american (sic) hybrid

*

A quote from Holderlin:

"There is only one real quarrel in the world: which is more important, the whole or the individual part."

Poetry, or the poem?

Process, or product?

In practice, poets do seem to make a choice between the two—I'm hardly the first to note this . . .

I'm sorry, but I don't think this "one real quarrel" can be ended or resolved by proclamation—

Of course you can always assert that your "American [sic] Hybrid" has transcended this argument,

and sell your illusory empty amalgam,

market your scam (or dream) . . . but?

***
As to which option is preferable, surely it depends on the personality of the poet?

"The whole" or "poetry" worked for O'Hara,

while "the individual part" or "the poem" worked for Larkin.

You can't say either of them was the wrong choice.


***

open no freebie

*
There's an interesting piece on the Poetry Foundation website

(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=238198)

about the joys of buying books of poetry—

When I lived in the Boston area I often bought poetry books at the Brattle bookstore on West Street across from the Common, off of Tremont St, nearby where the college I taught at was located—

if you visit the Boston area, I urge you to check out the Brattle bookstore: really, you can find terrific books for a dollar on their outdoor book racks—

I chagrin myself everytime I remember an item from any number of books I had in my hand and could have bought for a dollar or three there at the Brattle, and didn't——

The note on the PF site commends the Elliott Bay bookstore in Seattle as a delightful place to browse for poetry books—

one of the comments below the note mentions the "Open Books" shop, also there in Seattle, which specializes in poetry books—

I'm sure Open Books is a great venue,

but, how shall I phrase it, I had a contretemps with them

regarding their disposition of my poetry books,

I mean the poetry books I publish at LULU.com

(all of which, let me remind anyone reading this, can be downloaded FREE from my "storefront" page, see>>>first link on the sidebar to the right here)

—Now a few months ago I ordered some of my LULU collections to be printed and shipped to Open Books,

not on consignment, mind you,

please understand that: I was donating my books to them, no cost, free of charge—

I contacted/emailed Open Books and made one request:

that they place my crummy little vanity volumes

on their "freebie shelf"—

Like many small independent bookstores, they have a freebie shelf,

and are to be commended for that—

every small bookstore should have a freebie shelf—

But, long story short, Open Books refused to put my books on their freebie shelf—

the upshot of which is, that I no longer donate my books to them—

***
Well, the point is, that I would like to give my books away free, or send them to venues that would give them away free, but the latter are hard to find—

I begged the Grolier Poetry Book Shop for example, to give away free the books which I had donated to them,

but they refused too, just like Open Books did—

***

never mind all the bad reviews and insults, here's another reason I quit the Pobiz

*
An editor at a magazine I respect greatly asked me via email today to send them some poems if I would—

here is my reply:

Dear [Editor],

thanks for your kind words . . . much appreciated.

I haven't submitted poems anywhere since around 2004,

instead I collate the poems as they get written and publish them in various volumes on LULU.com,

from whence all my books of old and new poetry can be downloaded for free as pdfs

—they can also be purchased as perfectbound paperbacks for the cost of production and shipping (I always set my "profit" option at zero)—

Your kindness deserves an honest answer, but I don't know if I can adequately explain why I decided to quit trying to "place" my poems in any magazine or with any legitimate publisher—

I started sending my poems out when I was 19 and quit at around age 64 . . . fiftyfive [oops, fortyfive] years of rejection slips suddenly became one minute too many (you might be amused by some collages of rejections I have posted on my verse blog)—

but in the end it wasn't the hundreds of rejection slips that drove me into the shameful arms of vanity-publishing,

paradoxically it was 5 or 6 acceptances that kiboshed all my interest or desire to continue seeking public publication—

it's a long story but briefly Jonathan Galassi at Farrar Straus took a book which had been previously rejected by about 30 other places, composed of work from 10-12 years—

over those 10-12 years, a few poems from the ms. had been pubbed by approx 12 mags, which is roughly the average for my entire career, one magazine publication per year,

and then about 6 months before the book (eventually titled "The Unsubscriber") was due to be issued, someone there at Farrar Straus asked me for a list of the poems which hadn't appeared in periodicals—

their request puzzled me, but I gave them the list, which consisted of all the poems in the 120-page book save maybe 15-20 or so,

and then I forgot all about it until, suddenly, a month or two before the pub date, I got notification that the "Placement Editor" at Farrar Straus had "placed" some of the poems from that list,

the Placement Editor (I had never heard or read of such a creature before) had placed these poems into 5 or 6 magazines

without bothering to inform me of it, or asking my permission, or inquiring whether I indeed wanted my poems "placed" in those particular 5 or 6 mags—

if you look at the [acknowledgments] page of the "Unsub" book, you'll see 18 magazines listed— but a third of those 18 came about via FSG's Placement Editor, not me—

