Yearly Archives: 2016

42 posts

Jarring Wilderness for Future Use

jar

Last night my wife was making homemade chocolate–the kind you crown a scoop of vanilla ice cream with. Her chocolate factory was initially profligate, bubbling in a large saucepan, but she tamed it by pouring it into Mason jars.

Chocolate that rich begs for a smaller home like these little Mason jars, ribboned and destined for relatives and friends with a sweet tooth or two. Downsize rich chocolate, I always say, and no one’s objected yet.

With this saying still echoing in my head this morning, I read Wallace Stevens’ ode to a jar, one left out in the Tennessee wilderness. Give it a read-see, why don’t you?:

“Anecdote of the Jar”

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

A minor piece, as Stevens poems go (he being the darling of academic readers especially). Still, there’s that unexpected, pleasing-to-the-ear rhyming Wallace often injects in his works. And the notion of wilderness coming up to sniff a glass port of manmade (“a port in air”).

That something “gray and bare” could take dominion everywhere, despite giving neither bird nor bush, is disconcerting, which makes me wonder, as with much of Stevens, what he’s about here. Is the jar’s victory in its ugliness–ugly by dint of its surroundings? Juxtaposition is a powerful thing, after all, which is why I never stand next to handsome men, strong men, or successful men. Too jarring, if you catch my drift, and difficult on standers-by.

One might also ask what Wallace was doing in Tennessee. My favorite part of his being a poet was his daily job as an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut. Isn’t that jarring, too? Only which is the jar and which the wilderness–Stevens or a staid, 9-to-5 insurance office with his nameplate?

It’s the question of the day for you. If you need a jar opener, check the junk drawer….

The Poetry of Moments in Time

poetry reading poetry

roses

Nothing captures the elusive moment like a poem. Novels are too ham-fisted. Short stories too neat and mindful of their Chekhovian rifles hanging on the wall (“The Big-Bang Theory”). And essays? Please.

For poetry and moments, you need go no further than William Carlos Williams, famous for his dictum, “Say it! No ideas but in things.”

And, when you think about it, it is “things” that make the moment. Usually simple, unassuming things which are imbued with agency in unexpected ways.

Example? The delicious little moment in “The Act”:

There were the roses, in the rain.
Don’t cut them, I pleaded.
        They won’t last, she said.
But they’re so beautiful
        where they are.
Agh, we were all beautiful once, she
        said,
and cut them and gave them to me
        in my hand.

Trump-Voter Gloaters and Other Christmas Hazards

poetry

christmas

On the Eve. It’s the name of a Turgenev novel, but I’m more attuned to the calendar than Russian Literature as Christmas cards blow like white drifts into the mailbox. Today we are on the Eve of the Eve, and my mind is scattered poetic and prosaic with holiday overload. Time to hit the release valve, in other words, with some random observations:

The big thing this year is Christmas cards with pics on front AND back. Dogs (and, to a lesser degree, cats) have become members of the family recently. There they are, grinning in the line-up, their names listed along with Bobby’s and Suzy’s. Next we’ll be reading updates on their college careers and job promotions.
Will the Christmas form letter never go away? We had a few that opened with and went on and on about the election, of all things. Do we want to read about the election in the holiday season? We do not. And to the letter, every electioneering form-letter jabberer has been a Trump voter cloaked in red and green false modesty. (“Both candidates were flawed, but one was more flawed in our opinion, so we had little choice but to go the way we did! Still, despite hard feelings in the family, we managed to make it through Thanksgiving!”) Given their obvious lack of sensitivity, I doubt they’ll be as lucky at Christmas. For starters, they can throw their exclamation points onto the Yuletide fire and rejoin the human race.
Christmas Eve morning is the holiest of the year for me. Holy in a doughy kind of way. I rise around four a.m., turn on the infernal Christmas carols (about the only time I’ll endure them), and build my Christmas stollen alone in the kitchen with my four cups of coffee and predictable (by 7) acid stomach.
Speaking of, all I want for Christmas is my 21-year-old stomach. Probably in a scrap metal shop along about now. Somewhere in the cast iron section.
According to the new issue of Poets & Writers, these are salad days for black writers. The market is actively seeking good writers of color because, well, they are selling. About time, I say.
The irony of a race renaissance in publishing during a dark time of renewed racism in public life is not lost on us. Apparently Trump voters are not the ones buying books. Or much reading them.
Anyone submitting poetry to journals knows that these are salad days for LGBTQ writers, too. Dozens of submission guidelines now feature a pronounced desire to print more of their work.
Where does the expression “salad days” come from? Shakespeare, of course. Antony & Cleopatra’s Act I, Scene 5: “My salad days, When I was green in judgment: cold in blood, To say as I said then!” (Cleo, pre-asp, speaking).
I’ve read a lot of William Carlos Williams in my day, but only today came across his “Prelude to Winter”:

