Instructions:
Please do not post any new poems until I am done with this open interview. This interview will be available as a whole on the next issue of MiPoeisas Magazine. I will post one question at a time and you place your answers in the comment section. If you would like to ask a question yourself to the community, please e-mail it to me and if I think it works well for the interview I will let you post the question to the community as well. (e-mail me at chinavieja at gmail dot com with questions).
First question:
How do you really feel about online publication vs print?
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15 comments:
For poetry, I strongly prefer print publication. Print is more portable (I can carry and read a book on the bus, in a park, in a shopping mall -- harder to do with a computer). Print is more durable: Shakespeare's plays have survived in the manuscript folios copied and gathered by hand by a couple of Shakespeare's friends and colleagues; the epic of Gilgamesh, what we have of it, survives (albeit in fragments) on the original clay tablets.
On the other hand, there are computer databases 20 and 30 years old that no one can access any more because the hardware has deteriorated too much and the software is no longer compatible with current technology.
And every one of us has known someone who has lost writing because their hard drive crashed. (It's significant that for anything we really want to save, anything essential, we print it out on paper.)
Poetry published online tends to take on a more ephemeral quality than poetry published in print. You read something online, click on a button, and it's gone, evaporated.
There is also usually more "noise" or visual clutter go to through to read poems online. This dulls the potential impact of poems. The best poems benefit from the blank page space (and the silence) around them. The surrounding space and silence are part of the poem.
I don't object to publishing poems online -- I've published poems in online "magazines" and websites, when they'll publish me and when I like the websites -- but I want people to still be reading my poems 20 or 100 or 1000 years from now -- I want that at least to be possible -- and that, to me, means print.
So Lyle do you think that in a hundred years books will still be in production as we know them today?
For sending poetry I feel very strongly in favour of online. It's cost and eco-friendly. I dislike enormously the principle of sending wads of paper and reply pay coupons - such a mark-up at the post office here for example (60%)...
I get pissed off that mss get returned minus my expensive bulldog clips and/or not at all.
I have an intuition that the printed-process is rather stuffy - that is it's slower, less accessible, more elitist, more niche and so on.
I want my poetry to be simply 'out there' - an example was a recent site which took 4 of my anti-war poems - an Algerian journal/blog/review. They don't pay but who cares? I don't get a 'free' copy - but then I have a house stuffed full of more books than I have rooms for and who needs more poetry mags - I don't read them when they come in any case - but this Algerian site promises to translate my poems into French and Arabic.
Do I want this? Yoooo betcha I do. I have joked that the CIA now have a satellite trained on me reading what brand panties I wear.
My point being if I've got something to say I want it said and I'm not hooked into the 50plus-ish Ted Hughes pastoral filter that so much seems to have to get through to make it 'here.'
I spoke recently with one of the judges of a mainstream poetry award who says she has chosen some young poets who are bending the language.
I would say any quick half hour of scrolling through good poetry blogs/ poetics discussion will give me more language bending than my neuronals can deal with.
I edit an on-line poetry forum and am a contributing editor for a print mag - the former a daily hands-on - literally - the latter a cumbersome process at the best of times - it takes me back to school essay writing and I don't think I'm value add at that one bit.
I love the whole conecept of 'internet' and if the hardware crashes I have 'back-up' and if the end of the world comes we'll all go to heaven in a little row boat.
Click-scroll vs dust-gathering? No contest. I have my little black stacks of John Donne ad nauseam & a brand new allergen filter Dyson vacuum cleaner. Mr. Microsoft is buying up all the valuable books as we all know. I can't compete with that.
I am turned on by the speed at which the technology changes - podcasts are an example. I'd love my poems to become holograms - if some people have problems with 'list' poems for example can you imagine how hot an' bothered they'd be by 3D words dancing in their parlours?? Bring it on.
I'm crazy about both, as each has its place. Efficiency and breadth of exposure (for readers and writers equally) are paramount with online. It's a beautifully and bountifully effective means of showing visual poetry as well as textual work.
Print journals produce a more evident artifact that can be touched and held. This feature of print appeals of course, based upon the palpable feel, the psychometry that renders those very transferable sensations we send and receive. Sensory vibrant, too.
Sorry, Ann Marie, intuition is not allowed.
For my part, I strongly prefer print. You can hold a book in your hands, feel it's texture, know it's real.
I like to read BOOKS of a poet's published works because I, too, like to hold it in my hand and also because it can be bought or recommended easily for someone else to buy at Amazon or a bookstore. Regarding journals, they still hold enough prestige that it's nice to have been published in a few but if I want to share, how? I can't afford to buy and mail copies to my friends. I love online Journals. I can send the link whereever I like and have created a whole new generation of poetry readers this way (or so my friends tell me).
Yes, some online journals do die on the vine, but so do print journals or else they get sequested in college libraries or in the bookshelves of the relatively small number of subscribers.
oops....'sequestered' was a typo above.
sorry Pris, oops s not allowed
'sequested': requested out of secluded sequence (as from college libraries or bookshelves of a relatively small number of subscribers)
No, Ann Marie dear, it's intuition that's not allowed. What you refer to are assumptions about the printed process.
thanks, Ann Marie (blush)
Feel? (I just woke up) I can’t feel [it]. Electronic publication is the only way. Some like the feel and the smell (tactile thing), I, also, like the feel and smell of print publications. UH,OH!, however… online publication(s) is the future or really the now, the now. Same thing, same thing, how do you find it? It’s very wonderfully ego=(narcissistic) to have a print publication, but what the fuck is that? I love it. You answer (you answer it). I say, burn the coal and gas to keep the electricity going to keep the online poems in (your) my face. Is there a difference, no, it’s all the same now. But, in the end(ing(s)) much more. Seriously, I think we are moving away from print to electronic media (though, Barnes and Noble, etc… are thriving?). It may take another generation (first time I have been able to use that one) before we see electronic media being the pervasive form. I love to curl up with my laptop in bed and read a novel, no page turning, just down arrow, no rolling over for each page change, just down arrow… when it’s feeling less than an experience of a book, I put my Salman Rushdie book (Midnight’s Children) next to my laptop for the wonderful paper smell.
cheers, hks
I have a collection of old poetry books that I have been building on and adding to for several years now. Nothing can compare to a book in hand, especially a nice old book with rich gold embossing and yellowing pages. If you get lucky you will find a little note on the inside cover like "To Marie, I love you more than life itself, John" or an old bookmark or personal paper forgotten. It's a treasure, an antique. New or old there is something to be said for feeding the "senses" of our bodies.
On the other side of the spectrum is the world of internet and digital publishing. They offer
many opportunities for writers, students and readers. For one, there is the instant gratification factor. You want it, you want it now, it's there for your taking.
You don't have to wait for mail or the chance to run out to the bookstore. Second, the quality and quantity of content is improving and growing constantly.
When you look at the big picture
and technology along with the fact
that the internet is still a baby I think print will be almost obsolete someday.
Many public schools use laptops
instead of books. As time passes these kids lose patience with print. Generations are growing up on screens instead of paper.
Publishing will never die of course, we will just be publishing in new ways. I can see the day where all novels, textbooks
encyclopedias, etc. will come on small disks similar to a digital camera card to be inserted into one universal type reader similar to the size of a print novel that is light and portable (perhaps even smells and sounds will be incorporated into the experience). Technically that day is already here with ebooks and portable palms.
Changes need to happen though. Laptops aren't the best choice. I'm probably not going to want to take mine to the beach. They're not very efficient energy wise, how far into the book before your battery dies? Portable palms aren't very eye friendly for book reading.
Small presses might fare better. I want to say though I don't think books will die completely. But in a hundred years they just might be more like antiques. These changes are coming. They are here. Get ready. It's exciting.
Well, for now, I think print has all the prestige. And, for lack of a better word, all the rarity. Compared to the online word, it is more difficult, more expense, more everything, to publish a poem on paper. (This would be even more true if the poems were hand-copied by semi-literate monks, on real calfskin. Illuminated, etc. Especially so if on scrolls.)
Unfortunately, none of this makes the poems themselves any better.
I can think of one clear advantage of the internet though. The best poems can be read by more, sooner. It's unlikely, for example, that we'll ever again see a poet the caliber of say, an Emily Dickinson, escape the notice of her peers. (At least, lets hope not. I mean, it could still happen I guess.)
That and the scroll bar. The scroll bar is huge. That is like, well, that is like having scrolls.
--D
i'm sorry
i'm a print snob
i have a love affair with paper
some thing about being
able to hold the poem
the internet / bless it all to hell
i love it / the exposure i'm sure
much larger / i do the majority of my writing in my various on line journals / / but still it seems
so un stable / / a thrill to be on line
a bigger thrill to be in print ;)
plus i edit a print journal /
there is nothing like a new book
hot off the press
imo
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