Those 5 or 6 magazines the Placement Editor managed to ram my verse into through the power of the imprimatur of Farrar Straus & Giroux

were magazines who had previously always rejected my work—

yes, when the poems came from me, they, The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Literary Review, to name three that immediately come to mind—

when it was me, me personally who submitted poems to those mags from time to time over the course of four-five decades, I only ever received no response but form rejection-slips—preprinted forms with no human markings upon them.

It's impossible to convey the disgust and degradation, the betrayal I felt over these "acceptances." (One was from a magazine I dislike, and would never have submitted my work to.)

So, there I was, suddenly miraculously after forty or more years of being rejected by them, suddenly miraculously The New Yorker was publishing a poem by me (just one, mind you),

and also Poetry Magazine which had similarly rejected me for over four decades,

"Poetry (Chicago)" as it was called back in [1961-62] when I first submitted poems to them,

now Poetry was suddenly miraculously publishing a few of my short poems: there I was on their Contributors Notes page at the age of 65 with an asterisk by my name to indicate "first appearance"

—is there another USA poet who made their "first appearance" in Poetry at such an advanced age?—

So there I was. Only, of course, there I wasn't.

It wasn't me they were publishing, it was FSG—

I was just collateral to that transaction.

It wasn't me: those mags had dozens of opportunities to publish me in the four-five previous decades and they didn't.

It wasn't me.

It's not me.

I don't know what else to say, except to apologize for boring you with this sordid story,

and to say I'm sorry but I will not submit poems to you nor to anyone else ever again.

Sincerely,

Bill Knott

***
Afterthought:

It wasn't the rejection-slips accumulating over decades

that did me in—I could have withstood them, I did withstand them—

no, it was those phony acceptances, those "placements"

that broke my spirit—

**

Michael Robbins on my malfeasance:

*
(see my earlier post on this: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com/2009/11/plus-ca-change.html . . . )

*
This is one of his many imprecations against me, as featured on his blog:

"Some of the Lulu books are prefaced by two pages of anti-blurbs (”[Bill Knott is] incompetent” & so on), many of them wrenched from the context of appreciative reviews, by the likes of Christopher Ricks . . ."

I can't find my xerox of the Christopher Ricks review (The Massachusetts Review, Spring 1970 issue), but have ordered another one which should arrive in about a week and which I will then scan in its entirety onto this blog as a jpeg file, where anyone can make their own judgement as to whether it is indeed an "appreciative review" . . .

To say that "many of" the quotes I print in my LULU books are "wrenched from the context of appreciative reviews" is untrue—one or two of them may be wrenched thus, though I would dispute even that, and would claim that even those one or two are not inaccurate in spirit—

and then there's this: in many of the LULU books I also include two pages of favorable blurbs and excerpts from reviews which actually are appreciative—

Does Michael Robbins consider these latter also fraudulent?

All the quotes I use are sourced, and all those sources can be checked out by anyone who wants the truth,

though I suspect that these sensationalist accusations of my malfeasance in this matter

are a paparazzian fanfaronade so coquettish in its hyberbole, so gossipy-glicksome,

that few if any will bother to seek out and verify the mere factual.

*

*

UCAL TRIUMPHS

*
I assume the decision of the National Book Award judges to give the poetry prize this year to a book published by the University of California Press

was meant to be a rebuke to those UCal students who are denouncing tuition increases and the elimination of their services at that school—

the judges are in effect chiding these protesters:

Ingrates! look at what your money goes to support: great works of verse like this! You should be proud and thankful that your money is used to publish 50 dollar volumes like this one.

Isn't that why the judges made their choice: isn't it intended to admonish those rebellious youths and their lack of appreciation for the value of the cultural capital produced by this university?

