A Stranger in a Strange Land
President Obama: We have important issues, and here are some policies I will push in the coming year.
Governor McDonnell (R-VA): I really didn’t read the President’s speech, and I’m not even going to bother commenting on what he said. Instead, I’m just going to pretend to be president, giving a fake state of the union address, to a canned audience who must clap on command. Because I’m cynical, and I think it would be good television.
Poetry is NOT about emotion. Poetry is about the artistic uses of language and language sound systems.
Part of the reason why I don’t blog much comes down to books. A friend of mine and I decided to go into business together and start up a niche/micro press. No delusions of grandeur, no “we’re going to change the landscape of publishing … hear our [mouse] roar!” Just, put together books we like, with the immediate goal of the press (Bandersnatch) generating enough money to keep itself afloat. One of the thing I’ve discovered, recently, is the issue of putting prices on books.
So, keep this in mind. You read a book of poetry that you like, and you want to publish it using POD technology (to cut out the expense of large print runs and warehouse fees). Lets say it’s a 32 page chapbook. Cost of production, full color, trade paperback in a 6 by 9 format will likely be 5 dollars and change. If you’re profit splitting or whatever, you can likely put a price of $8 on it, sell it off a website with a paypal link, and call it a day. Of course, you can’t expect the title to sell much by itself — paypal is a limiting factor, and the sad fact is: nobody really buys poetry, these days.
However, lets say an online vendor/book store comes around. Lets say they see the book and want to stock it. In all likelihood, that vendor will charge half the retail price as a fee for stocking and selling said chapbook. Half of 8 naturally is 4 — and if it costs you 5 and change to produce said chapbook . . . congrats, now you’re a dollar in the hole. So, to factor in online vendors, you have to up the price. 5 to manufacture, so the price goes to 10 just to break even. Add 2 dollars profit, and you’re at 12 (for 32 pages of poetry). Some readers will look at that and ask, “What the bloody blue fuck?” And they will not buy.
But, interestingly enough, high prices are not the territory of print on demand publishing. In general, the prices of poetry books — even in the larger, New York City presses — are just abysmal. Recently, I bought Dearest Creature by Amy Gerstler. (Plug: It’s great! I’ve always admired Amy Gerstler’s work!) Penguin Books put it out. The list price? $18 for like 96 pages. Over at a smaller, independent press like Saraband, Cate Marvin’s Fragment of the Head of a Queen is $13.95. Same length. Looking for a doorstop? The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (University of California Press) has a list price of $28.95, for 586 pages. I could go on and on citing examples. Penguin seems to charge the most, however, for thin poetry books.
It’s kind of dispiriting if you think about it. This is something the average, serious poetry reader knows already. However, lets say, like myself, that you’re trying to sell poetry to a genre audience, who normally has a jaded eye. They will look at 32 pages of poetry with a $12-15 price tag and cringe. Truth be told — publishing poetry is not super profitable anyway. And as much as I’d love to be comforted by higher prices stretching beyond POD technology, I’m not. The average reader will look at Amy Gerstler’s book on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, no matter the quality, and go “Um, 90 something pages for 18 dollars?” No thanks! Where are the Anne Rice paperbacks?
Seems like I’ve had one of my many no-blogging spells. I blame Wal-Mart, Christmas, and a rather economic issue I’d rather not get into. Instead, here is some nostalgia for 1990’s European punk rock….
So, today, while I was eating a rueben at Applebee’s, I was thumbing through the latest edition of the American Poetry Review. When it comes to that journal, it’s kind of hit or miss with me. Anyhow, I happened across something that touches on my aesthetic beliefs about horror in literature. APR republished an old essay by William Carlos Williams, entitled “The Practice.” Basically, Williams is reflected back on his other profession (the one that paid his bills), medicine. Basically, he suggests that without his practice of medicine, he wouldn’t have been able to write. Basically, making daily house calls kept him in touch with other people’s humanity, and that, in the end, fueled his writing.
That is why as a writer I have never felt that medicine interfered with me but rather that it was my very food and drink, the very thing which made it possible for me to write. Was I not interested in man?
