Friday, February 26, 2010

Theory: Famous Drinkers Writing

Long Live Fiction: A Guide to Fiction Online



It's hard to figure out how much poetry is being published in America. When I suggested to Michael Neff, founder of Web del Sol, that anyone can start an online journal for $100, he pointed out that anyone can start one via a blog for nothing. If current trends persist, the sheer amount of poetry "published" is likely to double, quadruple, "ten-tuple" in the decades ahead.


A word to the novelist on how to write better books


Moby Dick Abridged

In the vast whiteness
a white speck appears to move.
Perhaps it’s nothing.

-- Ravi Shankar


from the current issue of Now Culture
featuring short poems


From the annals of Life Magazine - Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts

3 comments:

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

That link "how much poetry is being published in America" (which pointed to a Chronicle of Higher Education article, "The New Math of Poetry") is very sobering-- in fact, staggering. 2,000 poetry journals on the duotrope list, and yet they "do not attempt to list all the poetry journals that are currently publishing." 330-plus chapbook contests.

And he concludes "Perhaps the most sinister fact about the new math of poetry is that it allows the academic oligarchy that controls poetry to impose a nonaesthetic, self-serving scoring system without attracting notice or raising indignation. Since no one can possibly read the vast number of poems being published, professionals can ignore independent poets and reserve the goodies—premiere readings, publications, honors, financial support—for those fortunate enough to be housed inside the professional poetry bubble.

Yow.

John B. Burroughs said...

Thanks for this!

John B. Burroughs said...

I have great respect for Ravi and kinda like his abridged version of Moby Dick, but think his poem nevertheless demonstrates the truth of the saying "Size Matters."

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau