blood and ink

we've moved!

2008-04-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

some of you might be curious why there hasn't been a new post in a mazillion years. Well it's 'cause you're looking in the wrong place. Blood and ink has moved to www.elijahbrubaker.com/bloodandink check out the new contributors and see what we have to say.
Thanks
~E

Small Press Editorial Changes

2007-11-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

There are times in the small press when, as a publishing writer, you'll be asked by an editor for certain changes. Depending on the weight and creativity of these changes, you can find yourself wedged between that age-old rock and a hard place. How to handle these situations, and whether to handle them is up to you, but there are some useful things to keep in mind and that we'll discuss in this post. I'll begin with an example, and we'll move on from there.

I sent three poems to an editor for a publication we'll call 'The Whistler'. I received a response only days later, which was swift, but the response was strange. The editor explained that he'd been rewriting my poems, and had hit a snag, so wanted me to okay what he'd already done before he continued rewriting them. I read this email several times, slower each time. There was an attachment that supposedly contained what he was talking about. What did he mean by 'rewriting' my poems? Was this a misunderstanding, and he meant simply that he was typing them into HTML for his webpage, or copying them in some way into his layout program for the next issue, or did he mean he was literally rewriting my work, you know, going to town and changing whatever he pleased? I read the poems he enclosed and yes, he'd rewritten them, heavily. They resembled what I sent, but had been altered all over the place. Not just a word or two, but entire stanzas moved around, broken up, words simply removed, and most of my punctuation had been removed as well. This was like someone disciplining my kid without my consent.

I responded, of course. I told him I wasn't into my work being altered to that extent, and that I didn't want it printed with the changes he had 'offered'. It was an ethical thing, for me. If I didn't write the poems (these changes were to such an extent that I no longer felt the poems were my own), I didn't want them in print with my name on them. A bigger problem was that I simply didn't like what he'd done with the poems. He'd made numerous changes, not just one or two, and all of them altered the poem considerably. I felt he'd fucked them all up, really, and warped them into his own poetry. I was cordial about it, but I withdrew the poems from his consideration. The changes wouldn't have been so bizarre if the poem had been an objective narrative, or complete fiction, but the poems I had sent were about ME, my life, things that had happened over the years. Changing those details, true ones, seemed ludicrous. So, I rescinded from the publication and began the process of getting it behind me. The story should end there.

It doesn't.

The editor emailed me back very quickly with a barrage of profuse apologies. He was sincere, and felt just awful about the situation, and confessed that he didn't mean to overstep his boundaries, and shouldn't have, and then asked me to reconsider, and let him print the poems. It seemed he still wanted to keep his rewrite version for print, after I'd rescinded. I started questioning myself. Was I right to rescind so quickly? Should I have tried to talk to him first? Oh man... had I been a total dick to the editor?

I felt bad for the guy. He seemed really upset with himself, and my withdrawal of the poems had hit him in a harsh way, which wasn't what I intended. I decided to look over his changes some more, and see if I was able to find a middle ground for which I'd be satisfied the poems were my own, and good, but still allow a few of his changes (I'll add that not all of them were bad, per se, they were just numerous and heavy).

Before I could respond with something like: "Sorry about that, man. Okay, let me think about it", I received another email from him. This was about an hour after the last one. The new email was angry, bitter, and he seemed to think I was being pig-headed for not accepting his changes. He went on to say that anyone would have made those same changes, and alluded to the notion that I should have made them myself. I got the idea that he no longer wanted the poems. I mean, this newer email just came off scornful. This email was 180 degrees in the opposite direction as the email that preceeded it, and given that I received them nearly back to back, without having responded yet... well, they spooked me. I decided not to answer him and move on. Things had become weird. He was pissed and I wanted out, though I was supposedly already out, due to my earlier rescinsion.

A couple hours later, however, I received another email from him. This one was melancholy, down-in-the-dumps, and certainly apologetic. He stated that he had planned on using my poems for the centerpiece of the entire issue, and had done much with the formatting to adjust his issue just for my poems, that they were incredible, and that he felt truly horrible for having offended me. He then began a paragraph wherin it was explained that he'd changed my work for love. Those were his exact words. The changes he had made were an act of love, and love was never wrong. I think he meant it. And I was now creeped out sincerely. He'd gone from apologetic to pissed off to sad, to true, perfect love... all in a matter of three emails over about 3 hours, and without my having responded to any of them. It's not like I ditched this guy for a month without response, we're talking 3 hours. I could have been alseep for all he knew. I remember thinking, Jesus, my cover letter... this guy knows where I live. I'd better check my records and-- Oh shit. I live a day's drive down the coast from this guy...

The following morning, I woke and, sure enough, another email from the editor. This one was more like he was trying to identify with me and how I must have felt having my work altered without consent, and how he felt bad for having done it. He stuck to his guns, though, defending the changes he'd made, stating they were good, that the poem was great, that he needed it for his issue and it was all going to be so perfect and ideal... I'd see, just wait, it would come out great, I'd see...

Dear reader, I'll have you know this creeped me out so much that I cowed entirely. I immediately responded. My response was contrived to snuff out what I discerned to be a disturbing turn of events, and to do it in the fastest possible way with the least possible backlash or further communication. It was the biggest solve-all solution I could think of: I told him to go for it, print away, I loved his changes, they were great and I don't know why I didn't see it before. He was great, too. Then I apologized to him for being premature in withdrawing my poems. My bad, all that. I then gave him the all-clear. No problem, buddy. They're all yours. Have a good one. Heh heh... don't murder me in my sleep... right?

The issue came out shortly thereafter, and my butchered poems were present for the world to see. Sure, I wasn't so pleased with the notion that people would read them and think I intended the weird intro, the lack of punctuation, the forced lines... and seeing my altered work on the page certainly bugged me, but hey, I wasn't being stalked or looking over my shoulder, so... it was a fair trade, in my mind.

End of the story, and yes, I'm going somewhere with all this.

When submitting to a publication, it is expected that you have an interest in the publication, and that you feel your work is a fit with their process and production. You think your poem or story fits with what they're up to and you decided to send it. Simple. So you wait for your response and eventually, it arrives. However, what happens if you get a red flag response, stating a 'potential' acceptance of the work in question, pending certain changes the editor has decided you should make? I get these from time to time, and there is no simple solution. It depends on the changes, doesn't it? As a general rule, a minor alteration doesn't bug me much (I.E. An editor asking me to insert 'and' in a line that maybe needs it or maybe doesn't, or an editor letting me know I have a few typos, or misspelled something). However, what if the editor wants more 'creative' changes, meaning, they want you to do some rewriting before they'll accept the piece?

Basically, this is a minefield you have to navigate with care, and the clock is ticking. On the one hand, you shouldn't be so blind about it that you rush to the other end, flinging changes into your poem like mad to suit the editor, but on the other hand, you shouldn't give him/her the finger, either. Again, it depends on the level of change involved. It can be pretty insulting when an editor of a particular ethic or 'school of poetry' tries to change your work to match what they prefer. If they liked your work enough to ask for changes, instead of just rejecting it, there's something you've done right. The differences may be aesthetic, in the sense of general tone or language, or the differences may be strong, as with an editor asking a full rewrite. A 'workshop' editor usually feels that a lot of poetry is open to scrutiny, and I've noticed that most of them tend to forget that not everyone is involved in the workshop manner of things, wherein everything is on the table and open for change. It can be problematic when a more workshop-oriented editor lets this form of learning/exploration effect a writer with a differing style. It can cause much confliction when an editor desires to mellow a poem that wasn't intended to be mellow, or speed up the flow of a poem you wanted to function in a slower measure.

Part of you may be thinking, "Uh, these changes are asinine, overall, and will only disturb what I have going on. They'll only take my poem over and make it one of yours, with me having done only most of the writing." You have to weigh the changes objectively. As I said, this can be tough if you're not into the workshop way of doing things, or haven't been subjected to schooling whereby poems are usually given exacting scrutiny for a particular vein of traits. I'm pretty isolated on my page, and don't like it any other way. The work is mine and I'm on the ball, so more than a couple of suggestions, especially if they're heavy changes, makes me wince. However, I'm not so egoistic to believe I shit roses, and though I dislike it, I will certainly work with an editor if they see something they think will better the poem. I'm critical about it, but not bitter, and on my guard, not a warpath.

I do know poets that hold the more sycophantic notion of accepting everything an editor asks. "Oh thank you! Yes, the poem is so much better this way!", no matter the changes. Think for yourself, but don't forget the editor is doing the same thing, and there needs to be a middle ground if you're going to continue interacting together on or concerning a piece of writing and its publication. It is of high likelihood that you and the editor are seeing the piece from different perspectives. When this occurs, you have to understand that any prospective readers may see it from either, or their own. Tread light: What is it you're trying to do?

Another example:

Editor: "We think the poem would be enhanced if you changed 'sunset' to 'sunrise', and 'midnight' to 'the witching hour'."

Now, you might think, "No, the poem takes place at twilight, and continues until midnight, so 'sunrise' makes no sense. Also, 'the witching hour' sounds out of place when discussing where one day officially and lawfully becomes the next, especially considering I'm not writing some dark, spooky poem, but a poem about officiousness, calendars, and the restraint of living in the present." If this is the case, explain it carefully and kindly. You're sticking to your guns, but not firing them, right? You don't want to get caught in the following sort of banter:

Editor: "We think the poem would be enhanced if you changed 'sunset' to 'sunrise', and 'midnight' to 'the witching hour'."

You: "What, are you stupid? I'm filet mignon and aged red wine. You're hot dogs and a pee milkshake. I'm done with you."

Neither do you want to engage in the following:

Editor: "We think the poem would be enhanced if you changed 'sunset' to 'sunrise', and 'midnight' to 'the witching hour'."

You: "What great ideas! I'm blown away! I'll totally make these changes right now! I'm so glad there are people around who can tell me where I'm flawed!"

You have to navigate what you're willing to change, versus what you're not willing to change, and you have to use a bit of diplomacy in explaining yourself. Remember, the editor saw something in your work that they appreciated, otherwise you would have only received a rejection. Don't make them sorry they liked your work, simply because they want to try and better it (whether their changes are apt or not). Confidence and competence don't always agree.

When it comes to changes in your work that occur without your knowledge, things can be a bit dicey. There are several reasons that can cause these nonconsentual changes to appear in the publication that accepts your writing. Most are innocuous, and related to simple transcription or typographical error. Your poem 'The Sandal Pearls' appears in print, after a long wait, and you notice that the title has been changed to 'The Sandal Petals'. If you submitted on page, by post, it is more than likely, the editor was compiling the issue and your poem was around the 40^th poem the editor had typed up in a day. His/her eyes were bleary and numb from reading poetry all day, and it's possible he saw your title peripherally and simply typed what he though he'd read. The words are similar in this instance, yes? If the publication is a bit more automated, they might be using an Optical Recognition Program through a scanner, and your poem is being transcribed by a computer. This can create errors at times. It's also possible the editor spellchecked the issue and a typo in 'Pearls' caused it to come up with 'Petals', and the editor may have clicked 'OK', not realizing the error being made. These are trivial and to be expected. If the publication is an electronic journal, changes can easily be made to a poem that comes to print with mistakes in it, but if we're talking a print journal, there's not much you can do but make a fuss with little resolve.

In your favor as a poet, many online web journals send a customary email out before an issue goes live, asking you to go over your work and get back to them if you find any errors. There are some print journals that do this as well, though more and more of them are abandoning the practice. For those publications that let you examine a work and its layout before it enters complete print, this is a great service, and you should use it, if offered. If it isn't offered, and you later notice an error in your printed work, consider the weight of the error before contacting the editor. Is it just that some random letter in your poem happens to be in bold-face, or the all too common 'teh' appears once instead of 'the'? Likely, not a big deal. For small things like this, readers will know what's up, but what if the publication did produce something very wrong (Dear Editor, your spellcheck muddled up a couple of things- My last name is 'Succre', not 'Soccer', and in the last stanza, the squash is called 'butternut', not 'butt nut'). If so, you should contact and mention it. Again, be cool about things. It is more than probable that the editor had no malicious intent and the problem is a simple typographical disturbance, and if electronic, easily remedied, so don't get all insulted and throw an e-mail hissy-fit at someone you don't know.

I've met poets who will stonewall an editor at the mention of changes (I'm posessed by genius!), believing it to be insulting, and I run across some more passive writers who will generally acquiese (Whatever you say, just print it.), being publication hungry. It's common that these mindsets can be altered by the amount of time the poet has been publishing, and how many publications he/she has under their belt. You're hungrier when you're starting out, and you're more confident when you've succeeded enough times. I think the most effective and least damaging approach is to travel between these two formats, giving a little when needed, standing rigid at times, and keeping your head on no matter what. It's a good idea to remember that most of the prolific writers throughout history had an editor of some sort that gave their work at least a once-over before it saw print. These days, and especially in the small press, this dynamic can get convoluted because there is a huge surplus of writers and editors, and an even larger resevoir of opinions about poetry, what it is, what it's supposed to do... schools of thought, yeah? More confusing is that any of these manners of thought regarding poetry can be augmented easily to fit a particular aesthetic in an editor or writer. Couple this with the notion that most of our small press editors are also writers, and you have a vast gamut of situations that can arise during submissions to publication. Keep that in mind when approached by an editor that wants to talk shop on a piece of your writing.

There are editors who will take it upon themselves to ask a tremendous amount of revision, some of which might be unacceptable to you. This situation is rare, but it does happen. In these cases, there comes a point where a line has to be drawn. You might not know where, at first, but you'll definitely know when it's been crossed. An editor edits a publication, and to some extent, can help out with a piece of your writing, however, not to the point of rewriting it entirely. That's no longer editing, but co-writing. I do know poets that get insulted too easily, will start a pissing match with an editor over even a minute alteration, and I know poets that do the opposite, lapping up whatever they're told or asked to change and smiling all the while. The thing to remember is that, in most instances, these are suggestions. Granted, not making an effort to follow them may bar you from the publication in question with the material you sent, but you can easily turn away and go elsewhere. However, as suggestions, you may want to take heed and give them a shot (within reason). When an editor asks me to make an alteration to a piece, I weigh it with much thought. Does the change requested ruin my poem? Is it inconsequential enough that I wouldn't even notice if I didn't know about it? Is the poem enhanced in a way I'm okay with? Putting myself in a reader's shoes, and keeping my writer self out of it for a moment, do these changes help catch my interest without overly catering to me? As a writer, can I make the changes, or my own, alternate changes to suit the editor, and still maintain my own thing without neutering my stylization in the poem?

