Photo Friday: “Mellow Yellow”

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Weekend Thoughts on Transitions in Publication

A number of times I have written in One Poet’s Notes about the changes happening in composition and publication of various forms of literature as the dominant medium transitions from print to digital. I have related the steady shift of literary periodicals from paper to online during the last decade (“Online Literary Journals: A Status Report”). I have also narrated my experience with release of a poetry chapbook, Dark Refuge, in numerous formats, most popularly online and as an e-book (“Dark Refuge: Process and Publication”). In addition, a couple of months ago I reported the policy change, after a dozen years, to accepting only e-mail submissions for Valparaiso Poetry Review (“VPR Submission Guidelines: A Policy Change”), as well as the process of submitting work through an electronic submission manager to the newly established Valparaiso Fiction Review.

Ever since Valparaiso Poetry Review was initiated as an online journal in 1999, I have emphasized that electronic literary venues were not meant to supplant print publications, but they were intended to supplement and be complementary. Although I still believe this to be true, I am convinced the balance of influence is tilting even more quickly toward digital publication. I was reminded of this movement and its consequences in a few experiences during the past weekend.

On Friday, at the request of my university’s librarian in charge of rare books and archives, I examined four storage boxes of material written by a nineteenth-century author who had graduated from Valparaiso University. The gathered works included books of poetry, typed manuscripts, hand-written journals, personal letters, and all sorts of other pieces. I was pleased to see the books, published in the 1890s, were still in excellent condition. The content of the journals and letters fascinated me. Especially since I had first learned to value authorship as a boy when I wrote in cursive with my treasured fountain pen and ink bottle, I could imagine the writer’s hand creating those elegant loops and sharp slashes more than one hundred years ago.

The journals contained everyday entries about current events and a chronological record, complete with commentary or analysis, of all books read by the author, as well as details of submissions to magazines along with dates of rejections or acceptances. I was intrigued by the informal notations and hand-written corrections to multiple drafts of typed poems or essays. At the same time, I lamented to the librarian that much preserved in these collected papers would not exist among holdings of a contemporary author because today’s writer most likely would have composed upon a computer and deleted many of the unwanted drafts. Indeed, the letters might also have been lost by an individual writing now if sent by e-mail.

After examining and evaluating the books or papers to be sorted and catalogued, I was offered a tour of the archives. A couple of magnificent books I noticed, beautifully printed and adorned with illustrations, had been published in the mid-1560s, and I was impressed by the fine condition in which they still exist nearly 450 years later. These volumes appealed to my great appreciation for books as objects of art. I immediately contrasted their magnificent presence with the lack of physical substance when reading an e-book.

Nevertheless, I have a fondness for the ease of use and practical economic advantages of electronic publications. As much as I maintain affection for print books—the quality of paper, the choice of font, the design of text, and the artful cover—and continue to add volumes to the thousands in my home library, I also confess to delighting in the ability to obtain any novel instantly or to possibly hold an extended collection of books on the Kindle I can regularly carry in my sport jacket pocket. In addition, though I view magazine covers as artworks, and as attractive as text set in print magazines may be, I appreciate the vastly greater potential of a worldwide audience for literary journals available online.

At a meeting on Friday with Jon Bull, my co-editor at Valparaiso Fiction Review who also is a librarian and has a great attraction to books as tactile objects or physical works of art, we discussed the desire to someday produce a book including an anthology of works from Valparaiso Fiction Review, similar to Poetry from Paradise Valley, the print publication of selected poems from the first decade of Valparaiso Poetry Review that has recently been released. During our conversation, Jon remarked that he expected print books would always be an option to complement electronic publications, though he envisioned a future in which print publications might have a specialty position similar to vinyl records that many collectors still seek despite the digitization of music in other formats. Similarly, I thought of how I enjoy very much my digital camera and the ease of editing or displaying photos online; however, I still prefer viewing the finest photos as prints within a frame mounted upon a wall.

Over the weekend, newspapers included articles concerning the closing of Borders bookstores across the country and bloggers contemplated whether this event represented more evidence of transformation in the literary world. In addition, I received word that Quarterly West, the literary journal with which I gained valuable experience as the poetry editor during a few years of graduate school, would be joining a number of other notable literary journals, such as Shenandoah and TriQuarterly, by making a switch in its next issue from print publication to online only.

On Monday, my weekend thoughts about the contemporary process or product of publication seemed complete when I accepted an e-mail invitation by a literary group to give a poetry reading in the upcoming year, and I responded to a request to deliver a talk about a topic of my choice. I informed the reading series organizer I would present poems from a few of my newest publications, both print and electronic, and for my lecture I felt I had chosen an apt title: “Transitions in Publication.” Indeed, I noted that I believe the subject I selected might reflect various perspectives about one of the most significant developments to shape the literary community during the past decade, while addressing concerns and questions about format that will continue to influence how literature is put forward by authors or perceived by readers in the decade ahead, perhaps even evolving in ways we have not yet determined.

Poem of the Week: “Beachwalkers” by Kathryn Stripling Byer

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kathryn Stripling Byer’s “Beachwalkers,” which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue (Volume XI, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kathryn Stripling Byer has published five books of poetry, including Wildwood Flower (LSU Press, 1992), the Lamont Selection of the Academy of American Poets, Catching Light (LSU Press, 2001), and Coming to Rest (LSU Press, 2006). She is the 2007 recipient of the Hanes Award in Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals. In 2010, she completed her term as Poet Laureate of North Carolina.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

Photo Friday: “Lush”

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Poem of the Week: “No More” by Kate Fox

The VPR Poem of the Week is Kate Fox’s “No More,” which is included in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Kate Fox's poems have appeared in New Virginia Review, West Branch, Windsor Review, and Green Mountains Review, among others. Her chapbook, The Lazarus Method, was published by Kent State University Press as part of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers revisit it.

