Response Time

We try to respond to submissions promptly, and now there's an online monitor of how promptly that is: Duotrope, which reports, for example, that Zoetrope (no relation) took 318 days recently to whip out a form rejection.

Our tracked response time averages 26 days.

We once tried responding quicker, flipping a rejection back as soon as we had made the decision, but some rejectees accused us of not having given their work sufficient attention.

(I read everything that comes in and I do so two or three times a week; that way I'm relatively fresh every time I address the slush pile. It's too depressing to let manuscripts pile up.)

So we age our rejections in a special bin, sometimes for a couple of weeks. Or even three weeks. Until the bin starts to fill up.

Part of the fantasy involved in submitting a manuscript is having work "under consideration at..."

For some writers, we're part of the testing process, offering "serious, hard-nosed, constructive criticism," as Trevor Hambric put it yesterday in Writers' Hearth.

We're willing to play along. The whole thing is a fantasy, on our end, too.

Lesser is lesser

Debbie Yee: Junker versus Lesser

Top Ten Tragedies

Upon further review, The Decline of English lit and the rise of Creative Writing does not even make the Top Ten Tragedies of the Past Half-Century, which are:

10. Dylan goes electric

9. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson

8. Texting

7. Foodieism

6. Post-colonial Africa

5. The assassinations of the sixties: (Fidel), Lumumba, Diem, JFK, Malcolm X, George Lincoln Rockwell, MLK, Jr., RFK...

4. John Updike not getting the Nobel Prize for Literature

3. AIDS

2. Y2K (the bust and esp. the election)

1. Taking revenge: America's response to 9/11

No Comment

Robert Peake has been kind enough to point out that at least one of my posts, "Couples," on March 23, did not "allow" comments. My mistake, but perhaps that's why there were in fact no comments. If you'd like to mention some famous writers who found life-partners who were also famous writers, please do so now.

I sometimes envy blogs that elicit lots of comments, although I'm not running a chat room here.

Comments that seem more personal than public, for example, I tend to keep for myself.

And then, only last Friday, "Monica" commented on my post of 12 December [sic]:

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Have a nice day!

What the Dickens

If you had begun BLEAK HOUSE in March, 1852, when Dickens presented the world with its first four chapters, you would have had to wait 19 months to reach The End.

I thought of re-reading this wonderfully unbleak novel, whose contents had almost entirely faded from memory, in the proper installments, to get a feel for that sort of thing, but I concluded, not that life is too short, although it may well be, but that our sense of time has been so accelerated, what with the many advances in science & industry, that I might achieve the equivalent experience by devoting 19 days to the reading.

In the event, I stayed in bed with my book when I should have been up and about, and for a few days and nights I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

But, Dear Reader, I gave up after 256 pages. Not because I didn't like the book, but because I was gorged. It was too delicious a read. I couldn't eat another bite.

And, really, I was miffed, because I had thought I was the only one enchanted with the idea of The Growlery, the room the usually pleasant and generous Mr. Jarndyce repairs to when he is feeling out of humor.

But a google revealed that every blogger and her brother wants a room of their own for growling, when the need arises.

Oh, google it yourself.

Couples

Writers tend to be solitary souls, not team players, and few famous ones have found life-partners in the same line of work.

In the great tradition, there are really only the Brownings and the Rossettis.

In modern times, if you include critics, there'd be F.R & Q.D. themselves, and, of course, Lionel & Diana.

And then maybe Scott & Zelda, Bunny & Mary, Lillian & Dash, Joan & John Gregory... (Actually, Mary McCarthy had four husbands and her marriage to Edmund "Bunny" Wilson was "a mistake" that lasted less than ten years, but you gotta include a guy called Bunny if you possibly can.)

Amongst poets: Cal & Jean & Lizzie & Caroline, Ted & Sylvia, LeRoi & Diane, Gary & Joanne, Ray & Tess, Bob & Bobbie, Donald & Jane, Bob & Brenda, Jorie and whatever-his-name-is, Barry & Carla, Maxine & Paul...

These days, there seem to be a lot of prosey couples in our hood: Bharati & Clark, Dodie & Kevin, Michael & Ayelet, Dave & Vendela, Julie & Ryan...and, farther off, Alice & Glen David, Jonathan & Nicole....

Tom Christensen, who forms a translating team with his wife, wonders how I could have overlooked Percy & Mary and J-P & Simone. And Lenny & Virginia.

And I just remembered Frances & Ed Mayes.

Perhaps you'd like to add a few names....

Susan Ito adds: "Michael Dorris & Louise Erdrich were a huge inspiration for me until, of course, his sad death."

