poems presented and set the standard which, at that time (1956-58), was formal formal formal.

In my poem “Iowa Writers’ Workshop—1958” (Collected Poems, p. 76-77) I refer to them as "the four crows."

“...Ours is an age of light. Our crows*
Reflect the age, Eisenhower-Nixon
Colored stripes, rainbow solids, blacks & whites.

"Ruffling their wings, Mezey, Coulette, Levine
Refuse to vote. [i.e., comment on a poem under discussion]

“Page four, 'Apologies to William S.'
Apologies, our third sonnet...”
And those who teach, who write
And teach, the man at hand, apologize
For themselves, and themselves at hand.

[later – same poem]

“...One has written
Nothing new, and it is inconceivable
That one would, or will ever write again.

“...Page one. Walled-in glances at the author.
And then the author disappears,
The poem anonymous.
Voice. Voices. There are voices about it:
Anonymous. The self. A sonnet’s self...

“The room is filled with it. It is a bird.
It sits beside us and extends
Its wings. Mezey hits it with his elbow.
The bird shrieks and sprawls
Upon the floor. We surrender

"We surrender to its death. The poem breathes,
Becomes its author and departs.
We all depart. And watch
The green walls take our seats. Apologies.
Brooks & Warren. DuPont. Edsel & Ford.”
---

The four *crows? At the time (c. 1958) I was researching and writing poems about birds, "The Apteryx," "The Dodo..." as for the crow, one has only to turn to Wikipedia...

"Corvids and man

"Certain species have been considered pests; the Common Raven, Australian Raven and Carrion Crow have all been known to kill weak lambs as well as eating freshly dead corpses probably killed by other means...

"Crows make a wide variety of calls or vocalizations. Whether the crows' system of communication constitutes a language is a topic of debate... Crows have also been observed to respond to calls of other species; this behavior is presumably learned because it varies regionally. Crows' vocalizations are complex and poorly understood. Some of the many vocalizations that crows make are a "caw", usually echoed back and forth between birds, a series of "caws" in discrete units, counting out numbers, [sounds like poetry to me!] a long caw followed by a series of short caws (usually made when a bird takes off from a perch), an echo-like "eh-aw" sound... These vocalizations vary by species, and within each species vary regionally. In many species, the pattern and number of the numerical vocalizations have been observed to change in response to events in the surroundings (i.e. arrival or departure of [other] crows).

"As a group, the crows show remarkable examples of intelligence, and Aesop's fables of The Crow and the Pitcher shows that humans have long viewed the crow as an intelligent animal. Crows and ravens often score very highly on intelligence tests. Certain species top the avian IQ scale. Crows in the northwestern U.S. show modest linguistic capabilities and the ability to relay information over great distances, live in complex, hierarchic societies involving hundreds of individuals with various "occupations", and have an intense rivalry with the area's less socially advanced ravens.

"...Crows will engage in a kind of mid-air jousting, or air-"chicken" to establish pecking order..."

Crows, poetry workshops and pecking order...

I’ve studied in and led poetry workshops since 1956. In fact, in 1968 I happily returned to Iowa to teach. Some of my best friends—and worst enemies—have been poets. The pie is small. The rivalry is huge. And I compete. But it’s not so much the rewards as the fact other people care about writing, that my writing benefits, I find, from association—positive or negative—with other writers.

Crows, poetry workshops and pecking order... I edit a feature for Web Del Sol / Perihelion. It’s called Writers’ Friendship and has to do with the relationship / what it’s like for one writer to sustain a friendship with another. Lola Haskins, a fine poet who teaches Computer Science at the University of Florida writes:

"For example, when I meet some poets, I get the feeling that they’re sizing me up to see if I’m any threat. If the verdict is that I’m not, then they relax. If they decide otherwise, they clam up and start looking over my shoulder for someone more useful to talk to. Sometimes, it goes much farther than this, perhaps even to the point of paranoia. For instance, ...a few years ago, when two poets came to my town to teach in the writing program, I thought, great, more poets, and bought their books. But not only have they not been polite to me--without ever exchanging more than ten words total with me in all the years since they’ve come, they put me down to their students on a regular basis. So why are they doing this? I’ve decided it’s because they’re protecting English, which they see as their territory. It seems such a pity, but I know it’s not an isolated case. I’ve heard other stories like that, where certain writers seem to have peed on their four corners, to make sure interlopers are aware that only they, the purveyors of urine, and their students are welcome within their borders. And if someone tries to cross that line, he or she finds out what that odd odor means and, to mix a metaphor, in spades."