Tough questions when you're under the scope, but keep your head and think of your place in the piece, and your station as a writer. What's the worst that can happen? Keep it in mind, and remember that principle is mostly invisible. What are you willing to give or take for it?

some exercises

2007-10-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

This is a continuation of an old post where I promised some creative exercises but never followed up on it (sorry)
Being primarily a cartoonist I will of course skew these small acts with an eye toward cartooning but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize that there are corollaries and connections between all the arts and what benefits an artist of one stripe can also benefit an artist of another. Some of these exercises will not be helpful to a writer of poetry or a dancer or a person who battles sharks but with a little luck there will be at least something in this list that will appeal to everyone's idiosyncratic creative drives. These are presented in no particular order.

Make a grocery list and go shopping. When that is done take your list and sit down at a table. Make a quick drawing of each and every item on the list... don't spend more than two or three minutes on each drawing. Make a small book of those drawings (if you don't know how to make a small book you can look it up with a search engine of your choice using keywords like 'zine' or 'minicomic.' I will post a detailed how-to on that subject in the distant future) Take that book to a local zine show or craft fair and sell them for a quarter.
go for a walk and collect objects you find on the sidewalk. Make sure to have at least ten items. Once home arrange those items on the floor in a row, in an order that you think of as "harmonious" for lack of a better word. Write a short story incorporating all the items. The items should appear in the story in the order they are arranged on the floor.
Write a poem, do not spend too much time on it, this is just an exercise remember? Turn that poem into a comic strip, turn that comic strip into a song, turn that song into a video monologue, turn that video monologue into a short story... you get the idea. Take no more than twenty or thirty minutes on each form. feel free to stretch it out over several days if you need to though. When you are done you should be able to notice distinct strengths and weaknesses that each form offers.
write a short biographical study, this can be in comic form, prose, screenplay, whatever. Try to make the study dramatic and narrative, not just a list of events. Make sure to remain true to the facts.
write a stream-of-consciousness story for thirty minutes or more. if written on the computer you should print it out. with scissors cut the paragraphs apart and paste them together in no particular order. read the story aloud and see what new inspiration you can derive from it. repeat as many times as you can stomach. try the same technique cutting each sentence into strips and rearranging.
go and see what some of my co-contributors have to say here and here both articles are hugely inspirational and many good exercises could be cultivated from them.

I'll try to list off a few more exercises whenever things get slow around here. Thanks for reading, now go make stuff.

Formal Construction in Poetry - Part 2

2007-09-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Across the planet, written language in its most basic beginnings flourished, and it most certainly flourishes still. There is no end to the sheer infinitude of things requiring description by humans in language. As times change, so does interest in various modes of language, especially in manners of expression considered artistic. In the poetry arena, this is certainly evident and we have a large backdrop of styles and forms that make up the structure of this style of lingual art. Translations are in high demand these days, and you'll notice a large number of venues in the small press looking for them. Translation poses problems between languages, of course, but in languages of similarity, it can be managed somewhat well. The meeting of east and west, and later, the far east with the far west, however, created a kind of rift in translation. What happens when poetry in a specific language uses strong elements and a construction that simply doesn't or can't exist in another language? Can these works be translated well? This is a difficult question, though translations do abound from form to form, language to language. Even more difficult to capture are the very forms in which certain poems are written. One may be tempted to discern the differences in Japanese tanka or haiku and their western counterparts to be minor, but they are not. One might be very comfortable writing in Adelaide Crapsey's version of a cinquain, a form inspired by both French and Japanese forms, yet find difficulty with a study of the base roots of the form.

As cultural borders and interests shift in each society, the rules behind their most modern forms of verse are augmented or simplified. Effects of other languages are often taken on, studied, and attempts at use in another language are made. In this mode, synopsis is made, simplified, and usually explained to others in basic elements, and it is common that the interests of one culture can change the interpretation of poetic forms from another. Through these changes, Italian farm songs of old are re-envisioned in writing forms of the French aristocracy, then adapted into English, given new rules, and finally, we have the modern villanelle. Funeral stone carvings and inscriptions become popular among collectors in ancient Greece, are anthologized and studied, then a style develops, is utilized for longer works once papyrus becomes common, is adopted by many languages, including English, and through all of these changes and interests, we arrive at the modern epigram. Church prayer in France spawns the use of amen statements, one of which, when repeated often, inspires a verse form that survives today in many languages, the kyrielle. In Persian poetry, the use of quatrains becomes so popular that, a thousand years later, one of the greatest middle eastern verse forms, the ruba'i, is still written in these simple quatrains, having adopted a critical and inventive system of refrain. All of these forms have been adopted into other languages, some of an entirely different construction. In short, culture steals. The varying styles of poetry of a great many places exchange popularity, and often, and many have made it through the language barriers to you and me. Even more interesting is that some of these verse forms inspired other verse forms that we'll also read about. You can note them dating one another through history.

You may have noticed that in my articles thus far, there seems to be quite a few French, Japanese, and Persian forms. There is a reason for this, being that much of the rhythmic forms of poetry we use had their birth in these places, through the ages, and have carried well enough into English. By far the majority of our poetic English forms are based on previous forms in other cultures, and especially early French, Japanese, and middle eastern forms or practices, though there are many invented (and often reinvented) in English itself.

You'll also find that there are six different forms in this article, rather than the five I try to maintain. The reason for this is due to my study of the cinquain. After searching through books and all over the internet for reference and various tidbits of history, and getting different explanations of what a cinquain is and was from just about every synopsis I encountered, I chose to write a more complete history of the cinquain, with a large explanation behind why there are so many types of poems called 'cinquain', and explain what all the confusion is about. It will be explained more in detail that at the heart of the confusion surrounding cinquain, and why the rules seem to change depending on who you ask, is that our most modern cinquains are inspired by the tanka, while the name 'cinquain' was taken from a French form already in existence, and which was quite different. Also, we'll learn about other forms inspired by the newer cinquain, and that also contribute to the confusion about all of it. In order to highlight how this all occurred and what it means today, I added a history and study of the tanka to the five forms I had already prepared for the article.

As with the previous article, I have provided scansive marks where appropriate, with soft accents appearing as 'o', and their opposite hard accents appearing as '/'. These are often shown as circles and dashes, as well as other symbols, but for this text, I've chosen to go with o and /, and use color to indicate rhyme or layering effects.

***

Kyrielle:

Kyrielle (KEAR-ee-EL) is a form that shares a hearty lineage alongside the pantoum and other French forms. Like the pantoum, its history is longer than that of most poetry forms.

Origin and History: This intriguing kind of poetry was born in medieval France, early in the renaissance, and was originally a troubadour verse pattern. The name itself derives from christian liturgy, the 'kiriele', which is a derivative of the kyrie eleison, a form of church prayer. Each stanza of the kyrie ended with the phrase "Kyrie eleison", which translates as "Lord, have mercy". This was used as a sort of refrain / amen statement at the end of certain church songs and chants. Refrains and repeating lines were common enough in liturgy, and were sometimes called 'rime en kyrielle'. Even today, the kyrie eleison is a strong feature in modern church hymns and verse.

The form: The poetic form developed from the kyrie. This form, the kyrielle (sometimes kiriele), has been adapted, for nonreligious verse, into the canon of poetic forms. The basis was octosyllabic (8 syllable) lines, usual among troubadour songs, and was not often rhymed, as is common in French poetic tradition. The traditional Kyrielle is designed around stanzas, each being 4 lines. The fourth line is a refrain, and is repeated in its entirety with each 4^th line of the poem. Another trait it has inherited from the faith-based song form is a heavy use of repetition (like, though of a different nature, the pantoum), both in word and phrase, and there is a refrain at the end of each verse. The kyrielle did not ascribe to the particular rhythms that steep English history today, but was measured in a count of single syllables, not an English rhythm, as we tend to use in our modern verse. In English, rather than keeping the lines octosyllabic only, a rhythm is used, in addition to retaining the rule of eight syllables. With eight syllables, you're rhythmically left to the iamb (o/) or the trochee (/o), though the traditional, canonical usage certainly dictates iambic.

The modern and less strict version of the kyrielle that we retain and use is similar to its original form, but we use English rhythms to construct it. Each stanza contains 4 lines, the first 3 of which are in iambic tetrameter (those wishing to dismiss the octosyllabic rule of the kyrielle may use pentameter, as this is acceptable anymore). The 4^th line is the refrain, which also uses the same rhythm, but can vary in size from a single foot (monometric), to a size equal to the three lines preceding it. The refrain no longer needs be "Lord, have mercy upon us", but is open to the use and needs of the author. French has a wide variety of vowel endings, far more than in English. As English lacks some of the musicality of these endings, we have a stronger need for rhyme. The modern English kyrielle usually carries an AABB rhyme in the first stanza, followed by CCBB in the second, and so forth (red here denotes the refrain rhyme). Other variations are plausible. It is also possible to write the kyrielle in couplets (2-lined stanzas), rather than quatrains (4-lined stanzas). The notion that the kyrielle's prevalent quatrain form is actually only two couplets without separation is arguable, and does have a following among some with a great interest in the kyrielle form. In the use of separated couplets, the refrain would be the second line, which ends each couplet, rather than the 4^th line of a quatrain.

Quatrain Tablature in 4 stanzas, in iambic tetrameter, with AABB rhyme scheme:

o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/ B

[refrain (o/)] B

o/o/o/o/ C

o/o/o/o/ B

[refrain (o/)] B

o/o/o/o/ D

o/o/o/o/ B

[refrain (o/)] B

o/o/o/o/ E

o/o/o/o/ B

[refrain (o/)] B

Couplet Tablature in 4 stanzas, in trochaic tetrameter, with AB rhyme scheme:

/o/o/o/o A

[refrain (o/)] B

/o/o/o/o A

[refrain (o/)] B

/o/o/o/o C

[refrain (o/)] B

/o/o/o/o C

[refrain (o/)] B

Whether in quatrains or couplets, the kyrielle has a rich history evolved from christian church liturgy, and its survival, or revival, in modern poetic usage is an indication of its powerful nature. The use of exact refrain drives a point or plead quite far, and while the kyrielle is not as versatile as the sonnet, and not as stringent as the pantoum, it has its own place among poetic form aficionados, and writing in it is a superb experience that carries both great tradition and longstanding history.

***

Epigram:

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

-Oscar Wilde: The Nihilists, act 2. Referring to Prince Paul

Considered at times to be a lyric, though of diminutive shape and length, nothing defines an epigram more than its wit. It shares a trait with the Japanese haiku in that its primary usage requires concision, subject, and brevity, but that's where the similarity ends. The concentration of the subject, usually with a focus on a turn of wit near the end, and with an exacerbating tone, is tantamount in the epigram. Considered a staple form for many humorists and poets alike through the centuries, the epigram has been mastered by a wide variety of individuals, from poets the likes of Coleridge, Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Balzak, to various humorists. 20^th century playwright and author Oscar Wilde was notorious for his epigrammatic wit, as was satirist Ambrose Bierce, and writer / humorist Mark Twain. You'd be hard-pressed to find a performing comic that doesn't make use, even without knowledge of the term, of epigrammatic lines, especially in segue and in interactions with hecklers.

Origin and a Brief History: The very etymology of the word 'epigram' has had a long life. From Merriam-Webster Online, 'Epigram' is from Middle English epigrame, from Latin epigrammat-, epigramma, from Greek, from epigraphein, to write on, inscribe, from epi- + graphein to write. This same dictionary entry describes the epigram as: "A concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought." This definition encapsulates the epigram well, but a more historical study (and a sense of humor) is certainly needed to truly enjoy the form.

In the earliest origin, epigrams were utilized in verse form and appeared as inscriptions on public memorials, funerary objects (another form, the elegy, springs from this same funerary function), and statues of popular figures of Greece. These inscriptions were necessarily short, as they were designed to be set, literally, in stone, which required some work. During the Hellenistic period, when setting statements in stone was surpassed by the evolving use of papyrus, the shortness of epigrams became a matter of the author's choice, as longer works could now be feasible. However, their roots in stone held, and the epigram was usually kept short. These were often gathered in collections, as well, with some known to be quite large. Through their intellectual enjoyment, these collections of brief inscriptions soon gave way to a genre of literature. The epigram evolved directly from the simple use of inscriptions, which gives a strong impetus for promoting concision and expeditiousness in the form. These early, Greek epigrams were not so short as epigrams in the modern, western tradition, and carried funerary themes for quite some time.

Modern epigrams take their shortness and brevity from the European tradition, which did not use a broad scope when studying the diverse Grecian epigrams, instead using a very selective adaptation of a few authors in order to coordinate it with the tradition of metrical satire in some Roman forms. The modern, western epigram has a long history, and, along with the proverb, dominated early English literature. It contains a swiftness to reach the point, and a tightly constructed brevity in wording, oftentimes to deliver, as with a limerick, the punchline or twist. It is not uncommon for epigrams to take on meter and rhyme, and a usual, well-recognized size is 4 lines, though this a matter of choice on the author. The real relegation of an epigram is perfection of statement, and if your wit comes turn in 3 lines, then 3 lines it should be.

The epigram form, with its origin in inscription, has many facets in modern culture that have long ago separated from formal poetry. Many witty one-liners can be considered epigrams, like Mark Twain's famous line:

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right."

The memorable phrases of enlightenment attributed to philosophers are often epigrammatic, as with Frederich Nietzsche's statement:

"Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself."

Some folk sayings share the epigram root as well, like in the proverbial:

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

It could even be inferred that many of the world's bumper sticker sayings (really just stick-on inscriptions, yes?) are epigrammatic. For example:

My wife said it was either her or the truck.
I'll miss her.

Examples:

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest — and so am I.

-John Dryden

Of old when folk lay sick and sorely tried,
The doctors gave them physic, and they died.
But here's a happier age; for now we know
Both how to make men sick and keep them so.