SFState of the Art

Nine litmags editors expatiated on their art last nite at the Poetry Center at SF State. Some things that caught my ear:

1) Eli Horowitz of McSweeney's described putting a magnet in the current issue: the negotiations with the printer in Singapore (finding one who could perform the insertion; getting the right strength of magnet)...a real crowd pleaser.

I replied that "packaging" struck me as an interim solution to the crisis of the text and the reader's disinterest in it.

In the longer run, I suggested, the generation that lives to "text" each other nonstop (and can input with their thumbs) is not going to have the patience or the concentrated attention to (want to) be able to deal with intricately composed (and extended) verbal patterns.

Nonetheless, I went on, maybe "literature" will survive the way horses have, not so much for day-to-day transportation (consider the pollution we'd have if they had), but for recreation and racing and pastoral delight (and food). Since there are now more horses in this country than there were in 1900, us farrier/editors may have a future....

2) Del Ray Cross of Shampoo was asked how he decided how much stuff to include in his online journal. He replied that although theoretically he has infinite space, in practice he likes to have the names of all the poets in a given "issue" visible on the homepage. (Thus, 36 appear in the current issue.)

I thought this was an excellent question and that his answer showed how the model for the e-zine continues to be "the page." The possibilities of the new (post-page) format, with links, with video, with interactivity, are only beginning to be explored.

Michelle Richmond of Fiction Attic said she likes having an object to lug around with her, peruse in the bath, etc., and Del Ray cited Sony's e-book (and I felt like pulling out my superBlackBerry, which is waterproof, and liteweight, and easy to read...except I don't have one).

3) Chad Sweeney of Parthenon West Review allowed as how the experience of the panel that night, discussing the money-draining quagmire of distribution versus the ease and economy of e-publishing, had persuaded him to renounce print in the future and just do a limited edition, a couple hundred copies for libraries, and let the online edition reach out to the masses.

PS: At least one member of the audience posted her reaction before she turned in: http://boredlizzie.livejournal.com/32230.html?view=42726#t42726

Creative Writing

Heather McHugh (ZYZZYVA Spring '95, Fall/Winter '96) has responded to my letter to the editor of The American Scholar (Autumn 2006) with a letter of her own, a rousing defense of creative writing programs. She was inspired by my comment that "one of the greatest tragedies of the past half-century has been the decline of 'English lit' and the rise of 'creative writing.'"

My hyperbole apparently distracted her from the true subject of my letter, a lament that the new editor of The Scholar had decided to include two short stories per issue.

I suggested that, even though general-interest magazines have given up on short fiction (because their readers don't want it), there are plenty of other outlets, which is what creative writers call litmags.

And many of these outlets now feature "creative nonfiction," which is what creative writing teachers call essays and reportage and memoirs--the traditional strength of The Scholar, which I urged him not to dilute.

But if he were determined to do fiction, I begged him to go beyond the usual suspects.

He has to date resisted my good counsel.

The first three with-fiction issues have offered such shopworn idols as Ann Beattie, David Leavitt, Steven Millhauser, and Alice Munro. To be sure, the current issue includes a story by the editor of the O.Henry Prize anthology, whose career as a story writer may have escaped your notice, although she is exactly the kind of expert one imagines The Scholar's editor might have consulted before he launched his ill-advised fiction project.

Mes semblables

Wednesday night at the San Francisco State Poetry Center:

Meet the editors.

Del Ray Cross, Shampoo
Eli Horowitz, McSweeney’s
Howard Junker, ZYZZYVA
Liz Lisle, Watchword
Michelle Richmond, Fiction Attic
Jason Snyder, Sidebrow
Chad Sweeney, Parthenon West Review
Eric Zassenhaus, Instant City

“The continuing importance of literary journals”
Panel moderator:
Jenny Pritchett, Fourteen Hills

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
7:30 p.m.

The Poetry Center
Humanities Building, Room 512
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
Map: http://tinyurl.com/349uy9

New Poets

Kore Press in Tucson has just brought out LOVELIEST GROTESQUE by Sandra Lim, whom we published in Spring '05: Something Something Something Grand

Meanwhile, among the fifty new poets in BEST NEW POETS 2006 (University of Virginia Press) are three we've published:

Andrew Allport, his second poem in print, Spring '06, http://www.zyzzyva.org/sp06.allport.htm

Lisa Gluskin, Fall '01, http://www.zyzzyva.org/fall01.gluskin.htm

Julie Larios, Fall '03, (sorry, we didn't put her poem up on our website) http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com/2006/08/author-interview-julie-larios-on.html

We've been invited to nominate two poets for next year's volume.