The moth under the eaves
with wings like
the bark of a tree, lies
symmetrically still —

And love is a curious
soft-winged thing
unmoving under the eaves
when the leaves fall.

Old WCW must’ve known he’d hit on a good thing when he wrote “love is a curious / soft-winged thing” and then built a little poem around it. Sometimes the line comes first, then drives the poem.
The term “glass ceiling,” a popular metaphor that gained greater currency in a presidential election where a woman came this close to winning, should be put out on loan for poets trying to break into major-league journals with names that like… well… names. Just as women have to try harder to just match a man who tries less, wannabe poets and writers have to try harder to match sub-standard work by bigger poet and writer names. Pass the Windex and pray for clear-seeing editors!
For my 10-day holiday break, I’ve piled up a few books from interlibrary loan, including Patrick Modiano’s In the Café of Lost Youth (cool title, French setting, and short length) and a collection of Scottish poet Norman MacCaig’s work. He’s been on my list to check out for a while, and boy-howdy, is there a lot to check out. This man is a poetic Joyce Carol Oates!
To all my readers (all five of you), have a very Merry and a Happy, resolution-free New, too!

My Personal Pantheon of Favorite Poetry Books: Part One

poetry reading poetry

poetry

T’is the the season and shoppers are bustling to stores under silver bells on a midnight clear to buy last minute books. For fans of poetry, I thought I’d recap a few of my all-time favorites, both among the Soon-To-Be-Famous (the little guys, so to speak) and the Famous (the name recognition crowd). First things first. For today’s post, the not-so-famous. For tomorrow’s, the better known.

Fugitive Pigments by Ruth Bavetta

OK, I admit that I might have missed some of the painting-oriented poems’ allusions, and that I don’t know Alice Neel from Alice B. Toklas, but consider how a “painting poem” works marvelously as a “writing poem,” too:

To Make a Mark

Emptiness is deadly. To master it
you must blemish it. A long slashing
line, a curve curling back
upon itself; a line that winds
with no end in mind.

Once you have destroyed perfection
you will be entering
a country you have not known.
I will not tell you this.

You may find something amazing —
someone to take your hand, a waterfall,
a fall from three flights up.
I will not tell you this, either.

I will tell you that it doesn’t matter
if, by the end, your first mark
has disappeared. It matters only
that you have made it.
Pick up your pencil now.
Begin.

Reads like a terrific argument against writer’s block to me!

Some poems that spoke to me especially were “Black, White,” “Drawing Conclusions” (will use as an inference exercise in class, thank you), “Fog,” “To Make a Mark,” “First Lesson” (also parallels a writer’s experience, though it calls on artistic masters to make its point), “The Color of Wind” (another great poetry exemplar for the classroom), and “Beacon.”

But these are just froth atop the lovely cream. Rich, rewarding comfort (and sometimes disturbing comfort) food here.

The Briar Patch by J. Kates

I had the pleasure of meeting J. Kates at my first poetry reading, where he served ably as reader #2. We exchanged books and, reading The Briar Patch, I feel as though I got to know Kates better. Jim is a New Hampshire poet and, as one might expect, harvests topics from the land around him. But he also explores a wide range of other topics, from the seasons to classic Greeks to Monet paintings to the Buddha to foreigners and exiles to politics to other cultures and history.