-Hilaire Belloc

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend,
Unnerves his strength, invites his end.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

***

Tanka:

It is usual that westerners group forms by ethnicity, and where you'll find haiku, you'll usually find a mention of tanka. Like haiku, the history of tanka can be a little confusing, though not once the few clear changes in how it was officialized are understood. The lifespan of tanka, through several names and cultural shifts during many periods of Japanese history, is much longer than that of haiku or its base form, hokku. Like all Japanese poetry, it is short, concise, and requires expert construction to pull off.

History and Origin: Tanka is Japanese, with it's very name meaning "short poem". It evolved off the end unit of another, older form, the chōka. The late Nara and early Heian periods (early 10^th century) of Japanese history saw the modification or abandonment of various styles of poetry, and was a time of poetic nationalism, when the Japanese sought to distinguish their own poetry forms, waka from that of the well-known Chinese styles, kanshi. Waka (also referred to in earlier times as Yamato uta) and kanshi mean, respectively, 'Japanese poem' and 'Chinese poems'. It is also a time of revision, and many styles of poetry were left to history during the Heian period, while some were augmented or reaffixed in academics and poetry circles of the time.

Waka was a term given to many styles of Japanese poetry and contained many forms, including the chōka ("long poem"), sedōka ("whirling head poem"), bussokusekika ("rock of the Buddha's footprint poem"), katauta ("half song"), and the hanka ("reverse poem"). Of these forms, the hanka and the chōka were the most used and were considered the more customary in the period's poetry. The chōka, which ended with a metrical count of 5-7 / 5-7-7, was instrumental in the evolution of the hanka, which is exactly 5-7 / 5-7-7. It was the ending of chōkas that inspired them to be written, at times, on their own and called hanka. This is similar to how hokku (later called haiku) evolved as a form, after separating from its usual usage as the opening of a haikai poem. The Heian period saw the demise of most waka forms from common usage, except for the hanka, which survived strongly. In time, the term waka began to take on a meaning synonymous with the single sub-form to have survived the times, hanka. The terms became semi-interchangeable, though most used the term waka. The subjects of most waka related to love, funereal sadness, and descriptions with occasional elements of philosophy and nature.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the famed Japanese poetry critic and revivalist Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), himself a poet of much renown, sought to separate the historical notions of many Japanese poetic forms from the modern usage, and appropriate names accordingly. With clarity and disambiguation in mind, he began liberating many poetry forms from their confusing family names, and trying to give each its own, modern identity, or at the very least, its own name. You may remember Shiki from our study of the recreation of Haiku, in a previous post. Shiki felt the history of these forms was messy, and caused many modern writers to lose focus on what certain forms were, and why. He wanted a renewal to the pantheon of Japanese poetry, a modernization that would carry both clarity and simplicity. It is Shiki that we owe our knowledge and usage of haiku to, as well as other forms, including the modern hanka, which he gave the title "tanka". Shiki used the term tanka for a specific short poem, educating many on the differences in the new terminology. Waka would come to be a term of certain poetry structures again, in general, and tanka would be a specific sort of poem itself.

In English, the tanka is extraordinarily young, having been adopted into English only in the late 20^th century. The earliest English tanka collections date from 1974, which means the tanka, in English, is roughly the same age as the author of this post. This is quite a juxtaposition with its Japanese age, which is well over a millennium.

More information regarding format: Waka poems are often divided into sections, much in the same way western sonnets consist of an octave and a sestet. Waka uses a similar system of division. Kami-no-ku (upper phrase), refers to the topmost phrase or system in the poem, and shimo-no-ku (lower phrase) refers to the second, lower phrase or system. These poem structures are measured in mora phrases as well. A mora is a unit of sound in many languages that determines syllable weight, or stress. Japanese is a language that uses moraic qualities extensively, in contrast to English, which uses syllables. This causes much disability when translating poems from Japanese into western language. 'Nippon' (the Japanese name for their country, for which westerners extracted the name 'Japan') has 2 syllables in English, NIP-PON, but 4 moras in Japanese: NI-P-PO-N. A mora phrase, in Japanese poetry, is a portion of sounds that can serve as a refrain or stress pattern. These are as similar to English metrical rhythm as they are dissimilar. Their function is alike, but in a wholly different metrical system, much like the functional difference between the American mile, in measuring distance, and the metrical kilometer in Europe. They serve the same purpose, in the same means, but are entirely different machines that operate in distinctive methods. Look to the example of tanka below to see how these phrases and functions operate.

Another function in these forms is that they are designed in units, rather than romanicized lines. The closing or concluding unit of certain Japanese poems is called an envoi, and if often doubles as the lower phrase. When translated into English, a line is the closest approximation to the unit of poetry in which these forms are created in their native tongue.

As they are available and relatively simple, I will describe all of the abovementioned forms and their mechanics, in our most modern understanding of them.

The Waka Forms

Chōka:

Japanese: This consists of a series of the mora upper phrase (kami-no-ku) 5-7 recurring 2 or more times, and ending with a fresh lower phrase (shimo-no-ku) 5-7-7 ending. Example: 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-7. In this example, red is used to denote the unit of measure being repeated. The chōka is usually a longer poem than the example I've given. The 5-7 measure is repeated a number of times until the poet chooses to end the poem, by capping it off with the final 5-7-7.

Western: The same, but with syllables rather than mora. Most westerners do not adopt the upper/lower phrase system, and rather keep the poem in the function of lines in certain syllable counts. In chōka, this is a line in 5 syllables, then one in 7 syllables, with further repetition of this 5 and 7, until the poem ends with lines of 5-7-7 syllables. Example: 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-7. Again, the red denotes the measurement being repeated, in this case syllables. As with the Japanese original, repetition of certain sounds is expected, and in the west, often results in alliterative poetry.

Sedōka:

Japanese: A mora structure of 5-7-7-5-7-7. Here, red denotes the mora phrase being repeated. It is repeated once. The upper and lower phrasing is identical, metrically.

Western: The same in syllables. 5-7-7-5-7-7. Again, red denotes the metrical repeat.

Katauta:

Japanese/Western: A katauta is the same as a sedoka, but without the repeat. This means it is exactly half of a sedōka. The mora/syllable count is 5-7-7. This is a single phrase poem, and has no repeat.

Bussokusekika:

The pattern for this form, in Japanese is 5-7-5-7-7-7. There is no modern English equivalent to this poem, as one of the hallmarks of bussokusekika is that it be carved in slate. I suppose if one so chose, he/she could make a western version using the above pattern in syllables, however, I don't know of any poets who earn enough from penning verse to afford chisels and slate instead of paper. If anyone decides to write a bussokusekika in western language and actually carves it in slate, send me a picture.

Tanka (originally hanka):

Japanese: A mora upper phrase of 5-7-5, followed by a lower phrase of 7-7. You can see now how this matches the end phrasing of a chōka, which was mentioned in the above history.

Western: 5 lines made of the following syllable count: 5-7-5-7-7.

Tanka, itself a development from the chōka, has also been instrumental in the development of other forms, as well. It is a Japanese tradition among poets that when one sends a haiku to a friend, the friend return the gesture by sending a tanka. Renga, which I will cover in a later post, is another form begotten from tanka. It began as a game between poets, where one would create, either writing or reciting, an upper phrase of a tanka, and a second poet would complete it, writing or reciting the lower phrase. This is similar to the vogue of circle-writing that English has seen in its past, which only carries over now into basic formats in workshops and group exercises. The tanka was also key in the invention of one form of Americanized cinquain, as you will read below, in the next form discussion.

In closing, the tanka is an adapted form that has a high degree of popularity in both the east and west, created openly with identical construction, but dissimilar base units. There are many small press western magazines that actively seek English tanka, and the number of them grows by the year. The only changes the tanka has seen are in the sometimes obfuscating, though necessary, measurement definitions when crossing the language barrier between east and west, and its title as a poetic form, which was a matter of officializing the form and giving it a new name for clarity in the early 20^th century. The tanka has seen a long, millennial advancement across many eras and periods of history, and in that time has undergone virtually no change in construction. From its conception onward, it has kept itself both pure and provident. It is, to use a cliche, a form both tried and true.

For an excellent source of various English examples: http://www.americantanka.com/

***

Cinquain:

What makes a cinquain ('sing-KANE', though in some circles pronounced 'saw-KAHN') is a bit of a controversy among those who write it with regularity. The reason for this discongruence is that two different forms of poetry (and in great error, others at times) claim the same nomination of title: Cinquain. I'll describe them both to you, with tablature, and mention some of the others that have snipped the title on occasion. In this article, the older cinquain will keep its name, and the second form will be referred to as Crapsey's cinquain, after it's inventor, Adelaide Crapsey, an American poet and promulgator of many verse forms, of some prominence in the early 1900's. What these two forms share is brevity in the use of 5 lines. That's where the similarity exists, and only there.

If you do a basic Google search for 'cinquain', you'll find a throng of descriptions. Some are very specific, but have little to do with the next description you'll find. There will be some that claim the cinquain is French, and some will claim it is American, and I've seen still others that claim the form is Japanese. All three are correct on certain levels, though this depends on which cinquain is being discussed. Most of these sites will also state exactly what a cinquain is, and how to write it, but you'll notice the next site has a different explanation entirely. Some relegate that a cinquain is all subject, with a few rules about lines that modify it, in specific lengths, while others will state that a western meter be used, while still others claim it's nothing more than a specific set of syllables and that's it. About the only thing anyone agrees on is that the cinquain, in whatever form, is 5 lines long. So, of all these descriptions, which is true? Which is traditional? Why do some say it was invented by an American poet, and some say it was invented in France, and some say it comes from the Japanese tanka or even haiku? Which is actual cinquain, versus some offshoot of cinquain? Who didn't do their research and who did? Most are professors, but they give different answers so... WHAT'S GOING ON?

In order to answer that, we have to go to the root of the problem and talk about Adelaide Crapsey, and before we can go to that root, we need to travel overseas for a moment and look at the root of her inspiration (and title). Next stop, France.

Cinquain Form: The cinquain is a French form (sometimes referred to as 'quintain', which means 5 lines, in the same system for which 'quatrain' means 4 lines), and is designed around a 5 line stanza with a rhyme scheme of ABABB, though the rhyme and line length can vary. Rhythm is often used, but the poem can be devoid of classical feet, can exist in free verse, or various constructs, if one so wishes. The basic rule is 5 lines and the ABABB rhyme scheme.

Tablature, in iambic pentameter:

o/o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/o/ B

o/o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/o/ B

That's it, nothing too complex. They are a pleasure to write and provide quick gratification to someone wanting to formalize a poetic afternoon. Now that we know what a cinquain was, we have to travel over to ancient Japan, Heian period, and study the tanka, because it is key in understanding why the cinquain is no longer like the French model on which we've just read. Go ahead and read about tanka, in the post previous this, above, if you haven't already.

All done? Good news. Now, having visited France and Japan, we have to travel to America, early 20^th century, and find out why this relatively simple French form is now touted all over the internet with many, many different definitions, virtually none of it resembling the actual French form, and most of it resembling Japanese forms, particularly tanka. Strap in.

The Second Cinquain History and Origin: Adelaide Crapsey, a poet in the beginning of the 20^th century, heavily influenced by the more image-oriented Japanese poetry, devised a poetic form, based loosely on the 5-line tanka form. Japanese poetry was seeing a vanguard in American poets in the turn of 20^th century and its use of image and brevity was gaining in popularity. Crapsey's new American form had a much more specialized set of rules than tanka, but there were similarities. Proud of her form, she most likely saw a great degree of use to be had for it, and so all she needed was to give it a title. It is in this particular function, giving her form a name, that all our future confusion arises. It all leads back to this single point in history: Adelaide chose 'cinquain' as the name of her new form, which was a name already taken. She may have meant 'cinquain' merely as a defining title, as it means, literally, '5 lines', but the world seemed to adopt 'cinquain' as the form's actual name. Why this poet chose to name her new form, an offshoot of Japanese tanka, a cinquain (a form from France and related to church liturgy), is befuddling, and a cause of some of the confusion surrounding her created form. The two original forms share a structure of 5-lines, but the similarities end there. One can only wish she had chosen to simply call it a "tanka cinquain", or a unique name of its own, which would have been easier on those of us with an interest in her form. Crapsey did something similar with the epigram, as well, attempting to use the name for a new form of her own. This seems to be a strange habit of hers. We can assume she was trying to innervate older forms by changing them up a bit, adding some spice here and there, but in hindsight, much spicy confusion has been sowed, and innervation has become enervation, instead. This may be our fault more than hers.

Now, having studied a bit, we can better understand how a 5 line French form's name was taken and used for a 5 line American form inspired by a 5 line Japanese form. None of which are all that alike. Ah, the noble cinquain(s).

So, we know what the French form was, and now we're going to take a look at Crapsey's form, which is more relevant in modern times when one looks up 'cinquain' references.

Crapsey Cinquain form: Once the tanka and French form is understood, we can better understand the Crapsey form. Adelaide's cinquain was an unrhymed poem, of five lines, and consisting of just 22 syllables from beginning to end. As with tanka, haiku and other Japanese forms, she gave each line a specific metrical count (in English, syllables). The first line has 2 syllables, the second uses 4, the third carries 6 syllables, and the fourth line uses 8. Line 5, the last and final line of the poem, reverts in size and is but 2 syllables, just as at the beginning. She gave her cinquains titles, just as with original French cinquains, and unlike modern tanka.

Tablature of the Crapsey Cinquain is not required, as there is no rhythm of feet and no formal structure beyond a syllable count of 2, 4, 6, 8, 2.

Of Note: There is yet another alternate definition of a cinquain that one may find in various places online, attributed to the French cinquain, though I found no history to back it up at all, just numerous mentions. The alternate form and definition is as follows: A French form in five lines. The initial line is a title, with the second line describing this title in but two words. The third incorporates action words, again regarding the title line, and the fourth line uses exactly four 'sensory' or 'feeling' words. The last line of this French cinquain line involves a description of the title in a single word. (Author's note: This alternate definition doesn't coincide with French poetic tradition much, and I have to question the validity of the statement that it is French at all. This alternate definition seems more like a hybrid of the original French cinquain and Crapsey's American cinquain).

More confusion? Indeed. The turns and gyrations of definition keep coming, and if this alternate description of the 'original French cinquain' with its improbability and strong difference from the one we studied before hasn't confused you enough, read on.