You're invited to mention your favorites from Fall '06, Winter '06, and Spring '07, which left the printer last Thursday, will reach our "mailing house" Wednesday, and then be at the mercy of the Post Office.

If you are a poet and if you haven't published a book already, you can nominate one of your own recent poems: http://www.bestnewpoets.org/open.html

Yesterday

After a hard day at the office, I went to Steve Rodefer's 4:30 reading at the Poetry Center. I've known him since he was the most beautiful freshman at Amherst. (Scroll way down and subtract 20 years: http://www.poltroonpress.com/rogues.html

He read from his classic FOUR LECTURES, projected on a screen, and also had projected some of his text-based paintings http://www.modernsculpture.com/stephenrodefer.htm

Kit Robinson had come with Steve and we talked about THE GRAND PIANO, the language poets' ten-part collective autobiography; Part II has just come out http://www.spdbooks.org/SearchResults.asp?AuthorTitle=grand+piano
Since I'd paid hard cash for the first two parts, Kit offered to put me on his freebie list for Part III.

My old friend Dale Freeman (http://www.zyzzyva.org/w05.freeman.htm) had invited me to the ballet, so I left before Dara Weir read. I had time to check out the ZYZZYVA placement (one copy left) at Books, Inc. (an advertiser), and ran into Aaron Shurin, co-director of creative writing at USF (an advertiser), who sat with me while I had a hot cocoa at Peet's. He was delighted to tell me that City Lights will do his book of essays next year.

After the ballet, I ran into Frances Phillips, poet and program director at the Creative Work Fund, which, in the early nineties, gave us a grant to publish four first-novels http://www.zyzzyva.org/zbooksandbios.htm ; I told her the good news about Aaron and urged her to congratulate him.

AQR

Although the Spring & Summer 2007 issue of AQR is up on the website http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/aqr/current-issue.cfm and may even have been printed already, Fall & Winter 2006 just arrived in this office.

The title on the spine is Alaska Quarterly Review, but it is no longer a quarterly, it comes out as a "double issue" twice a year, a fact that "AQR," the big title on the front cover, kind of disguises.

F&W '06 contains 248 pages and devotes 68 of them to Albert Goldbarth--two new poems and thirteen reprints. This "special feature" is labeled "New and Selected Poems." The reprints are from books that have gone out of print.

There is one first-time-in-print, by a doctoral candidate; it begins: "Sexual desire triggered Larry's most acute bouts of hearthache--though the sex was not really what his heart ached for, he knew--and masturbation brought his greatest depression, each hopeless ejaculation a microcosm of his life...."

The Hopper Revisited

The last time I bought a manuscript was January 26, pretty late in the game considering we went to the printer on February 9, but I had had a discussion with the writer and was, in effect, keeping a slot for it.

For the past seven weeks, I've continued to screen manuscripts as they came in: 309 in all, of which 20 made it to the hopper. (From here on in, my turn-around time will get back to a normal three weeks.)

Yesterday, I returned ten and kept ten--to marinate a bit more. Two or three of these survivors will probably end up in print, about the average yield for the slush pile, one per cent.

Stegners

A Stegner Fellowship at Stanford is the creative-writing student's equivalent of clerking for the Supreme Court: icing on the cake ("a living stipend of $22,000 and required workshop tuition of approximately $6,500, totaling $57,000 for the two-year period.")

One of our managing editors, Robin Ekiss, first time in print ZYZZYVA Summer '93, got one--and married one.

John Struloeff, a current Stegner and editor of the web resource Poetry Mountain, has a couple of poems in the Spring issue; Cynthia Struloeff, his wife, had a short story in the Winter issue, in which former Stegner Dean Young had three poems.

After her Stegner, Jennifer Anderson, first time in print ZYZZYVA Spring '97, moved back to Napa, where her husband, Kristof, makes wine for Erba, http://www.erbamountainsidevineyards.com/erbawines.htm. He has also done four barrels of cabernet with a label bearing the name of their daughter, Pella. (I'm letting my bottle age a few years).

After her Stegner, Joelle Fraser, first time in print ZYZZYVA Fall '98, also lived in Napa; she needs to follow up on her 2003 memoir, The Territory of Men http://www.amazon.com/Territory-Men-Memoir-Joelle-Fraser/dp/0812968182/ref=sr_1_2/104-0663895-4331955?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173711230&sr=8-2

Jim Gavin, first time in print ZYZZYVA Winter '01, just got a Stegner for next fall; he's been working as a plumber in L.A., a career move I think Wally would have approved of. Actually, right now, Jim's working as a production assistant on "Jeopardy." Which also ought to stand him in good stead.

Filthy Lucre

C.M. Mayo sent me her new cuaderno/chapbook, http://www.tameme.org/catalog.html, which I enjoyed, esp. because my Spanish is at its best in the presence of a bilingual text.