So, back to the original question, Do poetry workshops do anyone any good?

Is there value in hanging out with some of the best teachers and writers in the country? Iowa may have been a mixed blessing for me--in the late 50s with my ragged verse--but it was, overall, very much a blessing. The community of writers, the contagious passion for writing and for poetry itself... overall, speaking for myself, the answer is yes yes yes.

--
David Alpaugh's Professionalization of Poetry
http://www.houstonpoetryreview.net/fall2003_review_001.html

Getting Published 3

Why I Publish In E-Zines: One Writer's View of Online Publishing
(Originally published in 1996)

Computer-phobic writers, fellow freelancers and fans of olde style
lit-mags ask why I have chosen to publish in e-zines like Web del Sol / Perihelion; Alsop Review; Blue Moon Review; X-Connect; eSCENE; Gruene Street; Realpoetik; Recursive Angel; Transmog; and Zero City, to name a few.

1. I publish on the Net and World Wide Web because it's cheap: email after all is free.
2. It's more efficient: no SASEs, no International Reply Coupons; fewer trips to the office supply store.
3. It saves time: I don't have to wait 18 months to hear back and the rejections, when they come, are less annoying because a) I've invested less in the submission process and b) it's easy enough to send the work somewhere else.
4. It gives me the opportunity to improve on what I write and make changes even after publication. Zen Buddhists say "First thought, best thought." I say, "Think again."
5. It allows for interaction: timely feedback from fellow writers, editors, publishers, agents, and students.

I recently [remember, this is 1996!] sent a poem to Realpoetik ("rpoetik, the little magazine of the Internet, a moderated listserv..."), got an e-mail acceptance message and saw the poem published, all within 24 hours. Editor Robert Salasin claims he has approximately 3,000 subscribers. All I know is that over the next few days I got more responses ("fine work...," "wish you continued success in Cyberspace...," "would like to use excerpts from A Much-Married Man...") from that single appearance than I got from 30 years of publishing in magazines like The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Transatlantic Review, etc.

Yes, it's a form of instant gratification. Just what the world needs, right? In my opinion, instant gratification has gotten a bad rap. Or maybe I'm late to the game and am just beginning to catch on. Anyway, I write for myself and always have, but I still agree with Whitman: it doesn't hurt to have an audience.

I still use pen and pencil to write and revise and turn to my Olympia portable to type envelopes. I'm still doing what I did in my 20s: writing, revising and sending the best work I have to the editors of the journals I admire.

Writing is re-writing and I spend just as much time revising now as I ever did. To this day I send poems and stories to traditional print journals and, when the publication appears, sometimes long to remove a line or two or correct a typo or printers error. A while back the then London-based Transatlantic Review published "Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee" and destroyed the poem, made it meaningless with a record thirteen typographical errors. They never sent me page proofs and, once the poem was printed, there was nothing I could do except rage at the editor, the inattentive, lackadaisical schmuck.

Now, when I submit work to an e-journal there is no typographer involved because there is no type to set. And if an error occurs or I change my mind, voila! I can email corrections and see the fix made promptly and at no expense. I like that.

Apart from an increasingly large, responsive audience, what's the payoff? Payment used to be in contributor copies. Now with magazines appearing in electronic print, there are no contributor copies to send. Still, a few mainline lit-mags and e-journals do make an effort to pay. In all the years I've been writing, I haven't come close--not one year have I come close--to covering the cost of postage. How much is poetry worth? In 1958, in an effort to determine the dollar value, if any, of my poetry, I engaged in an experiment. A student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, I sent half a dozen poems to the local phone company as a way of paying my bill. Not only did Ma Bell send them back, but she disconnected my phone. So be it.

*

I'm doing multi-media stuff now combining poetry, fiction and non-fiction with photographs, paintings, movies and--soon--music and the human voice. I'm collaborating with visual artists, computer scientists and other writers. If you're interested, check out Earthquake Collage and Highway 17 on my home page.