The Americanized Crapsey version of the cinquain, inspired by the tanka, has spawned and inspired numerous offshoots of its own in the poetry world. It has been breeding all over the place. All of these offshoots share certain ideals in Crapsey's rulings, but with their own eccentricities and grooming habits:

Cinqku, a spin-off form created by American Poet Denis Garrison (Garrison and Crapsey are both mentioned frequently in studies of 20^th century poetic forms), is a concise, five-line cinquain in 17 syllables, like a haiku, bearing no title, and usually with a 'twist' or 'turn' in the last two lines.

Lanterne, another sprig from the Crapsey cinquain stem, is a five-line verse, but shaped like a Japanese lantern. It carries the rule that the syllable count must follow this precise pattern: One, two, three, four, one. In addition to this, each line must be able to function as a separate phrase. The lanterne can also go without a title, though if one is used, it is in service to a sort of '6^th line', which often summarizes the poem, like a title, as a 'handle' to the image of the lantern.

Tetractys is another form from the Crapsey cinquain origin. For this one, we have British poet Ray Stebbings to thank. A tetractys, like those above, is a 5-line poem, but has 20 syllables throughout, and certainly a title. The syllables are utilized in the 5 lines as follows: One, two, three, four, ten. As with the lanterne, each line must stand on its own as a phrase.

Quintiles are a bit different from those above, in that they are longer. The reason for this is obvious when one considers what makes a Quintile. This form is created when multiple cinquains (Crapsey's) are linked together around a common theme or image. A quintile is a chain of cinquains that forms a new, larger, unique poem, similar to a "crown" of sonnets being a chain of multiple sonnets.

These are all examples of five-line image forms that are related to Adelaide Crapsey's cinquain form, with the exception of quintiles, which are multiples of other cinquains. Some of these numerous forms are often mislabeled as simply 'cinquain', and even more confusion has set in. The original cinquain (Not Adelaide Crapsey's), has spawned a few variations of its own, as well, seen in the use of some English quintets (5 line stanza or unbroken poem), quintillas, and five line blank or free verse.

With both forms seeding the poetry world with so many young, new poetic forms, all of which bare similarities to one another, and many of which are sometimes referred to simply as 'cinquain', it's easy to see why fans of various cinquain forms can find themselves in confused arguments, and spend time arguing out the peculiarities of one another's poetry. Some editors in the small press favor these poems, but before submitting to one, it may be wise to research what, exactly, a particular editor refers to when the term 'cinquain' is used.

I'm not posting examples of these various 'cinquain' forms because there are simply too many to track down. A simple internet search will find you droves of them, but be cautious of the definitions that accompany the examples. They vary nearly by site.

***

Ruba'i:

Ruba'i is the Persian singular for 'quatrain', the plural being rubáiyát (sometimes written as ruba'iyat, ruba'iyyat or rubaiyat). The ruba'i is a rhymed quatrain, often linked into longer chains of quatrains with an interlaced rhyme scheme. While there are numerous poets renowned for their rubaiyat in Iran, the western world has few translations of these keystone poets. Some of the works of Rumi have seen publicity in the west, and there are many others to be found, particularly in various divans (collections of verse by a single poet, the Persian version of a 'reader'), but the most famous example of rubaiyat, internationally, is the well-known Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam, which exists in various language translations, with the English version translated by Edward Fitzgerald being far and wide the most known and distributed. Fitzgerald was a major reason for this Persian system of quatrains becoming known to the west, and also one of the primary players in getting Omar Khayyam more notice in his own country (historically, Khayyam was often dismissed as hedonistic and of lighter talent, and even accused of not writing all of his own verses, for a time, but the popularity of Fitzgerald's translation caused critics to rethink his abilities, and certain manuscripts discovered later proved that Khayyam did write all of his verses).

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam saw much praise and is still heavily available in most bookstores with even a rudimentary poetry section. This was no easy feat in the west, as Persian poetry is heavily imbued with distinctive beauty in language and a unique, versatile sound usage that doesn't exist in most other languages, and translations into English lose a wealth of the pleasure in Persian poetry. English translations can relate theme and subject, monorhyme (which works very well in Persian, and to different effect than it can in English), but very little of the musical construction, or sound essence can be transferred, and many of the Sufi images and allusion don't come across the cultural and lingual border. This is similar to the way in which French vowel endings don't exist so heavily in English, or Japanese mora don't translate into the metrics of English directly. We can only receive generalized translations of work in which elements are at play that English has no system for collaborating. Khayyam's rubaiyat, and their translation by Fitzgerald, in particular, is so highly renowned that the well-known book of it is often referred to as simply "The Rubaiyat", though this is also due to the misconception behind the word 'rubaiyat', with many westerners initially thinking it to be a specific title term to the book, and not simply the Persian word for 'quatrains'.

Origin and History: Most of the Persian forms came about or were augmented anew in the Ghaznavid and Seljuq periods, which saw the rise of numerous great poets, including 'The Six', which are a group of writers of various times, who were all considered the masters of poetry and prose, each in their own fields. Persians through the ages have held a strong reverence for these practitioners of written language. The six were Ferdowsi, Khayyam, Anvari, Rumi, Saadi, and Hafez. Hafez (also known as Hafiz), you may recall was mentioned in my last post in relation to the ghazal, for which he is considered a master.

Rhyme is an absolute in classical Persian verse. The usual format of it is monorhyme, meaning a single rhyme sound that continues throughout the poem. There are 4 main verse forms that have survived the test of Persian time, these being principal in the history. These are the qasideh, masnavi, qazal (also known in the west as ghazal), and the subject of this study, the ruba'i. These other forms will be studied in later posts, and the quazal we've already covered in a previous post. For now we'll focus on ruba'i and its form.

The Form: A ruba‘i is a quatrain (a four-line poem, usually metric). It carries within it a rhyme scheme of AABA, meaning that the 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th lines rhyme. A chain of ruba'i is known as ruba'iyat, and the rhyme scheme continues through the chain in singular fashion, meaning that the same rhyme sound is used throughout the poem: AABA, A2A2BA2, etc... This means that the same rhyme sound is used in each quatrain. The ruba'i is written in a specific meter, though this is a matter of choice and deliberation on the author's part. A more common format is in syllabic count, though in western languages, our formal rhythms can be used.

Other format: In later, augmented fashion, and especially in other languages during long strings of ruba'iyat, it is not uncommon to see more intricate rhyme schemes at play. For instance, the unrhymed line in the first quatrain can be used as the rhyme sound for the next quatrain (AABA, BBCB, CCDC, etc...), and this convention is known as 'interlocking ruba'iyat', and can be used to tie the separate quatrains together in a more woven and complex way, exacerbating the sound and flow of the poem. It is also common to interlock the last quatrain to the first using the same system, creating a loop in sound, as with the French pantoum form.

Tablature of rubaiyat, in four quatrains, interlocking rhyme, and using western iambic heptameter (seven feet of iambic meter), and looping back into the first quatrain with the last. This is a very short example. Coloring in this example indicates where the open second line in each quatrain becomes the rhyme of the next quatrain:

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ B

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ B

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ C

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ B

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ C

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ D

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ C

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ D

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/ D

Examples:

Opening 5 quatrains from 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam', translated by Edward Fitzgerald

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky

I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry,

"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup

Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before

The Tavern shouted -- "Open then the Door!

You know how little while we have to stay,

And, once departed, may return no more."

Now the New Year reviving old Desires.

The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,

Where the White Hand Of Moses on the Bough

Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,

And Jamshýd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;

But still the Vine her ancient Ruby yields,

And still a Garden by the Water blows.

[NOTE: This segment alone does not highlight the rules completely. For a complete version that highlights rubaiyat, as well as the complete poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, visit: http://www.therubaiyat.com/fitzindex.htm]

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

***

Villanelle:

"The villanelle is often used, and properly used, to deal with one or another degree of obsession.[...] There is even the potential for the two repeating lines to form a paradigm for schizophrenia... The mind may not fully know itself or its subject, may not be in full control, and yet it still tries, still festers and broods in a closed room towards a resolution that is at least pretended by the final couplet linking of the refrain lines."
-from "Modern Versions of the Villanelle," by Philip K. Jason. College Literature, 1980.

Medieval troubadours have been credited with causing the birth of many poetic forms, and for some time, the villanelle was attributed to this passage as well. In reality, the villanelle did not stem from these more metropolitan troubadours, with their intricate structures and daedal partsongs, as has been held in various circles, but from a far more common usage in the rural shepherd and farm songs of Italy. These were simply constructed, rustic songs with refrains for easier memorization, and were similar to ballads, though with no fixed length. The French name 'villanelle' (also sometimes referred to as 'villanesque') stems from the Italian 'villanella', from the Latin 'villano' (farmhand) and 'villa' (farm). The word 'villanelle' means, literally, 'farm song'. The early farm song 'villanelles' were adopted by Frenchman and Hellenist Jean Passerat during the Renaissance, in the 16^th century, who wrote a poem he titled 'Villanelle', on the subject of a turtledove. He had many other poems he also deemed villanelles, though these were in differing forms, with most of them unlike the famous turtledove poem. Passerat was lucky in the sense that his poetic form, which our modern villanelles are based on, managed to be accepted into the literary convention during his lifetime, a feat that is uncommon in literary history. It is Passerat's villanelle that is the basis of our modern, and he can be considered the form's inventor.

In the 19^th century, another French popularizer of the form, Theodore de Banville, under the notion that the villanelle was an antiquated form, began playing with it in earnest. In truth, he was following a form of 'villanelle' that he believed was originated by a poet, Wilhelm Tenint, and not the early farm songs for which villanelle were named, nor the works of Jean Passerat, from which the form he studied had sprung. His revival inspired other authors of the period, and especially authors that would come after him and take up the villanelle into their usage.

Origin: While the villanelle, as we know it in our most modern times, is considered a French form, there is only a small usage of the villanelle in French history, with the vast quantity of villanelles being written, instead, in English. The English villanelle is an imitation of the French model, which is an imitation of the rustic farm songs of old. The first English villanelles were written by Edmond Gosse, who was inspired by the above-mentioned Banville, and he praised the form and sought to give it life in English. He managed this in the late 19^th century through the use of an essay, "A Plea for Certain Exotic Forms of Verse". It caught on, and many well-known writers began using the form, including Oscar Wilde and Austin Dobson. The English modernists of the era, however, saw villanelle as just another annoying detail of the stuffy, formal aesthetic that they sought to take literature away from. There is a notable example of James Joyce, in his 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', having his young main character writing a villanelle, to highlight the youthful naivety of the character.

In the 1930s, William Empson gave a strong effort to revive the form, and several other writers found it to be of interest. W.H. Auden began toying with the form, and then Dylan Thomas, in a point of well-known history, used the most basic format of the villanelle to compose his famous and heartily regarded "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night". Later authors of the villanelle included Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Theodore Roethke. Even with these well-known and highly regarded authors having utilized the form, it was still on the fringe of English poetic forms, yet to see major adoption by the English poetic pantheon. This didn't occur until the appearance of the New Formalism, in the 1980s. Since that time, the villanelle has become much more common, and large numbers of poets have used the form, often in slight variations of the original English villanelle, which has now become one of the most recent additions (recent in comparison to many other popular forms) to the reservoir of major, English poetic forms.

The Form: There are some poets who consider the villanelle, like the pantoum, to be nightmarish and unruly. There are very specific limitations and functions at work in the villanelle, and adhering to them can be difficult.

The villanelle is nineteen lines long, and written in tercets (three line stanzas, also known as triplets), except for the last stanza, which will be a quatrain (4 line stanza). There is no established metrical system for the villanelle, but most modern usage sees a habit of using a syllabic count of 10 syllables to the line. There are but two rhyme sounds in a villanelle, being exhibited in a somewhat staple rhyme scheme of ABA throughout, with an additional A closing the quatrain at the end. This is simple enough, and the complete rhyme structure will be: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. Now on to the intricate part: The difficult essence of what makes a villanelle anything to marvel at is its refrain system, and in the repetition of the refrains. A villanelle's first stanza, three lines long, consist of your first refrain, a 'normal' line, and then your second refrain, which will rhyme with the first. Thereafter, each stanza will end with one of those same two refrains, alternating. This continues until the last stanza, the quatrain, where the poem ends with both refrains, back to back, in order as the last two lines.

Tablature:

First Refrain (A)

Line (B)

Second Refrain (A)

Line (A)

Line (B)

Repeat of First Refrain (A)

Line (A)

Line (B)

Repeat of Second Refrain (A)

Line (A)

Line (B)

Repeat of First Refrain (A)

Line (A)

Line (B)

Repeat of Second Refrain (A)

Line (A)

Line (B)

Repeat of First Refrain (A)

Repeat of Second Refrain (A)

The two refrains, which hound the poem back and forth between them, meet at the end and deliver their hard, overall meaning in one, concise statement. This summarizing, finale can be fantastical, when you've made your way through the poem's interwoven lines and refrains to reach it. The power in this form comes from using refrains that have a sensible figure in the poem, each time they are placed, so as to avoid a stock or clumsy sound. The refrain should have new meaning, or augmented meaning, each time it appears, especially in the final quatrain. Like pantoum, one of the keys to writing villanelle is acrobatic word choice and a strong yet grammatically passive refrain.

There is another, modified form of the villanelle called a terzanelle, but I will save this for a later posting, after we've covered terza rima, which plays one of two parents to the terzanelle, the other being the villanelle.

In the following example, you'll see that Dylan Thomas followed the pattern explicitly, and in it you'll find a strong sense of how the dual refrains collaborate into making a series of emphatic, athletic lines into a much greater, more powerful work:

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

***

There you have it, 6 forms and numerous sub-forms, in all of their distinctive flavors, histories, and essences. Attempts at any of these provide a unique and challenging opportunity to broaden your own work by taking on the habits of the form. A series of villanelle or kyrielle can teach you how powerful repetition and refrain can be (something most modern songs have adopted absolutely), whereas a tanka can show you how to bring concentration of statement and meaning into the shortest of lines, an excellent skill for any poet to practice. A ruba'iyat can give you indications on how to interlock your stanzas for both dramatic and indicative effect, as well as ease of statement, while writing epigrams is sure to sharpen your wit. Even the cinquain, in all its myriad definitions, can make you proud, at the very least, of knowing one from the other.