It’s something I always circle back to. People make literature interesting, as language can only go so far. In the end, it’s always Achilles or Hamlet that keeps us reading, not the meter Homer or Shakespeare wrote in. The drum I often beat about horror is: in order to understand or comprehend inhumanity, you also have to understand and comprehend humanity. Squirting blood can only get you so far, and it’s the people written about that keeps readers reading. Have an uninteresting character, and you have an uninteresting story. If we adapt this to poetry, it’s a matter of voice and persona, in most cases. You have a listless voice, and you have a listless poem.
But that’s not the all of it. APR also published some other material on Williams, some of it from Robert Lowell, and then there’s Christian C. Thompson’s essay “The Science of Subjectivity.” Thompson basically seeks to examine Williams through the Lens of Immanuel Kant. But, those greater points aside, I found the third paragraph of the essay and instructive reminder of what it is to be a writer:
The serious poet — whether he or she realizes it or not — is a social scientist. On a daily basis the poet is inundated by a vast amount of cultural data which excites the sensibility, is synthesized and stored by the brain, until on occasion, something happens–sometimes immediately, somtimes weeks, months, or years later, which results in a poem.
As writers, to an extent, we are the sum of our experiences. Even if fiction is largely contrived, there’s still some form of observation going on, some sort of stimulus that has warranted a response. For Williams, it seems, this came by way of his patients and his house calls. And, it makes one wonder, at least, what might happen to horror writers if they took these observations, this sort of writing ethic to heart.
Making a good reuben, I like to assert is a delicate art. First of all, no one ingredient should outshine the other, with one exception. It’s a corned beef sandwhich, so if one is only tasting the Russian dressing or the sauerkraut — you might have problems. So, if the kruat is too boldly sour, or if the Russian dressing (thousand island, heh) is too sweet, then the sandwich classifies itself as a failure. This is why I don’t like the reubens one can easily get at Arby’s. The dressing, on occasion, can be far too sweet.
So, the new reuben at Applebees? My answer: meh. My sandwhich was tamed down, so it wasn’t a case of one ingredient overpowering the other. I thought the actual sandwhich could have used more corned beef, but that’s what you get at a corporate chain. Skimpy portions, and generic cuts. There’s a profound difference, in this regard, between this and Boar’s Head, or, even better, a mom-and-pop deli that cures it’s own meats. At least, however, it’s a couple steps above Arbies. And, of course, with Applebees everywhere, it’s convenient.
The word(s) “post modernist” or “avant garde” do not make you cool. Those are just vague, and often vogue, terms used to describe new ways of writing. Clothing yourself in such language makes you no better than militant new formalists who think throwing around terms like “iambic pentameter,” “Dactylic Hexameter,” or, even worse, “Spondee” makes them the defenders of classical western culture.
I am very much a sandwich person — by far, my favorite food. I have many ambitions in life, and two of them includes finding the perfect Hot Pastrami and the perfect corned beef rueben. Living in New Jersey, one would think that I would be in culinary heaven. Well, maybe. So, I decided to embark on an adventure. Every workday I have off, and I have some pocket change to spare, I’m going to try a new deli in my quest for the perfect sandwich.
So, today I went to Yussi’s Deli and Takeout in Lakewood. The deli is on one of the main streets in Lakewood, which means it shares the street with a few other Jewish establishments, as well as some Hispanic eateries. The deli on the inside looked clean for the most part, with hardly much in the way of seating. There was a display case of kosher salads and such, but the long and the short of it: hot pastrami on rye with mustard.
For a little over $10, I got the sandwhich it self, a pickle, cole slaw, some fries and a can of coke. The fries were so, so — deep fried, crunchy, but essentially flavorless. I didn’t eat the cole slaw and found the pickle passable. As for the sandwhich, the pastrami was a little greasy and soaked into the rye halves. The cuts themselves were good, and generally more flavorful than the Boar’s Head pastrami one can find in the supermarket. Perhaps a little too heavy on the mustard, though.
Final rating: would I return? Quite possibly, but certainly not a perfect sandwich.
That for reasons I won’t mention, Daverana Enterprises and I have dissolved our working relationship and have gone our separate ways.
In other news, Death in Common, after being pulled for lack of pages numbers has apparently met another delay. Since I no longer work for Daverana or Janrae Frank, I don’t know what happened. I just hope the book goes back on Amazon soon, and in the form and format that was contracted and agreed upon by each individual contributor.