The book is divided into four sections, “How It Was,” “Now and Then,” “Desires,” and “Harvest of the Fields.” The last section allows Kates to share one of his passions, translating. It includes a wide range of authors, new and old: Gaius Valerius Catullus, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Richard Plantagenet Coeur de Lion, Olivier de Magney, Gérard de Nerval, Jacques Prévert, René Daumal, Evgeny Saburov, Alexey Shelvakh, Sergey Magid, Aleksandra Sozonova, Nikolai Baitov, and Arsen Mirzaev. There are helpful biographic capsules on each translated poet at the end.

Here is a poem, simple but true, from the “How It Was” section:

Underwater

Underwater, under cold water
I pull and stroke, holding tight
to my chest the warm air,
letting it out in useless bubbles
by the count of kicks, farther
and farther from the shore.
Even here, there is above and below
darkening as I make for the center
of the wide lake, while overhead
a small circle of everyday
swims with me, always the same blue
and always ready to save my life.

And here Kates shows his facility with rhyming, a place I haven’t gone yet (and may never, for all I know):

Stone Rubbing: A Local Graveyard

These black, faithful slaves who stand
through all weathers by their forgetful masters
at the open door, winged and grinning
and utterly submissive to my cold hand

will not leave off their warnings, prayers,
remembrances, even when I shroud them
and lift their souls into my own book.
Whatever I take, I leave what is most theirs.

I have been their gardener, their tender,
for my own end a servant to these servants
who care as little as their masters do
for anything less than apocalyptic splendor.

Who carved the slate felt for the dead

perhaps, and those who set the stone,
far more than my pathetic fallacies
can do, which take the cold death’s head

and touch it every way but as my own.

The Briar Patch is part of The Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series (Hobblebush being a small press that features New Hampshire poets in particular).

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuoung

Nota Bene: I’m not sure Ocean still rates as an “unknown” like the likes of me, but I’m going to insert him here anyway and wish him well because one more book like this one and he’ll happily leave this category for good.
Ocean has a way with words. Words that demand attention. I still remember the Beloit Poetry Journal poem of his I read, “Telemachus.” I loved that poem. And here it is, washed ashore in Night Sky with Exit Wounds. I hoped I would find another poem that I loved more, but I still loved this one best:

Telemachus

Like any good son, I pull my father out
of the water, drag him by his hair

through sand, his knuckles carving a trail
the waves rush in to erase. Because the city

beyond the shore is no longer
where he left it. Because the bombed

cathedral is now a cathedral
of trees. I kneel beside him to see how far

I might sink. Do you know who I am,
Ba? But the answer never comes. The answer

is the bullet hole in his back, brimming
with seawater. He is so still I think

he could be anyone’s father, found
the way a green bottle might appear

at a boy’s feet containing a year
he has never touched. I touch

his ears. No use. I turn him
over. To face it. The cathedral

in his sea-black eyes. The face
not mine but one I will wear

to kiss all my lovers good-night:
the way I seal my father’s lips

with my own and begin
the faithful work of drowning.

Wow. And the father theme is a painful refrain that keeps repeating in this book. Father and prison. Father and alcohol. Father and violence. The exit wounds are all over the page. Here he is again in a poem that landed in some magazine or other called The New Yorker:

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuoung

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer
& failing. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.

Some cool lines I jotted from the book, lines that sound like the ocean cupped to your ear:

“…the rain falling through him: guitar strings snapping over his globed shoulders”

“Even my name knelt down inside me…”

“Found the way a green bottle might appear at a boy’s feet, containing a year he has never touched”

“He moves like any other fracture, revealing the briefest doors…”

“…as the field shreds itself with cricket cries”

As you can see, OV knows his way around a word. He is a deft master of unexpected word pairs. I admit, it didn’t always work and sometimes led to the big, “Huh?” but when it does work, it is rewarding work, well-worth sweating over.