In the next article we'll take a look at some of our most modern, and even untested, forms, who's conceptions are new, and who's practices are so young as to have not made much history yet. Until then, there are excellent resources online that a simple Google search can unearth for further study of the abovementioned forms, and examples galore.

Formal Construction in Poetry

2007-08-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Poetry abounds in history, with uses that delve into every aspect of the human condition. It has been used to create the guidelines of nations in constitutions and declarations, to lift up our lightest matter and subjugate our darkest engorgements. It has chronicled much of our ancient history and some of our modern. Poetry has been used to commemorate and send off our dead, and herald our newborns. It has been put to music, paint, ink, clay, and digital bits of meaning. In short, it has been around long enough, and with so many attributes and disciplines, that a huge variety of its designs exist. From sizes ranging the shortest couplet in iambic dimeter, to the vast and novel-like Divine Comedy of Dante, from idle notions in observational work, to the very bibles of our major religions, poetry is the engine that turns our minds in words.

I've set out to highlight some of the better known forms of poetry, the types of it we have encountered over the millenia. I will post five forms with descriptions and some origin information in each post. Where needed, I will provide scansive formula (templates using metrical indicators), and will post about once a month. In the first of these installments, we'll take a look at the sonnet, haiku, the ghazal, the pantoum, and the limerick. I have provided scansive marks where appropriate, with soft accents appearing as 'o', and their opposite hard accents appearing as '/'. These are often shown as circles and dashes, as well as other symbols, but for this text, I've chosen to go with o and /, and use color to indicate layering effects. We begin with the diva of poetry forms, the sonnet.

The Sonnet

One of the most respected and prolific forms of poetry in western history. No study of Shakespeare, Petrarch, Dante, or most of our greatest western poets until the last two-hundred years would be complete without a study of the sonnet. A gift beginning in Italy, it has since been re-articulated and its rules redesigned numerous times in English, Spanish, Italian, and German history. Most major languages have made use of the sonnet since its Italian conception. So respected was the sonnet, it almost feels as if I should capitalise its every instance in this post. There were portions of English history where it was considered shocking that a given poet might stray from the sonnet form. Up until the last hundred years, sonnets were to poets what the vatican is to Catholics. The big enchilada. The head honcho. The alpha form. The sonnet.

Origin and a Nudge of History: The sonnet came about in the very early 13th century, in the court of Frederick II, then Holy Roman Emperor. The sonnet was designed around a songwriter form in Italian, a canso or canzone. The word sonnet comes from the Italian sonnetta ("little song"). At its heart, this form was a long poem, formed around the use of two stanzas serving to divide the poem into two parts, not always equal. It was common that these two stanzas would be broken down into two sections, a fronte and a sirma, separated from one another by a turn in design or meaning (volta).

Over a hundred poems still remain from the court of Frederick II, and 35 are sonnets. These early sonnets were 14 lined, 11-syllable stanzas, composed of an octave (8 line stanza) and a sestet (6 line stanza) always rhyming abababab / ababab. Another device was being used at times involving the addition of a couplet at the end. After finding its way north, it was idealized by poets like Guido Cavalcanti and then friend, Dante Alighieri. They used the rhyme scheme abbaabba in the octave. They also designated the octave as the place in the poem for presenting and describing, and then used the sestet portion of the poem for further comment. Dante's younger works are encapsulated in an excellent book, La Vita Nuova, and show how the form was taken in among Dante and his ilk, and enjoyed greatly.

After Dante, who was exiled on pain of death by the Black Guelfs, the sonnet saw more use by other poets, and particularly by another exile from Florence, Francis Petrarch. Petrarch used the sonnet form heavily. It is Petrarch we have to thank for the sonnet still being around, 700 years later. His use of it was prolific and accomplished. Like Dante, Pertarch used the abbaabba scheme in the octave, but he often used different schemes in his sestet: cdecde, and others. The pioneering Petrarch caused a change in which this type of sonnet would be regarded, and it was named, aptly, the Petrarchan sonnet. A large variety of earlier English sonnets are adapted from Petrarch, though they also adopted contemporary continental poetic structures, as with those utilized by Spenser.

Our modern sonnets, in varying forms, are more adapted from the later William Shakespeare's format and use. Shakespeare was fond of linking several sonnets together to create a longer poem, divided by sonnets. A group of sonnets formally linked by repeated lines is known as a "crown" of sonnets. Shakespeare and other poets of the 1500's were fond of occasionally placing an extra, self-rhyming couplet at the end of the sonnet, which is a common trait of our most modern sonnets.

Examples:

Francis Petrarch translated by Edwin Morgan

Gli occhi di ch'io parlai si caldamente

The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise,
The arms and hands and feet and countenance
Which made me a stranger in my own romance
And set me apart from the well-trodden ways;
The gleaming golden curly hair, the rays
Flashing from a smiling angel's glance
Which moved the world in paradisal dance,
Are grains of dust, insensibilities.
And I live on, but in grief and self-contempt,
Left here without the light I loved so much,
In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt.
No more love songs, then, I have done with such;
My old skill now runs thin at each attempt,
And tears are heard within the harp I touch.

***

William Shakespeare

Sonnet 6

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill'd:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place

With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-kill'd.

That use is not forbidden usury,

Which happies those that pay the willing loan;

That's for thyself to breed another thee,

Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;

Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:

Then what could death do, if thou shouldst depart,

Leaving thee living in posterity?

Be not self-will'd, for thou art much too fair

To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Haiku

One of the most misunderstood and heavily utilised traditional writing forms in English today. Haiku's origin is Japanese, around 1890, but stemming from haikai-no-renga in the 16^th century, which stemmed from renga in the 15^th century. The age of haiku's invention can be misleading. See the description below, under 'Origin and General Information' to learn why.

The reason for this form being misunderstood in the west is due to longstanding misconceptions about the intent of the poem. Westerners use form as an exacting template in which to write, and our subjects are somewhat open. True, certain forms had specific subjects to keep in mind (Miracle Plays, Eulogies, etc...), but in general, subject was a matter of the author’s experimentation and the general level of understanding and comfort of readers. There aren’t very specific rules regarding what a sonnet must be about. So, we don’t generally apply a subject mindset to modern haiku, either, and maintain that haiku is best with no specifically chosen limiter. That is, no center of interest that must be maintained. This is unfortunate from a traditional point of view, but does open the possibilities of the poem exponentially.

Origin and General Information: There is a longstanding confusion by western poets between the three related terms Haiku, Hokku and Haikai. These are sometimes used in place of one another, incorrectly. The term hokku means, in its most literal sense "starting verse", and was only the first introductory verse of a longer chain of verses. This longer chain was known as haikai-no-renga or just haikai, for short. The intent, scope and tone of the haika (the completed chain, the entire poem) was settled early in its hokku. Writing the introductory hokku quickly gained notoriety as a feat one had to be very skilled to do well. Because of this, it became common in some circles that a poet could compose a hokku solely.

After some time passed, writing a hokku could be considered a separate endeavor, though not officially. To remedy this and to give the form its own identity, away from the notion of haikai, a single introductory hokku became known by the name haiku. This occured in the 1890s, under the supervision and pressuring of Masaoka Shiki, one of the greatest critics of Matsuo Basho, an earlier poet who had been deified by the government. Criticizing Basho, for some time in Japanese history, was a blasphemous offense. According to Shiki, if separated and complete on its own, and without the extension of other verses, a hokku was to be called a haiku, and to be considered its own poetic form.

Because of this switch in names and intent, the "haiku" actually has a short history, and those poets (Kobayashi Issa, Matsuo Basho, and many others) who are known to have written it earlier than the late 19^th century were actually writing hokku. The difference is a matter of official naming and cultural shift.

I once had a creative writing teacher who, when asked what a haiku was, stated to his class: “Oh that? It’s just a poem that goes 5-7-5. That’s all.” This is neglectful. Saying a haiku is 5-7-5, and that's all, is akin to stating that a car is just a box that travels on four wheels. Yes, most cars have four wheels and travel, but there is certainly much more going on than that. The metrical count in Japanese haiku is important, but could be strayed here and there if needed. The real regulation of a haiku was its subject, concise brevity, and imagery. Westerners have a difficult time, culturally, charting and weighing subject and imagery, considering our alphabets aren't necessarily pictogrammatic, whereas many facets of asian language involve more pictogrammic usage. The Japanese symbol for 'house' looks like a house. Our word for 'house' looks like coded nonsense, if you don't read English. We can discern if we think an image in a poem is good, or of interest, and we can figure out if we enjoy or are attentive to a subject, but we don’t usually regulate it for our formats. We can write about anything, culturally. This has more to do with modernity and changes in acceptance than with cultural borders, but they do play a serious part in how we interpret haiku. So, if we don't specifiy subjects much, and we don't generally chart out our imagery, we're left with the concise brevity part. We focus most on the metrical count, one of the rules of haiku. Most scholars agree that the English syllable is the closest thing we have to the Japanese use of meter, despite that it is not so short as its japanese counterpart, and also that the English syllable varies in length ('cop' and 'strange' are both monosyllabic, but one takes longer to say). While some dislike this difference in style between traditional eastern and modern western haiku, particularly those who wish to write haiku in a more classical mode, there isn't much of a closer option than the English syllable, so that's what we use.

Brevity: My past instructor’s remark is a perfect example of forgetting subject and imagery, focusing on nothing but brevity. The general rule in English is three lines, of 5, 7, and then 5 syllables, and many people allow one to alter this, within reason. It is commonly accepted that modern, western haiku can be interpreted as the author wishes, so long as it's short. Most stick with 5-7-5. Unfortunately, this is not the sole rule one should follow (yet most do) in writing more traditional haiku. I can write 5-7-5 from sunrise to sunset, no problem, but I can’t write a good, true haiku without expending a lot of thought into it. You can dedicate your life to it. Ask Issa or Basho. The subject and imagery is key in traditional haiku, every bit as much as the metrical lines.

Haiku must contain a kigo, which is a seasonal word. These exist to indicate in which season the haiku is set. Snow would indicate winter, mosquitos can indicate summer, and one of the more famous images, cherry blossoms, indicate spring. There were, in the traditional Japanese, a wide variety of seasonal words that were acceptable, and it was the mark of a craftsman to gain acceptance with a new one of his own. In western haiku, the kigo and various other forms of subject and imagery, once mandatory and of great importance, even here, have been widely lost. Western haiku has largely become as my old creative writing teacher stated. A five, a seven, a five. That's it, the boring result of a hard watering down by masses of occasional poets and tinkerers.

Examples:

Kobayashi Issa (western calendar: June 15, 1763 - January 5, 1828)

A man, just one -
also a fly, just one -
in the huge drawing room.

***

Matsuo Basho (roughly 1644-1694)

Fallen sick on a journey,
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor.*

*written on his deathbed.

The Ghazal

Originating in 12th century Persia, from an arabic word that means 'talking to women', the ghazal (pronounced like 'gozzle') has a longstanding history. It is a poem comprised of entirely separated couplets, of which there is no enjambment or lead-off, and of which consist of lines of equal metrical length. The first line of each couplet is introductory, and the second line amplifies the meaning of the first. The rhyme scheme and system of refrain (repeated word or phrase) is uniform and does not change throughout the ghazal. The rhyme scheme is present in both lines of the introductory couplet, but thereafter is utilised only in the second line of each succeeding couplet. The rhyme does not end the line, but tapers into the refrain. The length of the ghazal is of the author's choice, but they are not usually longer than 15 couplets, and the last couplet in the poem has a specialized function, in which the author may introduce their name in whatever person they choose. It is a sort of signature by the poet.

The following is a template example in 3 stanzas, using iambic heptameter (seven iambs per line), with bold to show an example of rhyme, and red coloring to show a possible refrain. There is a blue patch to show a possible place to add your signature name. Remember, the refrain will always follow the rhyme immediately:

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/

o/o/o/o/o/o/o/A

Most ghazals are longer than this. If I were to lengthen it, I would add more couplets in the middle, all of which would bear the same design as the middle couplet already shown. The template example above merely shows the pertinent structure of the poem. The rhythm and meter are open and can be chosen by the author, so long as that chosen is consistent throughout. Also open are the rhyme and refrain you choose, as well as the way your signature works.

Example:

Khwaja Shams ud-Din Hafiz-i Shirazi (1326-1390, also known as 'Hafiz'.)

agar ân tork-e shirâzi be-dast ârad del-e mâ-râ
be-khâl-e henduvish bakhsham samarqand o bukhârâ-râ

badeh sâqi may-e bâqi keh dar jannat na-kh^vâhi yâft
kenâr-e âb-e roknâbâd o golgasht-e mosallâ-râ

faghân kin luliyân-e shawkh-e shirinkar shahr-âshub
chonân bordand sabr az del keh torkân-e kh^vân-e yaghmâ-râ

ze ‘eshq-e nâ-tamâm-e mâ jamâl-e yâr mostaghnist
be-âb o rang o khâl o khatt cheh hâjat ru-ye zibâ-râ

man az ân hosn-e ruzâfzun keh yusof dâsht dânastam
keh ‘eshq az pardeh-ye ‘esmat berun ârad zolaykhâ-râ

agar doshnâm farmâyi va gar nefrin do‘â guyam
javâb-e talkh mi-zibad lab-e la‘l-e shakar-khâ-râ

nasihat gush kon jânâ keh az jân dustar dârand
javânân-e sa‘âdatmand pand-e pir-e dânâ-râ

hadis az motreb o may gu va râz-e dahr kamtar ju
keh kas na-g’shud o na-g’shâyad be-hekmat in mo‘ammâ-râ

ghazal gofti va dorr softi biyâ kh^vosh be-kh^vân hâfez
keh bar nazm-e to afshânad falak `eqd-e sorayyâ-râ

***

(The following poem is a translation of that directly above, and for which I couldn't find a translator's name.)

If that Shirazi Turk would take my heart in her hand,
For her dark Indian mole I would give Samarkand
and Bukhara.

Wine, sâqi, bring the remaining wine!
For in Paradise thou’lt not find
the water’s edge of Ruknâbâd or the rose-park of Musallâ.

Alas, these wanton Luli girls upset the town with their sweet work;
they take away patience from the heart in the same way that the Turks plunder the feast.

The beauty of the Beloved has no need of my imperfect love:
what need has the beautiful face for perfume, rouge, moles, and makeup?

From the daily-increasing beauty that Joseph had, I know
the love that brought Zulaykhâ out from behind her veil of innocence.

If thou pronounce curses and maledictions, I will say prayers.
The bitter answer suits the sugar-eating ruby lips.

O soul, listen to advice
which is dearer than the soul to joyful youths
from the wise old man who knows:

Tell the tale of the minstrel and wine,
and don’t inquire much into the mystery of time,
for nobody’s wisdom will untie or undo this knot.

Thou has spoken the ghazal, and strung the pearls; come, sing sweetly, Hâfiz!
So that heaven may scatter on thy poem the necklace of the Pleiades.

The Pantoum

A French form, originating in Malay. The pantoum's traditional form consists of 4 stanzas, 4 lines each, of approximately 8 syllables to the line (this indicates the use of 3-footed rhythms like Dactyl and Anapest are out), rhyming ABBA. However, these rules are but a beginning of what makes a pantoum. The difficult and defining characteristic of a pantoum is its recursive quality. The pantoum re-uses its lines again and again, in a very specific order: The second and fourth lines of each stanza reappear EXACTLY as the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the next stanza. The last stanza's 2^nd and 4^th lines are also the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the first stanza, creating a never-ending loop. The last rhyme in the ABBA scheme doubles as the first rhyme when it repeats (example: ABBABBABBABBABBA. The red is used to denote how the end of one ABBA doubles as the beginning of the next. That second A doubles as the first A in the next rhyme scheme fulfillment). Today, most people who write pantoums allow an infinite number of stanzas, so long as the recursion rule is followed, and the use of 4 lines to the stanza. Some will augment the syllable count, so long as it's static throughout, and it's not uncommon to find modern pantoums with ABAB rhyme schemes. Many poets rank this classical form of poetry to be the strictest and most difficult (I disagree) but with a touch of modern laxity and experiment, they become easier. Sticking to the classical, traditional mode can be a headache, hence why these poems have been respected for some across many countries.

I've noticed that the pantoum is sometimes used for ‘dirty’ poetry, or, poetry of a debauched or raunchy gist, but classically, it is usually elevated for purer intentions. The pantoum is an amazing, recursive form, and difficult. Your lines have to be open enough to fit a variety of circumstances grammatically, yet specific enough to be of interest to the reader. In short, acrobatic word choice and lines capable of several meanings, in context. The toughest part of writing a pantoum is that any change you make to a line will require changing it in other lines, which changes the meaning of surrounding lines, which all have to be changed then, and on and on... It's the Rubik's cube of poems.

There is also the imperfect pantoum, which finds some use in the modern poetry arena. In this form, the final stanza differs from the traditional form, with the second and fourth lines allowed to be different from preceding lines.

The following is the template design of a usual pantoum, using trochaic tetrameter (four trochaic feet [/o] = 8 syllables). The color code represents which lines are the same (I.E. line 4 of the first stanza repeats as line 3 of the second stanza). By following the colors, you can see where each line repeats exactly. Lines 2 and 4 repeat as lines 1 and 3 in the next stanza, always. The last stanza's lines 2 and 4 repeat, just as before, but in the 1^st and 3^rd lines of the FIRST stanza, concluding and sealing the loop of lines together. The last stanza presupposes the very first stanza follows it, and the rhythm as well as the recursive line structure is completed.

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

/o/o/o/o B

/o/o/o/o A

Example (Note: In the following example, Charles Baudelaire ignored the common tactic of repeating the first line of the poem as his closing line, and also chose to use an ABBA rhyme scheme.)

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Harmonie du soir

Voici venir le temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Chaque fleur s’évapore ainsi qu’un encensoir;
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu’on afflige;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu’on afflige,
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;
Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!
Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige . . .
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

***

(An English translation follows)

Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem,
Each flower evaporates like a censer;
The sounds and scents revolve in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!
Each flower evaporates like a censer;
The violin trembles like a heart that is distressed;
Melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo!
The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar.
The violin trembles like a heart that is distressed,
A tender heart, which hates the vast, black nothingness!
The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar;
The sun has drowned in its freezing blood.
A tender heart, which hates the vast, black nothingness,
Collects all vestiges from the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in its freezing blood . . .
Your memory shines in me like a monstrance!

The Limerick

Believe it or not, this form of poetry, once considered the lowest of the low and generally relegated to drunken bar cronies rhyming anything they could with words obscene, profane, or just plain fun, is still alive and kicking. We've all met someone who has recited that they ‘once knew a man from Nantucket...’ who, at some point, did or said something that rhymed with 'fuck it' or 'suck it' or else. Believe it or not, there's a Limerick Day, which is celebrated on May 12^th,coinciding with the birthday of Edward Lear , a notable writer of limericks who wrote in the early-to-mid 1800s.

Origin: The object of the limerick, most of the time, is humor with a dash of shock-value. The subject matter for any good limerick usually involves something foul, low, begrudged, or sexual (and if you're really good, all four at once), and the poem is delivered like a joke or riddle, as it usually involves a punchline ending. I’ve heard all sorts of endings to limericks, from men having sex with mules, to drunken blackouts, and even a vacuum cleaner inserted in a politician's bottom. At 5 lines completed (I have seen experiments involving longer and more intricate structures, but the usual form is 5 lines), the general rhythm for this form is two lines in trimeter (usually anapestic, but on certain occasions iambic, and any other rhythm is workable), dropping into two shorter lines in dimeter, and then exalting its end with a final trimetric line, which tosses out the final rhyme and, like the punchline to a joke, delivers the witty shock or dirty wrap-up. We find out in this last moment what happens to the man from Nantucket, what tools were utilised, and to whom he involved in his humorous debauchery. The rhyme scheme of most limericks is AABBA.

Let's take a well-known (albeit filthy) version of 'Nantucket' apart:

There once was a man from Nantucket

Whose dick was so long he could suck it.

While wiping his chin,

He said with a grin,

"If my ear were a cunt, I could fuck it."

o/oo/oo/o A

o/oo/ B

oo/oo/oo/o A

You'll note that in the last line of this version of the poem, the author snuck in an extra syllable at the beginning. The rhythm needs not be exact, but it can't be entirely forgotten or you don't have a limerick.

Examples:

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were caught, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "Let us flee."
"Let us fly," said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

-Anonymous

***

There was an Old Person whose habits,
Induced him to feed upon rabbits;
When he'd eaten eighteen,
He turned perfectly green,
Upon which he relinquished those habits.

-Edward Lear

***

There was a young lady named Alice,
Who used dynamite for a phallus,
They found her vagina,
In North Carolina,
Her arsehole in Buckingham Palace.

-commonly known, yet unattributed

two people I know who make comics.

2007-08-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

(cross posted with Elijahbrubaker(dot)com)
Terminal Culture #2
By Jeremy Kemp
digest sized minicomic
I've known Jeremy for a while. He and I went to high school together. I was a little older than him and we didn't mingle much. Earlier this year he and I reconnected through mutual friends and I was pleased to learn he was making comics.
Now this isn't the part of my "review" where I tell everyone to buy this thing because I know the guy and everything he touches is awesome. Terminal Culture is pretty rough around the edges but that's because Jeremy's still feeling his way through the whole comics-making process. Fans of superhero comics or kids comics should steer clear. Jeremy's book seems to have more in common with the Zap Comics crowd than Shazam! And when I say the Zap comics crowd I'm talking more along the lines of S. Clay Wilson or Spain Rodriguez. Jeremy's book has a crude extremism found in the best crazy underground comics like Zap and Slow Death. Kemp revels in shoving crazy shit in your face. readers will most likely get the feeling that he's experimenting with what is acceptable in a comic. There's lots of violence and body piercing and insanity.
The main story is a weird little supernatural crime drama that picks up nicely from the previous issue. Terminal Culture #1 had this disjointed feeling that is lacking in its sequel. One gets the feeling that Jeremy is on his way to discovering what it is he's saying and if the comics continue to progress and improve in this way I'm sure it will happen soon.
The follow up story in TC #2 involves Jeremy's acknowledgment that everyone he knows in Portland has a tattoo and he does not. It's really just a laundry list of people describing their feeling for or against certain tattoos (look for a little appearance by yours truly.) The backup pieces in TC are really where my affections lie. In these small autobio pieces Kemp seems to be expressing something a little more blatently personal and engaging that the TC main story. In Terminal Culture #1 there's an anecdote about taking LSD that is pretty compelling.
on myspace.

Better Looking Than A Blog
by Shawn Granton.
minicomic
A lot of folks reading this already know Shawn or his comics. I met Shawn years ago at some comics event and I'd run into him here or there over the years. He really helped me out this last time I moved to Portland. Shawn's been making comics for a long time now and has come back to the form after a lengthy absence with a couple of books of diary strips.
I like the diary strip format, I've attempted to do one of my own a couple of times but drawing a new take on my life every day was too much for me. Granton pulls it off with a brilliant flair and a unique voice. That's the best part of diary strips for me, the fact that there are so many and with few exceptions they are all pretty unique to the person creating it.
I might even prefer Granton's diary comics to his older more rant-y stuff. His multi page comics often took on an air of disgruntledness (if that's a word) that could alienate readers on occasion. in his new diary strip Granton allows himself only enough room to make some (often very witty) observations and he moves on to the next day.
Like most diary strips, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. to read a single strip in this minicomic is to glimpse an insignificant insight into Shawn's world, to read the entire book is to encounter and examine much of Granton's inner life.
Shawn is one of the more active and enthusiastic portlanders I've met and he's involved in lots of interesting social circles, Reading his comics I feel like I've gained a certain vicarious insight into the workings of Portland, bike culture, hostels, zines and other sundry subcultures.
Shawn at SITO

Getting an idea.

2007-07-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.
~Barry Humphries

You know how we’re all forced to have a day job because making art don’t pay dick? Well I was at my day job (I quit a year ago) having lunch and one of my co-workers asked me how I came up with my ideas. See, when you have a dayjob and people find out you’re creative in some way you’ll get questions like this a lot. People take an interest in your work or at least they pretend to but no one will ever know what the creative process is like until they do it.
My answer to her question was that ideas were the easy part; it’s actually making those ideas into some kind of finished piece that is difficult. I’m serious, ideas are everywhere and at the beginning they’re all equally valid. Every idea you have throughout the course of the day is a book, or a film, or a comic waiting to happen. Every time you make a decision or notice something insignificant you’re forming ideas. These are the building blocks of stories and it’s up to you to craft those building blocks into something that others want to look at.
Now I’m not advocating putting every idea you have into a story and I’m certainly not suggesting that every idea is going to interest an audience but the notion that ideas are rare is certainly false.
There are few creative people that will ever be able to tell you how they come up with ideas and they sure as shit aren’t going to be able to tell you how you should come up with your ideas. That being said, it still seems to be a common question. So, like an idiot, I’m going to try to tackle the question “How do you come up with ideas?”
Part one: The difference between an idea and a story.
Okay, you’re sitting on a beach and a guy walks up to you and asks you directions to a nearby hotel. The guy is noticeably intoxicated. You give him the directions in an unsure way and moments after he walks off you realize you’ve given him the wrong directions.
As you sit there on the beach wondering if you should try to catch him you let your mind wander.
“I wonder where that guy’s going to end up.”
“I hope he gets where he needs to go eventually.”
“why was that guy drunk?”
You sit watching the sunset and you begin to daydream a bit about the whole scenario. You create a series of events in your head about how and why the man was asking directions on the beach.
You decide the guy had been out on the beach drinking because he’d gotten in a fight with his wife. The two of them were on their vacation and staying at a nearby hotel. The fight they had was over a trivial thing like where to have dinner that night. The man had gotten so drunk on the beach that he’d just wandered aimlessly and forgotten which way he’d come from. Some faulty directions from a stranger (you) had caused the man to walk off into the bad part of town and get attacked by a mugger.
You see where I’m going with this? A random occurrence caused you to think a little (and only a little) about a certain series of events. You wondered about the motivations of someone you met and turned those questions into a story without even realizing it.
Part two: a word about Craft
Is the above scenario really a story? No, it isn’t a story but it’s a good building block for a story. This is where craft comes into play… you know our friend craft right? That stuff they talk about in school? That stuff James Kochalka thinks is the enemy?
Craft is your friend, craft is a useful set of experiments that exist to allow you to maximize the potential of your ideas. Some people think that craft is there solely to tell you that you’re a bad artist and that no one will ever love you. Fuck that, you could kick craft’s punk ass and whenever craft gets out of line you can toss it out the window and rely on your gut.
However, craft is a useful tool and it would do everyone good to learn more about making good stories, learning from your predecessors, peers and your mistakes. Relying solely on the strength of your ideas is folly. Have you looked at the internet lately? There’s an idea around every corner, everyone’s got an idea. In the last ten years small press has given rise to blogs and youtube and there’s a means of distribution for ~~anyone with two fingers and a brain~~ anyone with two fingers. Everyone is now publishing every idea they have and every idea had already been used up a hundred years ago.
My point, if I have one at all, is that though an idea is absolutely the first real step in a creative endeavor it isn’t really any more important than the rest of the process.
That being said, let’s generate some ideas.
Next Part three: some writing exercises.

I'm back!

2007-07-19T02:09:00.002-07:00

okay, I was away for a little bit, sorry. I'm a no good lout. I tell people to post regularly then I split... what a dick thing to do. I have been writing but everything is still kind of half formed and incoherent. with luck I'll get back to the whole "making comics" thing in a bit. in the meantime, here's another somewhat lackluster post full of links and one off comments...
check out this book
I may not know what art is but I know Andrei does.
Tony Millionaire draws Bukowski (sort of)
My love affair with Bukowski dried up long ago, but my love affair with Drinky Crow will never die. (oh yeah, go to Maakiesdotcom for more)
freelancers go here
if you love color swatches (and who doesn't?) check this out.

more soon.