“Learning Sign Language: ‘Yes’” from Autism: A Poem

As I have mentioned previously, I have created a separate blog site as an open experiment of poetry composition, perhaps a glimpse at an emerging manuscript as it matures. The contents represent portions of an ongoing personal project with a particularly narrow focus intended to eventually develop toward a book-length poem tentatively and simply titled Autism.

The poem will grow as sections are added. The individual pieces are designed so that they may be viewed as independent items; however, I have consciously carried themes, images, and language through the extended sequence with the hope that connectivity and continuity will be preserved among numerous sections of the long poem.

I have now posted a new section, “Learning Sign Language: ‘Yes.’”

Readers are asked to regard Autism as a work in progress, a partial draft rather than a finished product (even if some selected segments previously may have appeared in print), and I request everyone realize various revisions—edits, emendations, or expansion—may be made to the posts at any time in the future.

In addition, I would like to remind readers that a portion of this poetry series in progress was released in March as Dark Refuge, an audio chapbook by Whale Sound. The dozen poems in that chapbook represent a narrative designed as a poetic sequence, part of this overall project of poetry I have been composing about particular observations or impressions concerning the characteristics and consequences associated with autism through a poetic chronicling of personal experiences with Alex.

Dark Refuge is available for readers to experience in differing formats: as online audio, online text, free downloadable mp3, pdf, e-book, print edition, and cd. Therefore, I also urge readers to visit the main page for Dark Refuge.

Photo Friday: “Twice as Nice”

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"Seeking a Center for Ecopoetics" by John Linstrom

During this summer season, I remind readers of the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review, which includes a lengthy essay on ecopoetics by John Linstrom:

SEEKING A CENTER FOR ECOPOETICS

—John Linstrom

A discomforting contradiction quickly crops up in the efforts of any nature writer who begins to consider the difference between nature and culture—it seems that writing, as a cultural act, could very easily be dismissed as superfluous to natural life. Particularly with the evolution of ecocriticism as a major field of literary study, we are reminded that no experience, no subject, no external object or pure thought, can be communicated with true immediacy. Language is, at best, mediating. So, if an ecocentric sense of primacy is granted to nonhuman nature or even to the sensually mediated experience of it, it would be best for us all to give up books for long walks in the woods. We could possibly attempt to give up on Jean Baudrillard’s non-referential map, that reality marked by detached signifiers, and get back to the territory, to the reality signified, but not through such an irrepressibly cultural and sign-dependent institution as language.[1]

Similarly, the concept of nature as a focalizing device could very easily be dismissed as superfluous to human culture. No amount of natural study will bring humans into a position of true nonhuman understanding—as a linguistic species we are intrinsically separate from an unspeaking and untranslatable universe. Why bother to attempt communication with this utterly nonhuman otherness when there is work to do and life to live in society? Recent scholarship provocatively asserts that “nature” is an entirely human construction anyway, so in that sense to attempt to place primacy of value in “nature” would seem to be simply another angle from which to approach a humanistic ethics.[2] Anthropocentrism rules—perhaps it must.

Ecocentrism as a concept has been emerging within ecocritical literary discourse as a confusing amalgam of conflicting values. Anthropocentrism seems straight-forward enough from a humanistic approach, but what kind of center is “eco"? Who are the ecopoets, if it is possible to distinguish them, and were they possible before the evolution of contemporary environmentalist dialogue? Most pressingly for current writers, where does the human fit within ecocentrism, if at all? Should the ecopoet observe an aesthetic of self-effacement, erasing her “brushstrokes” to highlight the landscape beyond the page and thus assert nonhuman primacy, or an aesthetic of unchecked artistic manipulation, admitting the inherent violence of representation against the thing represented and reveling in that admittance, celebrating the mess of paint in spite of its inadequacy? There is value in both of these perspectives, but, if they cannot be reconciled, the ecopoet is left displaced and paralyzed....

Visitors are invited to read the rest of the essay.

Poem of the Week: “Simple Pleasures” by Vincent Wixon

The VPR Poem of the Week is Vincent Wixon’s “Simple Pleasures,” which appears in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue (Volume IX, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Vincent Wixon is the author of two books of poems, The Square Grove (2006) and Seed (1993), and over the years he has published in various magazines and journals, as well as in three anthologies. Garrison Keillor read his poem “Tornado Weather” on The Writer’s Almanac. Wixon has produced videos on Oregon poets Lawson Inada and William Stafford, and has edited three Stafford books. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.

Photo Friday: “Downtown Reflected in Corvette Hood”

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Poem of the Week: “All There Is of Light” by Jean Nordhaus

The VPR Poem of the Week is Jean Nordhaus’s “All There Is of Light,” which appears in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue (Volume XII, Number 2) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Jean Nordhaus has published a number of books, including My Life in Hiding, A Bracelet of Lies, and The Porcelain Apes of Moses Mendelssohn. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, New Republic, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2000, and The Other Side of the Hill: 1975-1995, an anthology of poems by the Capitol Hill Poetry Group. Nordhaus has served as Coordinator of the Folger Shakespeare Library's poetry programs and as President of Washington Writers' Publishing House. She lives in Washington, DC.

Tuesday of each week One Poet’s Notes highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it.

Photo Friday: “Daylily at Night”

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