And so I toil. And recommend YOU toil, too. Despite occasional misfires, some real winners here. And my old friend Telemachus, too. Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned…

Running Counterclockwise by Alarie Tenille

Time. Like death, it is one of the universal themes of literature (and hey, death is an embedded aspect of time, no?). In this fine collection, Alarie Tennille gives time the Janus treatment by looking in both directions and finding inspiration for poetry. The collection is an eclectic mix of family, memories, insightful observations on society, and (wildcard!) ekphrastic poems that serve as frosting on the cake.

In “Bequest,” Tennille wonders “what it would be like/to donate 29 of my poems, to open/a new poetry wing at a museum.” This is one of the earliest of many poems to link poetry and painting, often with water lilies and Monet in particular as the mortar.

The bittersweet “Speeding Good-Bye” uses a mother’s death and protecting a father from it to good effect: ”

…So we
packed her tiny shoes and bright
dresses of Goodwill,

kept just just a few pieces of jewelry.
We left him no nightgown
to cradle, no familiar cologne,

no hint she might only
have gone to work for the day.
A cruel kindness.

Other entries using imagery or wry observation include these favorites: “To a Friend Now Dead” about an old high school friend who avoided the camera; “The Gift” about a stapler Dad foolishly gifted Mom for Christmas (and boy, howdy, can men relate to this poem!); “Anastasia” about a women who claimed to be the Romanov great until death and DNA tests out her; “In Pursuit,” which uses the metaphor of a cat chasing a reflection to humans pursuing happiness (Thomas Jefferson-like); and “I Predict,” a nifty morality meditation on fortune mis-tellers.

All in all, a fast and enjoyable trip through time and a collection to be proud of!

W. S. Merwin’s “Remembering Summer”

poetry reading poetry

fleur

We are but 11 days away from the shortest day of the year and the start of winter, December 21st. What better day to celebrate a new Merwin poem called “Remembering Summer”?

It’s found in W.S.’s (that’s William Stanley’s to you) newest collection, Garden Time, the title itself a reminder of summer, at least here in the northern, freeze-your-hey-nonny-nonnies-off zone.

The poems in Merwin’s latest book take a page out of the Pole Zbigniew Herbert’s stylebook. Meaning: The first word of each poem is capitalized, as is the pronoun “I” (which looks admittedly foolish and adolescent when it’s lower-cased) but, beyond that, all letters are lower case (as in the e’s in cummings) with no punctuation to speak of (just don’t speak of it to your 6th-grade English teacher).

The subject of summer made me reminisce, and I quickly found similarities in the season’s effects on us, as seen first here, then there:

“Summer’s End” by Ken Craft

In the dog days, when Altair and Deneb
set toward western waters, Vega
flaring in their starry wake, the song
of peepers and crickets melds liquid
to languid; the first maple leafs ripen
and curl to red fists; pine needles spread
gold scripture across the water;
nuthatch feet circle three trunks–
gentle scriveners
scribing the dawn of dying days.

“Remembering Summer” by W. S. Merwin

Being too warm the old lady said to me
is better than being too cold I think now
in between is the best because you never
give it a thought but it goes by too fast
I remember the winter how cold it got
I could never get warm wherever I was
but I don’t remember the summer heat like that
only the long days the breathing of the trees
the evenings with the hens still talking in the lane
and the light getting longer in the valley
the sound of a bell from down there somewhere
I can sit here now still listening to it

Ah, yes. The hens. The bells. I’m not sure where Merwin lives and writes, but I have a feeling New York City isn’t it. And if he did, would he really want to remember summer in such skyscrapered, police-sirened environs?

Summer only stretches out and sleeps in its true languorous loveliness in the country, it seems to me. In “Summer’s End,” I’m writing from a Maine lake, and in “Remembering Summer,” Merwin writes from his summer hideout, wherever that may be.

December, Tinseled Traitor Month

poetry writing

christmas-bulb

Just like that, it’s December. You remember him, looking like a page of artwork out of Dickens. The Ghost of Christmas Past. Big and bearded and jolly in his sumptuous and colorful robes as he overlooks scenes of joy and fellowship. This would be old (and impossibly green) tannenbaums , plum puddings, heartfelt carols and (wait for it!) gifts.

Silver. And sold (as in “out to capitalism”).

Writing prompt: Write about December. Free verse (though nothing’s for free in December, not even stocking stuffers). Write about the holiday, the anticipation, the tidings of comfort and joy. Write about 24/7 Christmas carols on radio stations driving carols into the clichéd ground. Write about lists a mile long, money a mile spent, stress a month hiked.

Write on this: “Christmas Magic: Strong as Ever or Hiding Out in Amazonian Jungles with the Dodo Bird?”

C. Clement Moore made his mark writing about Christmas, as did many song writers. For writers of poetry and prose, this means there’s money in them there hills. Lots. You just have to go out, 49er-like, and mine it.

The financial opportunities are even greater in the once united States this year. With a president-elect who scares the bejesus out of the majority of voters who chose his opponent, the numbers are legion among those seeking succor. Christmas as comfort food, then. In the key of ka-ching. If you write it, they will read.

Or you can be an Eeyore, a downer, a Christmas curmudgeon. Rail against it or write your dirges to it. “On the twelfth day of depression, my not-so-true love gave to me…” and so forth.

Any way you look at it, Christmas and the much-dreaded new year are sources of inspiration for writers. And whether you cheerlead or satirize the beast, writing about it will be therapeutic. So think of your screen or notepad as a much cheaper therapist. And stop eating so much sugar, else you begin to look like a well-rounded plum with no dancing skills (or a right jolly old elf with no Weight Watchers chapter in his town).

31 days. We can do this. Just don’t take a leave from writing, whatever you do. To be left to the mercies of the holidays is against the Geneva Convention, I’m more than sure.

Page 489, column 2, footnote 3b.

“Murder Your Darlings”

poetry word choice writing

terry-mcdonell

Murder your darlings. Famous words in writing, where the judge (that’s writers like me) tends to grant words clemency a bit more often than advisable.

In reading famous editor Terry McDonell’s The Accidental Life, I came across a small section that serves as wisdom not only for prose writers but for the non-prose sorts in his audience as well, the poets and the dreamers.

Let’s listen in:

“Avoid clichés like the plague, and no matter how amazing or incredible or unbelievable anything is, know how challenging it can be to raise the bar–even when you are writing about icons living in La La Land or Tinseltown or on the Left Coast.

“Likewise it is prudent to take Kurt Vonnegut’s advice: ‘Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.’

“Think like Mark Twain: ‘When you catch an adjective, kill it.’

“‘Kill your darlings’ means cut anything precious, overly clever, or self-indulgent. It is a stark, brilliant prohibition attributed most often to William Faulkner but also to Allen Ginsberg, Oscar Wilde, Eudora Welty, G. K. Chesterton, Anton Chekhov and Stephen King, who used the phrase in his effusive On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: ‘Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.’

“When the 2013 biopic of Allen Ginsberg, Kill Your Darlings, came out, Forrest Wickman on Slate tracked what is probably the best attribution to Arthur Quiller-Couch in his 1914 Cambridge lecture ‘On Style.’ The prolific poet, novelist and critic railed against ‘extraneous Ornament’ and emphasized, ‘If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it–wholeheartedly–and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.‘

“Wickman’s research also brought him to an even more important rule for journalists: ‘Check your sources.'”

— p. 70 “Editcraft”

“You’re Very Lucky If Two People Are Reading Your Stuff.”

poetry reading poetry writing

meena-alexander In the latest issue of Rattle, Timothy Green interviews Meena Alexander, an Indian-born poet whose latest book, Atmospheric Poetry, is forthcoming in 2017.

Intrigued by an essay and lecture Alexander wrote for the Yale Political Union, Green started his interview with the same topic she tackled in New Haven: What is the use of poetry?

Meena’s answer? “We have poetry so we do not die of history.” In a subsequent poem on the question, she followed that line with, “And I have no idea what that meant.” But it sounded good, and if you think about it long enough, it might even pass muster as an answer. The answer, even.