Publishing Rights

2007-07-04T00:57:00.001-07:00

The small press becomes, with each passing minute, more and more of a global theatre. It has always been so, yes, as long as the world has gotten smaller, but things have sped considerably in the last hundred years, and especially in the last two decades. With the widespread access to the internet and the Established Name factor (if you don’t have one, you’re more likely to search out smaller, more hidden magazines, and especially those far from the mainstream, well-funded American literary mags), the ability to publish in the small press has broadened and intensified at the same time. No longer does a struggling poet or writer need to seek out rare and priveleged information on small magazines that aren’t near. If you have a screen and a modem, you’re eye to eye with thousands of possible avenues. With online access, you can find a magazine that fits your mode in a variety of countries, from Finland to Russia, Austria to Chile, to your next-door neighbor who plays editor to a lit-blog while sitting on the couch in his underwear. More publications across the various seas have established rapport with one another, and the world, as a publishing place, has become smaller, while your chances to print, larger.

All of these publishing opportunities are ripe and looking for good work. You might have some of it, and if you do, you may already know how your copyright on the material works. I won’t bother giving a summary of copyright law or meddle with giving you a definition, as it abounds on the internet. I’ll provide a link, if you want to look up copyright:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

The meat of this post is on the subject of publishing rights, how they transfer, and what they mean. Rights, as some know and others suspect, do not refer to contract or ownership (in most cases). Rights refer to usage and license. Ever read an End User License Agreement on software you’ve installed on your computer? Even the blog service this is posted to has one. The EULA is a contract stating what you can and can’t do, what is and isn’t liable to the service, and is a lot of ass-covering on the corporate level. Some people think that rights negotiation is similar, in that you’re establishing the rules, covering your bases, and signing away the work. This is not the generally the case. Rights and their permissions are binding, as with a contract, but much simpler, and very basic. When someone requires any of the various rights to your work, they’re only asking for specific usages. They’re asking to do a specific thing with your writing, and that one thing only. Any further uses they might want will fall into other rights. The rights in question are just agreed upon fashions for them to use your work. Rights are not the same as payment, or contracts, or orders. The rights are generally on both of your sides, so they work as an effective intermediary between some of the confusing things that can happen between sending work out, and getting galleys back, or retiring a piece outright.

There are a great many rights that can be negotiated, though most publications will keep it simple and ask one or two of the more simple and understandable rights. Some longer strings of rights (First Exclusive French translation rights with International Exclusive French and Spanish Geographic Rights) are rare as hell in the small press, and it’s likely you won’t have to deal with anything like them.

I’ve compiled a list of some various, more common rights and what they mean, how they work. This should give you a better idea of what is really happening when a publication prints your work in a specific way, or asks for certain rights. I’ve chosen to stick with the more common (and a few rarities) rights transferred in the small press, and kept my hands out of others (No, you’re not going to see music rights here, even though some aspects of spoken word tracks can qualify under these, and I’m going nowhere near movie rights and other corporate forms of rights negotiation, because they don’t apply).

Electronic Rights vs. Print Rights:

The internet changed everything. We all know it. It seems almost silly to point it out. With the internet came the vast sweeping world of electronic rights (Oh, these existed before, certainly, but the internet brought them into the mainstream, everyday speech of editors who chose to work online). Some publishers differentiate between Electronic Rights and what they call Online Rights, or Internet Rights. For instance, they believe that issuing your poem as an electronic document on a CD to be electronic rights, but posting your work on their webpage would be Internet or Online rights. I don’t know if this is of legal concurrence, and I don’t think they know either. The general term is Electronic Rights.

First Rights: This is the most common right you’ll grant, as a writer, in the small press. Relegated to the FIRST time a distinct piece of writing is published in any accepted format. This includes letters to the editor, magazines, websites, blogs, even your own personal site. Writing a poem on a cinder block and throwing it through an editor’s window, however, is not an accepted form of publication, so that poem would be free to offer elsewhere for First Rights, still. You can grant this right once, and once only. After First Rights have been used or granted, even by yourself, you can never grant them again. Any subsequent printing will be a reprint.

1. First Electronic Rights: Same as above, but distinctive in the manner of electronic print. A publication asking for this is a publication asking to print the poem online or in an electronic format (In a CD issue, a .PDF file, .CBZ, etc...) for the first time. If it’s been printed elswhere online, no dice. Again, you can grant this right once in a piece’s lifetime. It is possible to grant a publication First Electronic Rights, and then later grant First Print Rights to an alternate magazine, provided these specific rights are in transfer. If you’ve transfered the more basic First Rights, with no specification, you’re on shaky ground trying to resubmit it as a First publishing in an alternate venue.

2. First Print Rights: These are First Rights with a specification toward print, and not electronic mediums. We’re talking paper and ink. Well, I once received a magazine made of plastic, but same basic idea. If you print someone’s poetry in blood on sandpaper and publish it in the public arena, that’s still Print, baby.

Exclusive Rights (sometimes referred to as Exclusivity): This involves exclusivity to print. Basically, exclusive rights indicate that a publication can print your work, but for a given length of time, rather than a single first, or one-time printing. The difference is that time is the measure, not simply the act of printing. In order to send your work on to other outlets, if you’ve sold or granted a publication Exclusivity, you will have to wait until the timeframe and conditions of the printing have expired. Most magazines will state in their guidelines this length of time if they ask for Exclusive Rights. In order to grant Exclusivity, the piece in question can not appear elsewhere in the time period agreed upon. If your work is already posted at your website, and you wish to grant Exclusivity for one of those posted works to a magazine, you’ll have to remove the work in question from your site during the interim. If you were to leave it up, it wouldn’t be very exclusive, would it?

Non-Exclusive Rights: The right to print your work, though still allowing you to submit the work elsewhere for reprint. This can be augmented for the electronic medium, as can most rights, and would then be Non-Exclusive Electronic Rights. Obviously, you can not grant exclusivity to another magazine if you have already granted Non-Exclusive rights elsewhere. Exclusivity means it isn’t anywhere else. It’s exclusive.

Perpetual Rights (sometimes referred to as Perpetual Access, and Perpetuity): The right to store your work in an archive or public place for viewing on an ongoing basis. Ever click on ‘Archives’ at the website of a magazine? Perpetual Rights have been negotiated, whether the artists or editors knew it or not. If the magazine in question is using a blog, or something similar, there will most likely be a dated archive, so Perpetual Rights are in play there. There is a more specific form of Perpetual Rights that deals exclusively with archiving, called Archive Rights.

Archive Rights: The right to archive your work. Distinguishable from Perpetual Rights in that they are specific to archival, while Perpetual Rights grant that the work can be exhibited in full view, not just stored in an archive. Most internet publishing that results the publicly viewable storage of work falls into Archive Rights, owing that works published on the internet are considered publicly available, but not generally public domain. The broader Perpetual Rights transfer is utilised more for work that is in the public domain. Your work on microfiche in a filing cabinet is an archived work, but your work in a book at the library, available to the public, is a work in which Perpetual Rights are attached.

One-Time Rights: The second most common right in the small press, and the vehicle for reprints. One-Time Rights, when granted, mean that the publication in question can print your work once, and once only, and you’re work is still free to use however you want. You can reprint the work as much as you desire, and submit it as many times as you prefer, all at once even (provided the magazines you’re submitting to allow simultaneous submission or previously published material). If you plan on using a piece of writing more than once in the same medium, look for publications that are fine with this right.

Reprint Rights: If granted, these indicate that a publisher can print your work for the second time in the work’s illustrious public existence, or even the 487th time, whichever you’re up to. The difference between Reprint Rights and One-Time Rights is slim, and they are often used in place of one another in the small press.

Regional Rights: Somewhat self-explanatory. The right to print in a given region. This right is distinctively for Print Rights, never Electronic, because the internet is an open-ended, global arena. It has no specific region, per se.

Anthology Rights: The right to place your work in anthology of other works. Usually these rights are transferred for ‘Year in Review’ type books, or ‘Best of’ collections, but can also refer to any other kind of collected anthology.

Geographic Rights: The right to print in a specifically defined geographic location, for a given time, exclusively. Can be the same as Regional Rights, but Geographic Rights are usually reserved for very broad areas, I.E. a country or province. For instance, a magazine asking Geographic Rights for Wisconsin is asking that they be the only publication in Wisconsin, for a given time, to have the work in question available for print. Unless otherwise stated, you could still conceivably submit elsewhere outside of the geographic area outlined, provided you haven’t transfered other pertinent rights, as well.

Translation Rights / Language Rights: Refers to the right to print a translated work, or a version of the work in a specific language. If you translate a poem from a famous Inuit writer into Mauritanian Creole, you can publish it as a translation, under the transfer of these rights. These were created to help diferentiate who owns what work. You, in the abovementioned example, didn’t write the Inuit poem. You translated someone else’s work, therefore you can’t transfer writes based on the original, only your language translation of it. Some magazines demand that, if you submit a translation, you provide the original as well as the permission of the original’s copyright holder.

Excerpt Rights: Needs little explanation. The right to excerpt from something you’ve written. A line from one of your poems that has a ‘famous quote’ kind of feel, maybe stuck under the masthead of a magazine... that’s Excerpt Rights in play. Excerpt Rights in the poetry small press are more common with interviews, in which a magazine not connected with an interview you’ve done, wants to reprint several of your responses. If you wanted to take a paragraph of this post and publish it in an essay on rights transfer, you’d be asking me for Excerpt Rights.

Work for Hire Rights: A little trickier. Employed to write material, or by comission, without the protection of copyright. This transfers the copyright ITSELF to the publisher, and they don’t need to mention your name ever. They can do whatever they please to or with it, and easily state that someone else wrote it, if they desire. You were just the human word processor, and nothing more.

All Rights: Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! This is exactly what it sounds like. Similar to Work for Hire Rights, All Rights mean you sell the work, forever and in all ways. The difference is that most Work for Hire Rights are negotiated before the writing takes place, as with some freelance work and on occasion, columnists, whereas All Rights are usually transferred for already written pieces. You wrote it, you sent it, they like it, they want it... forever. It doesn’t belong to you anymore. Whatever the publication wants to do with your work, if they’ve been granted All Rights, is their decision. You have no say at all in it. They don’t have to attribute it to you, and they can even say they wrote it. They have All Rights.

While there are other rights available for transfer if the need arises, these are the most common I’ve seen (in truth, I’ve never met anyone that asked Work for Hire or All Rights). All of these rights can be a little confusing at first, especially considering some of them can double as others under certain circumstances, but it’s good knowledge to know what usages a magazine or anthology is asking you for in the fine print. If you’d like a more in-depth study of these and other rights, a simple Google search will get you huge amounts of information.

So, in closing, it's beneficial to study your rights and learn what transferring them means. While most magazines will simply state the rights they want, and that your submitting is an act of agreeing to it, the rights transferred are seldom anything problematic to you, unless you're trying to buck the system in some way. If anything, having some information under your belt on the rights that concern your published work will make you feel a touch more professional, and that’s never bad, is it?

Rescinsion

2007-06-08T15:35:00.001-07:00

There are thorns in everyone’s side in the publishing world. If you send an editor something they don’t need, that’s a bit of a thorn. If an editor rejects you repeatedly, that’s a thorn. If an editor prints you, but fouls up your format or creates typographical errors when inputting your poem into print, that’s a thorn in your side. Between (and including) your pen touching a sheet of paper and a reader perusing your lines in a magazine or book, there is a keen harmony of things that can, at any point, go wrong. These are common, to be expected, and in some cases, necessary. There is one particular thorn I want to touch down on, a purposeful one that is generally known as ‘rescinsion’.

A definition is in order:

Verb: Rescind ri’sind

1. Annul by recalling.
2. Take back

Synonyms: annul, countermand, lift, overturn, repeal, revoke

Similar, but not to be confused with:

Noun: Rescission ri’si-shun

1. (Law) the act of rescinding; the cancellation of a contract and the return of the parties to the positions they would have had if the contract had not been made.

This, in publishing with the small press, is the simple act of taking your work back from an editor. Why would this be necessary? There are many reasons, but with this post, we’re going to focus on the three most common: Tardiness, simultaneous submission, and offense.

TARDINESS

When you submit a handful of poems to a magazine or other such publication, you are giving notice that your poems are available, and that if the editor so likes, they can be printed with the editor’s publication. Most magazines state in their guidelines that submitting work to them is an act of admission that you own the rights to the work you’re submitting, and that you are the creator of them. Many magazines will also state that the work cannot be previously published, nor simultaneously submitted, though some will allow these properties exist with your works and the rights to print therein.

If you send your work, following guidelines, the remainder of the publishing experience with that submission is a matter of waiting, followed by a brief climax, usually in the form of a letter or email stating they will or will not be published. This wait is a thorn in your side, yes, but necessary. Most publications have systems of print and reading submissions that differ from others, and the manner in which an editor and staff may go through this process can change the timespan in which you can expect a response from them. Clerical errors can come into play, or it’s possible they never received your work.

This calls into question the timeframe in which you can expect your response. Most magazines will state their average reply time in their guidelines, usually with a line similar to “We respond in 2-4 months” or another time allotment. What happens, however, if you don’t hear from them in that time? Do you contact them (and risk annoying them, or possibly severing any good tie you might have developed with the publication), wait longer, give up and move on? It depends. As a basic rule, I give a publication four additional months past their maximum stated response time. I don’t let them know I’m doing this, as patience isn’t the sort of thing you should brag about. You either have it or you don’t. After the four months pass, if I still haven’t received any contact with the publication, I send a letter or email, depending on the type of publication and whether they’ve made their email addresses available. This letter tries to establish contact, but does state how long it’s been, and that I’d like an update. I also states that if they don’t at least acknowledge they have the poems within a few more weeks, to consider the poems rescinded from their publication. This is a clear statement of intent, and is more than generous. If I STILL don’t hear from them in the few further weeks my notice gives them, the poems are rescinded (via that notice, which told them what to expect if irresponse continued). I am now free to send them elsewhere, or retire them, whichever I decide is best. It may sound like a rude practice, but if a publication gives a response time of 2 weeks, and 5 months go by, it should be brought to their attention, along with the fact that you’re now thinking of going elsewhere.

There’s a good possibility (and I know this from many experiences rescinding work from a variety of publications) that the magazine in question will have no record of your submission. This is the most common response (beyond no response at all) that I have received. Blame your email service, or the postman, or chaos theory, or even the staff of the magazine, but things went awry and there’s nothing you or they can do about it. Try again or move on. Before rescinding, it’s a wise idea to try and establish some communication with the publication in question. An email every now and then can go a long way in solving a dilemma, but if it doesn’t, rescinsion is your final act of closure.

