Zoetrope at Ten

Congratulations to Zoetrope: All-Story; its tenth-anniversary issue is on the press.

I never thought it would last this long, because I was convinced Francis Ford Coppola would soon tire of his plaything, become annoyed by the constant drain on the exchequeur.

Indeed, he removed the magazine from New York when its free rent was rescinded, and reinstalled it in his North Beach headquarters. But he has prospered, and so has the magazine. (I love the two-page ad for his winery; it would look good in our pages, and we could certainly discuss a discounted page-rate.)

I still don't get the virtue of reprinting "classic stories that inspired films to illustrate the narrative relationship between the art forms." That seems like Hollywoodish wishful thinking, and a cheap way to get a marquee-name writer. But there, too, that's what Zoetrope does: offer a handful of big-name writers in each issue (with only a very occasional venture into unknown territory).

I used to think naming the magazine after Coppola's production company was a bit much, but I now realize it was only branding. So I suppose it is just more branding, and not inexpressibly vulgar, to put "FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA PRESENTS" at the top of the front cover: http://ffcpresents.com/site.php

I like the theory of having each issue totally redesigned by a famous artist, even if the results are usually overbearing in their look-at-me insistence; I think the design of a litmag should be about enhancing the texts, a concept that celebrity-designers never seem to get.

ZYZZYVA looks forward to playing Zoetrope in softball this year; it's been a while and they ought to have recovered from their stinging defeats by now.

Rejection

The Hound & Horn (1927-1934) was begun by two undergraduates as a "Harvard miscellany"; they gave James Agee his first time in print.

The H&H become the country's hot litmag after The Dial folded in 1929, having run through $500,000 in ten years.

Among the writers who had work rejected by The H&H: Hart Crane, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Mark Shorer, Kenneth Rexroth, William Saroyan, Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, Katherine Anne Porter, Erskine Caldwell, and Sean O'Faolain.

The primary editor, Lincoln Kirstein, was the scion of a department-store fortune and could have kept The H&H afloat despite the Depression and the annual deficit of $10,000, but he had another dream to pursue: promoting ballet in America by starting a school and by importing George Balanchine.

The other co-founder, Varian Fry, went on to set up a last-minute escape hatch from Vichy France, which saved many writers & artists & intellectuals from the Nazis, including Hannah Arendt, Andre Breton, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Wanda Landowska, Jacques Lipchitz, Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, Marcel Duchamp, and Heinrich Mann.

Many Thanks

I'd like to thank the Board, our donors, subscribers, and advertisers for making this all possible.

Our wonderful managing editor, Amanda Field.

Our designer, Tom Ingalls. Our accountant, Michelle Wright. Quon at PhotoDay. Chin at Print One. Deidra Stierle and all the folks at McNaughton & Gunn. Accurate Mailings. The United States Postal Service. Byron Spooner and his crew at the Main Library's Book Bay.

I'd also like to thank the editors of Jack & Jill, who gave me my first time in print.

And my eighth-grade typing teacher, because in those days nobody had a machine at home and it was hard to build up enough finger-strength to mash the keys, so she suggested we thrum our fingers on our tables at home: left pinky, right pinky, left ring finger...etc.

Gene Reilly at Canterbury and Ben DeMott and Leo Marx at Amherst.

And Gay Talese, whose "human interest" stories in The Times, inspired me to become a journalist.

All those editors who gave me a chance: Maggie Paley, Dale McConathy, Harold Hayes, Jack Kroll, Betsy Baker, Paige Rense...

And, of course, my wife and daughter: I love you.

Statements of Ownership

The Post Office gives a special rate to magazines that publish at least four times a year and, in return, requires them to make an annual "Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation," which the publisher must sign off on ("I certify that all the information on this form is true and complete.") and publish in the next issue.

Thus, we know that The New Yorker has a million paid subscribers, but sells only 46,000 copies through "dealers and carriers, street venders, counter sales, and other non-USPS paid distribution."

That is, The New Yorker is not an impulse buy. If you want it, you want it every week, in the mail.

Art in America has 67,000 subscribers and sells 9,000 single copies.

Poetry magazine has 24,000 subscribers and sells 2,800 single copies.

VQR has 3,900 subscribers and sells 1,600 single copies.

Tin House has 6,500 subscribers and sells 4,500 single copies.

I queried the publisher of Tin House on his single-copy number, which seems so out of whack, and he thanked me for my concern.