I esp. enjoyed her translating "nonprofit" as "una asociacion no lucrativa."

Lucre, Middle English, from the Latin, of couse: http://www.answers.com/topic/lucre

NEA

Applying for a grant is never easy, the theory of most institutional donors being that applicants should have to work to get any money.

The 20-page application for an NEA Access to Artistic Excellence Literature Grant this year, for example, is supposed to be done online, but will not not accessible to Mac users until next year.

In any case, to submit online, you first have to "register." By the NEA's estimate, this process takes two weeks: http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/grantsgovChecklist.html

If you ask Mr. Gioia, I'm sure he'll tell you that the application process is being simplified and made more user-friendly and less time-consuming.

Stormy Wether

It is so frustrating that The New Yorker gets first shot at everything: http://wholelottahobbsy.blogspot.com/2007/03/choir-boy.html

Antonella Barba

Antonella Barba was the most popular search on Technorati yesterday, but AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, was number two, at least in the morning, on the strength of its annual conference in Atlanta over the weekend. (Amanda attended: http://zinesfromzerotohero.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-traveled-to-atlanta-this-weekend-for.html)

I guess attendees, most of them wannabes, wanted to find out whether other people found the experience as demoralizing/disorienting as they had.

Here's a typical voice from the depths: http://gokusan02.livejournal.com/36410.html

The Usual Suspects

In a comment on Ron Silliman's effusive celebration of Conjunction's 25th-anniversary issue last Thursday http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/search/label/Journals, Curtis Faville dissents:

"I'm not sure why Conjunctions bores me. Probably because it's too big. That's kind of how I felt about Antaeus--which, though a somewhat more conservatively edited omnibus mag, mixed poetry and prose in about the same measure, and with the same result--that it really isn't that difficult to seem eclectic, if you have enough space.

"The guiding principle behind a journal which pretends to cover this much ground can become too diffuse to be convincing. The other thing in common with Antaeus is the tendency to publish established authors. Because periodical publication in America is always tenuous, older authors who should have stepped aside long ago, to make way for younger authors, may keep pushing forward with new work. Do we really need to see new Ashbery/Barth/Oates work in magazines year after year--especially when we can almost anticipate precisely what we're going to see/read?

"If an author can get dependable book publication, why should he/she take up all the periodical space as well? It's all part of the mechanisms of careerism and branding and publicity--almost a kind of professional vanity press. Editors who ask for material, or who receive it unsolicited, from big names, are 'obliged' to publish it, even if they suspect it may not be up to snuff. The names on the masthead become more important than any vision the editorial staff may have had when they started. Because just espousing 'the best work' being done isn't specific enough."

Kathi George

In last Monday's post, a send-up of an Oscar acceptance speech, I neglected to thank Kathi George. On purpose: somebody important should always be left out. But foolishly, because she saves us from so much embarrassment.

Our proofreader, she catches the last, elusive typyos and the errors and misusages our tired eyes have let pass. Lest I get obstreperous on certain calls, she cites the Chicago Manual and the current American Heritage Dictionary--I still use the one, bound in duct tape, where I found the last word 25 years ago. She tries to keep my mania for hyphens in check. She insists on Kleenex, although I prefer kleenex. She reminds me, again and again, to spell out %.

Her late husband, the poet Charlie George, was a key board member in the early days.

In the seventies, Kathi helped found Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies; these days, she's a stalwart at San Diego's Brighton Press, setting type for letterpress books, proofing, of course, and generally being enthusiastic and essential:

http://www.ebrightonarts.com/who_we_are.html

Good/Best

I'm not exactly sure what Good is, but its website suggests it's "providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world," which is good enough for me.

Anyway, they asked Graydon Carter, of SPY and Vanity Fair, to do an intro to their list of the 51 best magazines of all time. I am pleased that one litmag, although not ZYZZYVA, made the list--and two others were mentioned.

I was also pleased that, besides having a letter to the NY Times about Poetry magazine quoted in a recent issue of No. 2 (The New Yorker), I've written for eight of the best:

http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/the_best_magazines_ever

Amanda Field

Managing editor Amanda Field's first chapbook, That Year, has just been published by Etherdome (Boulder, CO): http://www.durationpress.com/etherdome/index.htm

She works here two days a week, teaches English at Chabot College in Hayward two days a week, and on Wednesday nights teaches a course on zines at California College of the Arts; the course comes complete with a wiki and a blog: http://dada.cca.edu/~afield/

Tomorrow afternoon, in Atlanta, she's reading with the other Etherdome poets at the Associated Writing Programs annual conference.