Me, I’m just happy the answer to “What is the use of poetry?” isn’t “There is none.” In America, some may wonder. Although there is a rich poetic tradition here, it seems to have grown without the sunshine and water of a vast number of readers. Unless, of course, you’re talking Henry, Wadsworth, and Longfellow, three poetic rock stars of their day. But Whitman and such? The leaves and the grass loved him, but not many of his contemporary readers.

Meena Alexander goes on to tackle the question seriously and does yeoman duty, drawing links with music and sound and motion. Still, it got me thinking about Ireland and Russia and other countries where readers have a more eclectic diet in books. They read fiction and nonfiction with the same gusto as Americans. But unlike Americans, they have a healthier appetite for poetry.

Here in the States we dispense with questions like Meena’s and focus on ones like “Is Poetry Dead?” Or we move on to the follow-up question, “Does Anybody Really Care?” We even have authors who pass on writing poetry and instead make (more) money by writing poetry’s obituary. Ka-ching!

So, yes. It was nice to see some humor and courage in Meena Alexander’s attempts to explain what we thought we would never have to–the “why” of poetry. And any poet could identify with her honesty as she spoke. Beating the bushes for poetry readers is hard even for established, name-brand poets:

“The thing about being a poet is that you’re very lucky if two people are reading your stuff.” I think she means “in the world at any one time,” too. “You’re reading my stuff now,” she tells her interviewer, “and I’m deeply grateful, but it’s so touch and go, even for the one who makes it. A very iffy art. On the other hand it has this extraordinary life, in the sense that a poem can reach you from thousands of miles away, and from centuries ago. We read Sappho in translation, or Homer, or Kalidasa.”

By the end of the interview, I found myself very interested in reading her work, both previously published and forthcoming. She speaks my language (even though we hail from different cultures) and clearly understands what poets are up against. Without readers, a poet is that tree falling in the wilderness. It makes its noise for itself.

Sophomore Slumps ~ Real or Old Husband’s Tales?

poetry publishing writing

typewriter Getting a book of poetry accepted by a publisher can be a heady experience akin to euphoria (or maybe “me-phoria” is a better word). Is it any wonder that there might be a hangover, then?

I’m speaking of the sophomore slump, the term used for athletes, students, and artists who worry they will never match initial heights as they tackle new challenges and attempt to not only match but better their first success. Is this “slump” real, or is it just another old husband’s tale?

Oddly, when you get a book published and finish the hard work or working with an editor to get it ready for publication, you reward yourself with a writing vacation. Bad, bad, bad! This is not what writers do. They don’t wake up every day and say, “I don’t have to write today (or this month) because, look at that! I’ve got a shiny new book for the world to see!”

As the seasoned veterans will tell you, “Big deal. Writers write. So don’t make like Orpheus and look back now, start playing again.”

OK. Got it. But now you’re holding yourself to higher standards. Are these new poems better than the ones between the first book’s covers? And shouldn’t they be?

You see the problem. Suddenly the inner critic, already notoriously negative, becomes tougher still. And, as rejections from journals flow in from editors completely unimpressed with your cover letter citing a debut poetry collection, doubt begins to creep in and take hold.

“Was that it?” you wonder. “Am I one and done?”

Hardly. Take a look at the publishing histories of many poets and you’ll find that the arc from early poetry to more sophisticated later poetry is long and gradual. With the machete of words, you must hack your way through an Amazon forest of poems before discernible changes begin to appear.

Meaning? The sophomore slump is actually similar in nature to the work you produced as a freshman phenom. That you might produce worse is just another nagging falsehood you have to deal with as a writer. Rejection is part of the game and will remain so–even if you have four or five books of poetry to your credit.

Sure, once you make it to the Promised Land, where you have name recognition from summiting the toughest markets like Poetry and those august university magazines that are way past June and July and have been publishing verse since Frost was a school teacher, you can count on getting accepted more often even when you put out slightly sub-par stuff, but those days are so far away that you don’t even want to think about seeing them with the naked eye.