Grog

Former board member Dixon Long has followed up his guide to the markets of Provence with one for the markets of Paris:

http://www.amazon.com/Markets-Paris-Dixon-Long/dp/1892145456/sr=1-1/qid=1171384447/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0663895-4331955?ie=UTF8&s=books

Dixon will be at Book Passage in Corte Madera, on March 18; Readers Books in Sonoma on April 5, at Mrs. Dalloway's in Berkeley sometime in April, and at the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco on April 12: http://www.milibrary.org/events.html

Former board member Hans Gallas is celebrating this year's centennial of the meeting of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: http://www.gertrudeandalice.com/

Former board member Darien Hsu Gee, writing as Mia King, has just published her first novel (Berkeley Trade): http://www.miaking.com/

She also takes part in a grog: http://www.thedebutanteball.com/

Meanwhile, former board members Beth Gutcheon, Brenda Webster, and Marilyn Yalom continue to thrive:
http://www.bethgutcheon.com/

http://www.well.com/~brenda1/

http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/10783/Marilyn_Yalom/index.aspx

And Wikipedia suggests that former board member Ethan Canin may be coming out with a novel, "In the Bed of Ian K. Myron," later this year.

Auden, Editor

Auden edited the Yale Series of Younger Poets for 13 years, 1947-59. True, he picked Rich, Wright, Merwin, Ashbery, and Hollander, but he passed twice on Plath; in two years, he found nothing fit to print; in three, he went with manuscripts not officially submitted but found by his own devices.

BTW, Ginsberg met McClure at an Auden reading, and that led to the Howl reading.

See also:

http://www.audensociety.org/news.html

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/11/audens_on_the_c.html

http://rana.typepad.com/weblog/2007/02/auden.html

Soft Proofs

Yesterday, we got soft proofs of the Spring issue, pub date: 21 March.

We used to get "bluelines," so called because, like the blueprints that architects used to use, they printed out on a special bluish paper with the text a darker blue instead of black.

For the past few years, we've gotten regular, actual-sized, black-ink-on-white-paper proofs, bound, but without a cover, which came on a special sheet in color.

Soft proofs are e-mailed as PDFs and look exactly like what we sent the printer on a disk (with a printout) in the first place.

And since all we really want to know at this stage is whether the pages are in the right order, and the only corrections we want to make are slugging in the ads that arrived late and maybe jiggling the ad layout a bit, soft proofs are fine.

Hooray for e-printing.

Top Ten Literary Magazines

Litmags are all sui generis and they are not in competition with each other and it is not always necessary to be first:

http://www.everywritersresource.com/Biglist.html

Flarf

I would like to weigh in on flarf. (For a primer on flarf, check the link at the bottom of this post.)

For starters, even though nobody says that anymore, I am in favor of the word itself.

I am also absolutely in favor of flarf in theory. I believe in tricks of the trade, and I believe writers need tools just like other workers.

I also believe in the need for flarf to insult the alleged gravitas of the world.

It is true that I get enough flarf at home, in every medium there is, and that what I really want when I read is stuff that makes sense.

Nonetheless, I like to be amused by the absurdity of words and I admire writers who are clever. If they are not personally clever, then I am delighted when they figure out a way to appear to be.

I am not impressed with writers who pretend to be really smart, even if they are.

Nor do I need to be reminded on a regular basis that there are plenty of mysteries in this world, that "random" isn't abnormal, but to be expected. Chaos rules is a slogan I would proudly wear on my T-shirt, if anyone wore T-shirts with slogans anymore.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/syllabi/readings/flarf.html

Tribute Band Not

http://yetilobster.livejournal.com/2428.html

V-Z Day

Our office is not a hotbed of water-cooler romance, because, for one thing, we hydrate with pints of Crysal Geyser. (I favor quarts of Calistoga Sparkling Original.) More than that, we lack critical mass, being, on any given day, just Amanda and me and, with any luck, one volunteer at a time. But sometimes, when we review the just-published issue, for example, the entire staff gets together.

Kristin Kearns, an editorial assistant for the last six months, describes her experience:

"Last August, unemployed and spending most of my time writing in cafes, I decided to volunteer at ZYZZYVA. I'd received a number of "Onward!"s and figured if you can't get published by 'em, join 'em. I wouldn't be earning back any of the money I'd spent attempting to rouse the muse with caffeine, but I would, I hoped, learn about literary magazines and spend time with interesting, passionate people. Which is, as it turned out, exactly what happened.

"Here is an overview of my stint as an editorial assistant: I opened and logged in submissions, read manuscripts from the slush pile, proofread, learned Quark, and helped with layout.

"Met Mattie, the other editorial assistant, while doing layout for the All-Sex issue; applied mailing labels to envelopes; ate numerous lunches with Howard and Amanda; went on numerous dates with Mattie; helped update the website; decided to take a three-month trip to Italy with Mattie.

"So you see, volunteering is about much more than just breaking into publishing. You can expect such perks as free copies of the magazine and its anthologies, free lunches, and a boyfriend. We leave for Italy at the end of the month, which means there will be slots open for volunteers."

Below: Mattie (left) and Kristin, just moments after waking, prepare for another day at the office.

Repent

I didn't mind Cody's closing on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, its glory days were long gone, but I will be devastated if the sine qua non of L.A. bookstores, Dutton's Brentwood, now under pressure from its landlord, who wants to "develop" the property, vanishes.

There is no nicer bookseller than Doug Dutton. His store is an oasis and a bastion and an adventure.

I think Dutton's should be declared a National Literary Monument and preserved for the ages.

For a full report: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-duttons17jan17,0,7244633.story?coll=la-home-headlines

PS: Doug's brother Denis is the founding editor of the urlitmashup Arts & Letters Daily http://aldaily.com/

PPS: Dutton's has advertised in ZYZZYVA since Fall 1987.

The Man

Ron Silliman, the preeminent litblogger ("focused on contemporary poetry and poetics"), has just received his millionth visitor (since starting in August 2002).

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/

In big-media terms, this is pathetic, but in the litblogworld it's huge.

Silliman feels he has "a core readership of maybe 1,500 people, folks who stop by somewhere between daily – a handful more often than that– and once a fortnight. These are people who never need to explore beyond this top page unless they’re working on some project and need to get archival. Around this core is a somewhat larger number of individuals who stop by for a time – perhaps they’re taking a class & have been told by a professor to check it out – but who don’t develop the habit....

"When I started this blog, my goal, as I’ve noted before, was to have maybe 30 readers a day, 30 being the audience size of what I take to be a completely successful reading. And I still think that any blog that gets 30 readers a day deserves to be called successful – indeed, I think you can have a successful blog with considerably less, since the point of the blog is not numbers but rather the quality of thinking that the form helps to bring out in you.

"Right now, my average visitor spends exactly three minutes each time they come by. That’s roughly three times the length it takes to read the words in this note up to here silently, but less perhaps than it would take to read these same words aloud."

The Hopper

Later today, we'll send Spring '07, Volume XXIII, No. 1, off to the printer.

In the hopper for Fall, I've got nothing.

Nothing under contract. And in the white plastic wash tub where "promising" manuscripts wait to be given careful consideration, there is nothing.

This degree zero is not yet terrifying, because I'm still high on Spring, which I think is the best issue ever.

In fact, the clearing of the decks is always refreshing: the illusion of starting over with a clean slate. Of course, this particular slate is muddied, bloodied, chipped, and fractured.

Next week, I'll start inventing the wheel again.

The Look of the Poet

In a 1940 review of "Modern Poetry and the Tradition" by Cleanth Brooks, Auden declared that "The general public still thinks...true poets look like Shelley."

Apparently, they still do, as I discovered recently when I looked to see what eBay might offer in the way of "poets." I found the usual bric-a-braq and slim volumes as well as these items:

1) a Victoria's Secret $49 boucle sweater with "poet" sleeves

2) a plus-size NWT woman's peasant/poet blouse

3) Bobbi Wade's "awesome poet shirt made of a fabric that looks and feels like wool. The contents are not marked. It is machine washable. Made in Nantucket. It should fit a medium size man or a large size woman."

4) Gotham Castle's MEN'S GOTHIC/PIRATE/POET STYLE SHIRT

5) J JILL'S CRINKLED POET SHIRT

6) Cowboy Action Shooting POET Bandana SASS ARM GARTERS and Wild Rag POET Bandana SASS 35

7) Judy's "handsome poet shirt made of 100% unbleached muslin cotton. So soft and comfortable next to your skin. This shirt is multi functional. Great for all the colonial reenactments. How about pioneer days? Great for plays and musicals. Got a prom to go to? Now we all know how popular the whole renaissance thing is. The uses are unlimited."

Actually, Auden, in "Letter to Lord Byron, Part III," knew exactly what lots of poets looked like:

There's every mode of singing robe in stock,
From Shakespeare's gorgeous fur coat, Spenser's muff,
Or Dryden's lounge suit to my cotton frock,
And Wordworth's Harris tweed with leathern cuff.
Firbank, I think, wore just a just-enough;
I fancy Whitman in a reach-me-down,
But you, like Sherlock, in a dressing gown.

Litblogs, Notes Toward a Taxonomy

My distinguished colleague, C.M. Mayo, http://www.cmmayo.com/aboutcmmayo.html, recently took time away from finishing her novel, to reflect on the nature of blogs: Tameme Chapbooks ~ Cuadernos: If you're bilingual you count twice ~ Quien habla dos lenguas vale por dos

All-Sex Issue, Revisited

The Board enjoys my going over the contents of each issue, after it's been published, to hear what I think I was thinking.

So, last night, at our first meeting of the year, I ran through the Winter, so-called All-Sex Issue. The first story, which concerns a young man who "becomes" a hafiz, that is, someone who has memorized the entire Koran, does not allude to sex at all.

The first poem, however, refers to touching a breast. The second offers a whispered "I love you." The third includes "mating swans." All by Dean Young.

The second story is a gertudesteinish parody of porn, which begins, "Sometimes men are kissing. Men are sometimes kissing and sometimes drinking."

The third story describes an L.A. highschooler who lets herself get picked up at a Food-4-Less by a mature couple.

The fourth story begins, "She'd never seen a Murphy bed before..."

Then a poem by Diane di Prima.

The fifth story has a husband who's been cheating with a "floozy" who smokes Virginia Slims.

Then a poem titled "Kitchen Sex." Followed by a portofolio of photos of sexy fruits & vegetables.

The fifth story concerns a Taiwanese museum and an object that looks "like a saddle, with a sticklike object standing up from the center," which the owner's daughter uses to good advantage.

In the next poem, the muse pays a "conjugal visit."

Then, an essay by a psychiatrist/poet: "Sound becomes wonderful both for its physical pleasure, and also for its imagined powers to tie two people together."

The sixth, rather long, story deals with a teacher who did not have illicit relationships with his male students....

Then, Sharon Doubiago was sunbathing nude "on the platform out over the bluff when he arrived...."

Then, a nine-page poem, in couplets, in which a rabbi meets a woman on a flight to Delhi.

Then, two shorts: "Boys & Girls & Fish."

And a poem,"Novella," which begins, "spoil you, spank you...."

And, finally, two poems in which the poet spells out his love-hate for editors.

This issue is available for free to those who reveal their address to me (domestic U.S. only, while supplies last).

Big Ups

On Friday, we asked if anyone would dream up a WTF; many thanks to James Kelch for this one: http://www.technorati.com/wtf/zyzzyva/2007/02/02/zyzzyva-is-one-of-the-most-well-regarded-literary--1

quod vide:
http://www.emb4ever.com/videos/videoclip_kelch.html

WTF

Technorati.com, which searches 66 million blogs for free (we search for "zyzzyva" and "howard junker," of course), has just added a new feature, the WTF.

Technically, a WTF is a what-the-f--- opinion, although Technorati takes a higher road: "Where's the Fire encourages users to write explanations about why a given search term is hot -- right now. And because folks can also vote for the WTFs they think are most helpful, we're able to highlight the best WTFs for our community. It's Live Web search meets wiki meets voting. Really cool."

We urge you to write one about ZYZZYVA (in the gray box at the upper right):
http://www.technorati.com/search/%22zyzzyva%22

Statue of Limitations

There's a full-page ad in the current New York Review of Books headlined: "Where will we put the statue?"

The idea is to erect a statue to honor the late George Plimpton, who, among many other things, was "the editor of a small struggling literary review."

We are in favor of all honors bestowed upon litmag editors, although, given the choice, we would prefer those bestowed preposthumously.

Actually, the Paris Review has always been a giant among litmags and has never seemed to struggle unduly. And it is exactly not a "review," limiting itself, as Plimpton put it, to writing itself, not writing about writing.

In any case, the statuesque website is filled with amusing stuff, including fireworks: http://www.plimptonproject.org/