Surely the judges have voted yea to the established priorities of UCal, in particular the budget decisions made in the past, which granted such wise funding to its poetry series.

The judges have taken their stand in support of the status quo—

the judges have issued a censure against any student

who might object to wasteful expeditures by academic authorities responsible for fostering artistic extravagances like the one being honored on this occasion—

*
It seems obvious that the NBA poetry judges opted to pick a book published by a university press

(any UnivPress book, it didn't matter which)

as a show of support for the efforts of such presses,

some of whose poetry series are in danger of being curtailed or cut altogether in the current financial crisis,

and of course as a protest against the defunding of those presses and those poetry series.

(One guesses the next National Robogenetics Awards will be decided along similar lines.)

***

*
MARTIAL

Military sculpture is
to sculpture as
military food is to food,
if there are

any sculptors or chefs
left who have not
been conscripted, since
military verse

is to verse as
military noon is
to noon, the hands
straight up in rhyme.

And music—
music of course is war.

Note:
Anybody who reads poetry can see the ubiquitous self-doubts poets evince regarding the validity/value of their art. Compare that to the smug self-satisfied attitudes exhibited by the advocates and practitioners of music. They take it for granted that music is the highest art, the universal art, the only art that transcends all borders and biases. They never question that given assumption. The arrogance of composers and musicians is insufferable. They really believe Pater's dictum that all the other arts are inferior, that all the other arts "aspire towards the condition of music." But every military that ever marched out to murder rape and destroy was led by what art: were those armies fronted by poets extemporizing verse—by sculptors squeezing clay—by painters wielding brushes—actors posing soliloquies? No, the art that led those killers forth, the art whose urgent strident rhythms stirred and spurred their corresponding bloodlust, was the art to which they felt closest, the art that mirrored their evil egos. That's why they have always put music up there at the vanguard of their war-ranks, because not only is it the emblem, the fore-thrust insignia of their purpose, it is their purpose: it is the condition to which they aspire.

But if music is what its hucksters continually sell it as, 'The Universal Language', what that means is that before the Babel Discontinuity there was no music. Music did not exist before Babel, and will cease to exist when a true universal language (and a true universal peace) returns in the form of digitaldata/pictovids exchanged instantaneously by androids cyborgs robots. Music will soon be as obsolete defunct extinct as humans are.

*

But going back to Pater: think how very different our (contemporary) relation to music is from his, compared to his experience of it. How often would he have heard music?

I ask that literally: how often and under what conditions would he in his daily life have physically heard music, ie real music as opposed to any tune humming in his head?

I would guess to answer that question by saying : not very often: on special occasions, concerts, recitals, probably church bells more than anything else, a street musician perhaps, though it's hard to imagine Pater walking on streets where such creatures thrived . . .

Now compare that to our current experiencing of music, how it ubiquitously presses in on us relentlessly from every medium, you can't make a phonecall without being assailed by it, every store you go into blasts your ears with it, every street is boomboxed and car-stereoed to death with its intrusive noise. . . in many cities you can hardly find any public space not polluted by amplified "buskers"—

there is no escape from it.

It greases the gears of consumer capitalism as much as the oil our government is currently killing as many as it can to gain control of.

If Pater had to hearsuffer what the average USAer is deluged with on a daily basis, I doubt he would reverence music quite as highly as in his pre-massmedia'ed cloistered Oxford. . .

*
Anyway, my poem above (with its note) is in the mode of hyperbole, and not meant to be taken entirely unsatirically.

But I can't be the only poet in the last hundred years who has chafed at Pater, and has resented the fact that poetry is not ranked first among the arts.

And yes, I would say it again, the complacency and arrogance of composers and musicians is insufferable. Poets are constantly questioning the value and the validity of poetry; do composers and conductors ever do that?

I have had no personal acquaintance with those in music—my view of their smug arrogant attitude is based on what I've read.

*
But I must give the Master the last word here:

“In music, then, rather than in poetry, is to be found the true type or measure of perfected art.”
—Pater.

***

new book available for free download—see first link sidebar right>>>>

EKPHRASTIQUE DU MAL:

POEMS INVOLVED WITH

PAINTING

SCULPTURE

MUSEUMS

ARTISTS AND THAT

Paperback, 52 pages