My first computer was an Apple IIe and my first word processing program was Magic Window. Today I use Microsoft Word and Photoshop on a Mac G-4, supercharged by my son. How does it all work? I have no idea. I just switch on my modem, gaze into cyberspace and type away. It's still Magic Window to me.

"So what's the point?" my partner wants to know. "Isn't this just one big ego trip? Who really reads those e-journals? Do you actually think you're going to sell copies of your books on the Net? And what about copyright? How do you know someone isn't going to rip off that new book of poems of yours?"

Of course she's right, but I have all those virtual magazines and editors on the Net waiting for me to check in.

"Gee, honey, I don't know," I say. "I'm just gonna go upstairs for a moment and check my mail."

Copyright (c) 1996, 2001, 2007, Robert Sward

[In response to the above, my friend David Alpaugh writes, "I enjoyed your explanation of why you moved to Internet publishing. I've gravitated in that direction for the reasons you note and also because the sort of person who runs an Internet site tends to be more progressive, less reactionary poetry-wise on the whole than the old school hard copy editors (perhaps because many of the netters are not cloistered in the academy, out and about in the world in various fields). Site editors strike me as more in tune with the kind of reader Dana Gioia would like to recapture for poetry."]

Please see Getting Published 2 - The New Math of Poetry for more on David Alpaugh.

Getting Published 2

Getting Published 2 - The New Math of Poetry, courtesy my friend, poet and publisher David Alpaugh, whose essays on The Professionalization of Poetry appeared in Poets & Writers.
[Note: David's New Math article is still being researched and does not factor in the many hundreds of "Single Poem" contests.]

1) A cursory investigation on the Internet turns up 158 full collection poetry book contests and 172 poetry chapbook contests. That's 330 contests a year--and though just an approximate figure, it's a conservative one.

2) If the figure holds at the current level there will be 3,300 poetry book contest prize awards each decade--33,000 by the end of this century.

3) Everything leads me to believe that the figure will not hold--that the current trend and history of exponential growth will continue and that the figure will double, triple, quadruple, perhaps even ten-tuple as technology proceeds.

4) We could easily be looking at over 100,000 poetry book awards by the end of the century! Each book chosen from hundreds, in some cases thousands, of entries by "distinguished" poet/judges--and published by supposedly selective, credible presses, trying earnestly to bring the best poetry available to the reading public.

5) How could a 22nd century English professor be confident that he had a handle on the best 21st century without carefully reading these 33, 000 to 100,000 "prize-winning" books? And how about the tens of thousands of books that didn't win prizes? How about the tens of thousands of self-published ones? Shakespeare self-published his Sonnets. Blake self-published Songs of Innocence and Experience. Whitman Leaves of Grass. Would scholars have to specialize, say, in the first three days of June, 2042, to make certain that they weren't missing a "great" poet?

6) As for individual poems, we have two popular internet zines that publish a daily poem: Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. And we have Garrison Keillor reading at least one poem daily on The Writer's Almanac. There is little duplication, if any, between these three daily reads. 365 x 3 gives me 1095 poems a year. Let's round it off to 1000. That's ten thousand poems per decade and 100,000 by the end of the century (assuming that someone picks up the ball for Garrison when he leaves us for that great anthology in the sky).

7) Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Writer's Almanac are all highly "selective." They are choosing poems from respected publishers, and literary journals. Each of those collections, journals, anthologies is full of poems presumably just as good that don't make it onto the net or radio. Assuming that the publications they draw from average 60 pages of poetry each and we have 6 MILLION poems to add to our 21st Century "new math" total! Of course that figure is high because although the 3 entities almost never duplicate poems they do draw on many of the same publications, presses, journals, etc. So let's be conservative and cut it in half. (But, remember, there are at least as many fine anthologies, journals, and collections that never get the nod from VD, PD, or GK and would need to be added in).

8) And keep in mind that so far we have only talked about hard-copy publications! For Poetry Daily and Verse Daily only select from print, never from the internet where hundreds of journals are now up and running with more coming on line almost every day!

9) Certainly it is conservative to estimate the number of poems to be published during the 21st century as exceeding 10 million. It will probably be many times that!