Instead, trust in yourself (who else will?), write and, most of all, revise, revise. In the almost words of the book/movie Field of Dreams, “If you write it, they will come–and they don’t care whether you’re a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior.”

Amen to that.

The Tricky Ethics of Goodreads Giveaway Program

Goodreads publishing

Everybody loves freebies and, if you’re a bibliophile like me, you especially love it when that freebie is a book. Welcome to the Goodreads Giveaway, a program where GR’s reading millions can get in on some free action by simply registering for the many, many books that site offers for free consumption.

Of course, giveaways are not a new concept. In the publishing industry, ARCs (advanced reading copies) have been provided to readers since the beginning of book-publishing time. The purpose? To generate buzz and provide fodder for reviews leading to sales.

Amazon, the new owners of Goodreads, has its own giveaway program called Amazon Vine. In the beginning, Vine members only had to write reviews for some of the free books they received. After a year or two, however, Amazon changed the rules. All free books had to be reviewed or else you were cut off. That’s right. Your vine would wither and fall off the Giving Tree just like that.

Some Vinesters were not wild about this change, but I saw some justice in it. Why? Because, in this day and age, some people run mini-businesses out of their homes. E-bay is only the best known of the many ways to do this. You get something for free (or at a reduced price) and then resell it on-line for personal profit. It’s the American way, no?

But wait a minute. At least most Vine books are imprinted with “Not for Resale” or “Advanced Reading Copy–Not for Resale” on them. This is often NOT the case with the Goodreads Giveaway program. Meaning? The books obtained for free look like any book you might buy at a brick-and-mortar bookstore. Thus, reselling is easy-peasey.

But is it ethical?

It depends on how you look at it. Some publishers and authors see the purpose of a giveaway as buzz, pure and simple. It gives the book attention. After all, hundreds (and sometimes over a thousand!) readers sign up for the free book. Can this be a bad thing?

Yes and no. If the buzz translates to sales, readers, and reviews, then no, it can’t be a bad thing. But in the case of Goodreads Giveaways, books people sign up for (by default, they get put onto “to read” lists) are as likely not to be read as read. Even after they WIN the book against hefty odds and it shows up gratis in their mailbox, participants are under no obligation to read or review the book. Life is busy, after all, and as St. Frank of Zappa once said: “So many books, so little time.”

According to GR, excited publishers and authors have good reason to use the Giveaway program. Up to 60% of winners review the books they receive, Goodreads tells us, but this seems optimistic. A look at the stats of some Giveaway participants reveals why. Many posters sign up for free books in serial fashion. Each day dozens upon dozens of additional books accumulate on their “to-read” shelves until you see poster stats like “To-Read: 23,749” next to “Read: 0” or “Read: 7.”

Ouch. Will they ever return to the hopeful author’s “to-read” book in three months or even three years? With 23, 749 books on deck, probably not. Heck, even with 749 or 49 on deck, probably not. There are even Goodreads Giveaway groups, where posters can brag about the spoils of war and the blessings of Lady Luck. If it sounds like fun, it apparently is.

What can we conclude? That, at least in some of the cases, people use the program either for the thrill of the win (an innocent form of on-line gambling) or for the chance to sell books for personal profit. In the case of those who do choose to sell the book, the publisher loses on printing costs and the author loses on royalties.

You might call this a form of piracy, but it’s not. It is legal, after all, and publishers and authors put their books up knowingly, eyes wide open and hoping for the best. Which is really what the Goodreads Giveaway program amounts to from the writer-publisher point of view: Hoping for the best (and what is the publishing industry if not a metaphor for hope?).

Bottom line: If I win a giveaway (and I haven’t among the few I’ve signed up for), I will read it and offer my honest opinion because, to me, that’s not only the purpose but the right thing to do. Could that be bad for the publisher or author? Sure. I could 2-star the book. Is that any worse than not reviewing the book at all and reselling it for personal profit? It’s an interesting question I’ll leave to the philosophers. At least until Goodreads Giveaways follows Amazon Vine’s lead.