An example:

“My review is grand and timeless. Over the years, I have printed some of the greatest names in all of Eternia. Running this magazine, however, isn’t nearly as satisfying as I first thought. I need to take a rest and ignore all these submissions for awhile. I’ll just let them accrue and send one of my henchmen to wade through them later.”

“Man, what is the freakin’ deal with The Grayskull Quarterly? Their guidelines gave a response time of two months, max. It’s been eight long months and I haven’t heard anything. Did they get my work? Did they hate it and use it as toilet paper? Did they accept my poems and never tell me? I’m sending an email to inquire, because this is lame.”

“Henchman! You’ve made a gigantic mess of these submissions. They’re everywhere! And our office is such a pig-sty that I’m not even getting to half the emails coming in. People are beginning to rescind their work because of it. Gah, you're a horrible intern! Let’s just throw everything out and start over. Anything we missed will just go away, or iron itself out. Mwa ha.”

“Remember kids, when you run into an obstinate or clerically challenged publication, it’s best to move on and leave it behind you. A well-worded and apologetic rescinsion is a great way to ditch a magazine until it figures out what’s going on. You can always try again another time.”

That’s why rescinsion is needed for tardy editors and staff. There comes a point where your patience wears out, or you simply realize how ridiculous it is that a year has gone by without so much as a word on your three short poems. Now, on to the second reason for rescinsion that we’re covering in this post: Offense.

OFFENSE

I once had an editor at a well-regarded magazine call me on the phone, very long distance, to rewrite a poem I had submitted to the magazine. He didn’t want me to just rewrite it, he wanted to go over the entire poem, word by word with me, offering changes, telling me my work was odd, confusing, and rife with problems. A good portion of the lecture he gave me was based on how the simplest and most obvious words were the best place to start when writing a poem (I probably don’t need to mention that, aside from editing the literary magazine, he was also an english professor). I was quite green when this happened, having only been publishing about a month, and so went along. The sheer oddity of the situation made me let it go on. The conversation rattled on into the realm of downright horror for me. He accused me in the nicest ways of being a dolt and ignoring my readers, of abusing the language and, talent aside, writing in a bizarre fashion. He also stated that he couldn't understand why he liked my poem at all, he just somehow did, and a lot. It was obnoxious. I didn’t know that an editor would do this sort of thing. Did he call every other writer he thought about publishing and lecture them, as well? Shocking, right?

In the end, after two hours (no exaggeration) of telling me he would finally print the poem that I wrote (at that point, he’d written near half of it), we went our separate ways. Since that day, I have always fantasized of going back and telling this man what I would now, which isn’t entirely pleasant.

Rescinding your work from an editor due to offense needs little explanation. If you submit to a publication and the editor or staff decide to rewrite your poem or writing to an extent you won’t tolerate, you rescind the poem. I recently had to rescind from a rather nice publication because of a series of offensive events that began to bog down any trace of respect I had for the publication. They accepted my work, then forgot to print it, then the poetry editor wouldn’t answer my emails, then, when I finally got in touch with the chief editor, I was given an apology and a promise to print in a certain issue. The issue came and went and still, nothing. I contacted again, and was referred to a new poetry editor, who apologized again, and then asked me to make changes to the poem they had accepted two years prior. It was too much. The problem was even worse for me due to my inability to hound people. I’m really not the sort to do it, but had to, and I disliked the scenario much. I rescinded in a cordial way, but will never submit to them again.

Offense is a different beast to various people. Seeing that an editor has rewritten my bio bugs me, but not to the point I need stir up any trouble. However, if you have a carefully constructed work and you’ve placed each word with focus (as you should), having it stepped all over might make you angry enough to rescind. Whether a publication has stepped out of line is wholly up to you, and your level of tolerance. Whether you rescind due to this is also your decision. I advise you tread light. Rescind only when you have to.

Simultaneous Submission

When people use simultaneous submission in their publishing mode, they will often have to contact the editors of various magazines to take back poems that have been accepted elsewhere. My view on simultaneous submission is negative, but if you use it, be prepared to give prospective editors troublesome news with regularity. Taking a poem back, no matter the purpose, is an act of rescinsion.

***

In closing, rescinsion is a useful and, in certain cases, vital procedure. It can be overused, as well as abused. A good tenet when dealing with a troublesome editor or publication is tolerance, but if the trouble evolves into something you’re not willing to navigate, rescinsion is a final outcome that you can control.

While it is best to use patience and understanding with someone holding your work, there are times when you may need to break-it-off and start over. When in doubt, don’t rescind. I’ve sent rescinsions that turned into acceptances of my work, rescinsions that angered editors, and still others that brought heavy and sincere apologies. All of these made me feel like an ass. With rescinsion, keeping a bridge intact bears more couth than burning it, and if you decide you must rescind, use tact and a little diplomacy. It goes much farther than ranting in a letter to someone that doesn’t know you, and more than likely, didn’t know or believe there was a problem.

John August and Shazam

2007-05-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hollywood screenwriter John August wrote a little last month about his adaptation of the superhero Shazam (aka Capt. Marvel) and pissed a lot of people off with this little bit of insight.

DC publishes hardcover anthologies that gather up decades’ worth of Captain Marvel comics. If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, these would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the same realization I encounter trying to watch The Honeymooners or a black-and-white movie: Wow. Old things suck.

Yes he was being deliberately provocative so people like me would write about it on their blogs and everyone on the internet would get all crazy. However, his next post on the matter does little to quell my feelings of uneasiness about his opinions.

[W]hat frustrates me is when society insists on elevating and fawning over these non-masterpieces simply because they were part of some mythical Golden Age. To me, that includes The Honeymooners. Sorry. I can understand why it was groundbreaking, and the enormous challenge of creating a live show, and why it was seminal. But I don’t care. It doesn’t connect for me whatsoever, and I’m too honest to fake any interest in it. Thus, to me, it sucks.

So there you have it folks. This is my gripe. Not that he prefers new comics to old comics (though how he could dismiss C.C. Beck is a mystery to me) or that he's going to be writing a superhero movie and I'm afraid he's going to screw it up (I never cared about Cap. Marvel much but I'm pretty sure it just should not be made into a movie)
No, what matters to me is the lack of analysis involved in his statement. You'd think someone with a job crafting stories would understand that "it sucks" isn't a critically defensible point of view. He admits that he can see aspects of what makes a show like the Honeymooners appealing but he has no personal connection to it. This is much different than declaring it a waste of everyone's time with an offhand "it sucks." That's the kind of thing you say to your friends when you're thirteen, not when you're a well paid screenwriter, not in print anyway, and certainly not when you're the guy that wrote that Charley's Angels movie.
Anyway, my point here is that a creative person should probably have well defined analytic techniques that they can apply to their own work. Declaring something inferior because of your own personal inabilities to "connect" with a given work is damaging to the creative process and will probably result in work that is lackluster and shallow.

that's a-DOR-able

2007-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Sky and Winter McCloud visit Savannah Georgia and talk to Drew Weing and Eleanor Davis. I think every interview should be conducted by a cute little kid... interviewers would be destroyed once they reached a certain age like in Logan's run.

More stuff forthcoming, I've been out of town, sorry.

Simultaneous Submission

2007-04-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

Author’s note: This post is designed with poetry submission in mind, though some aspects of it may apply to other forms of writing, especially short stories and the such. Certainly the role of simultaneous submission changes considerably when you’re submitting something as large and time-consuming as a novel or book manuscript, and my opinion of simultaneous submission changes in relation to these circumstances. So, read on and take it as you want, but for the purpose of this article, we’re generally talking poetry and short works.

*********

Through the thousands of magazine guidelines available online and in print, there is strong mention of a process called ‘simultaneous submission’. Some magazines call this multiple submission (though the term ‘multiple submission’ is occasionally also used to describe submitting more than once to a magazine within its given reading period). Simultaneous submission is the act of offering your writing to more than one publisher or editor at the same time. It allows you to send what you consider to be valuable work to several places at once, thus garnering a higher chance of a positive response, or at least, rejections more quickly, giving you more of an idea of what the troubled work needs. This can be a blessing to the poet who has wide aspirations, or not much work, or who has a specifically themed piece that might be used well in several outlets where a submission window is a factor.

The benefit of using simultaneous or multiple submission, for the writer, is unarguable: It increases his/her chance of being published in a very direct, marketed way. Unfortunately, this act can be damaging to some editors, especially when a counted on piece from a submission is retracted close to a deadline, or at all, for that matter.

Let’s run through the process with an example and see where it gets us...

Flagella Garner has aspirations to be a published poet, and she believes she has three good poems to send out. They're entitled: "I Went Wild on Spring Break", "Spring Break Series #2: Pregnancy Test", and "I Think He Told Me His Name was 'Road Bird', But the Song Lyrics on the Napkin He Hid in My Glove Box were Signed 'Shawn'".

Now, Flagella has decided to send these three poems out to the magazine, Youthful Peril Bimonthly, but she thinks they'd also be a good fit at New Mommy Review, as well as at Experience: The Journal of Finding Things Out the Hard Way. She only has the three poems, but each magazine says to send exactly three. What can she do? That’s nine poems Flagella would need to submit to all three magazines. Well, she could send to one, wait until she gets an eventual response, and if it’s a rejection, send the poems on to the next magazine, and so forth, or she could send to all three magazines at once and hope they don’t mind. Well, in this instance, let’s say these three magazines state in their guidelines that they allow simultaneous submissions. Great news. Flagella can simultaneously submit these same three poems to all three magazines. Her odds just jumped up a bit, and someone is bound to accept at least one, right? It will pad her bio and give her a better chance at acceptance, with much more potential for having her work read by someone, which is why people want to print in the first place, to get their work read, yes? Sending these three poems out to a group of magazines, instead of one, will up young Flagella’s chances considerably. This sounds wonderful to her, and in this instance, is surely the best bet for achieving her goal of publishing the poems.

It seems as if things are going to work out for our young poet, Flagella. Or maybe not...

Simultaneous submission is trouble, and perhaps selfish. I wouldn't recommend it. There are rights involved in printing with magazines and anthologies. Rights to print are important and held in serious regard. Flagella can send to all three magazines at once, and hell, she could send the same poems to 12 magazines if she desired (and if they allow it), but she’ll have to let the others know the second one of them sends her an acceptance, or worse, she’ll have to tell the magazine accepting her that she’s holding out for a better magazine if she decides not to take the first acceptance. The rights become an issue (a big one) the minute she fails to do either of these things. Different magazines ask different rights, as well, and she'll have to maneuver her way through them in order to figure out what she can send and what she can't. The process can be a hassle, submissions can become more complicated than necessary, and there’s always the ever-present chance that she’ll piss someone off.

To give you a better idea of what's really going on when you simultaneously submit, with the fronts and well-meaning stripped away, try looking at it with the roles reversed. Imagine, as a poet, getting something like this in the mail from an editor:

Dear poet,

As you'll remember, I accepted two of your poems last month for my upcoming issue of World Renowned Literary Journal. As part of my selection process, I strategically 'over-accept' for each issue. I use twelve poems per issue, but will usually accept around 20, to make sure I have enough at crunch-time, when I head to the printer. I am about to release the issue, and am sorry to tell you that I have my twelve set up now, and yours aren’t in that, so I won't be using your poems as planned. Sorry if I got your hopes up, and please consider your poems freed and no longer of use to me; I've chosen to go with other poets. Thanks for your submisson to World Renowned and sorry to take back the acceptance. No hard feelings, and feel free to submit to us in the future.

-Editor

Yeah, no hard feelings, right?

I've never had an editor do anything this cold and horrible to me, so why would I toss this kind of wreckage on one of them? I wouldn't, and I wouldn't advise you do it, either. Simultaneous submission in poetry is, in effect, over-submitting. There’s also the between-the-lines message inferred when you simultaneously submit. This message is that you don’t care about the magazine enough to send them something that’s solely for their perusal. This message is that you’re only out for the acceptance or credit, and don’t necessarily see yourself as a potential part of that magazine’s ongoing history. This message is that you probably don’t find their magazine any more important or necessary than the next one you have earmarked for the poems. In short, speed-dating. Many editors understand, of course, and are both tolerant and patient about a contributor’s submission practices, but on a certain level, simultaneous submission still bears with it an undercurrent, no matter how courteous it is handled, of disrespect. It can be a rude behaviour and carries with it a selfish vibe. Having to retract your work from an editor because of an acceptance elsewhere is an act of aggressive marketing, no matter how polite an editor may be to you regarding it.

If you're serious about your work and you’re doing you job as a poet, you should have enough material to send to the magazines you like. If you don't have these things, wait until you do. If you’re not serious about your work, wait until you are. Sending various editors the same poems at the same time is an efficient, expedient, helpful, bad idea. It requires more active charting and records, and can turn on you rather quickly. There are magazines that allow it (many, in fact, and some even encourage it), but most of them don't like it when it backfires on them much, especially when rights or money come into play. They're agreeing to allow it because they feel for you. They know you're trying to navigate a large and unusually sporadic gauntlet and they're willing to help, to some degree. Some editors do it when sending out their own work. Regardless, simultaneous submission is still a situation that can easily become a mess, cause you to burn bridges, and anger some editors that were counting on the poem you sent them for an upcoming issue. What happens if two magazines accept a poem? There are ethical choices to make in this situation, but in the end, you’ll most likely have to go with one and ditch the other. How is this going to mutate the now cuckolded and ditched editor’s view of you?

If you have certain works that you feel would be well received at various magazines, the smartest thing to do is go without and just submit within your capability until you've accumulated enough material to send unique and real submissions to the magazines you hope want them. In dating, under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t ask ten people in a room, one at a time, to go out on a date with you within earshot of the others, would you? If so, what the hell for? Upping your chances? Ask yourself this: Chances for what? Certainly not establishing something meaningful. An acceptance, a score? Sure, but to what end? There’s no simple way around it that isn’t damaging: You simply have to try your luck and wait for the rejection. You’re just going to have to wait. Want more poems out at more editors? Write them, then send them. If you get an acceptance, problem solved; you printed the work. If you get a rejection, problem solved; the work is free to revise and send elsewhere.

Now, many people use simultaneous submission to get around the achingly long response times of many magazines. This is understandable, and certainly a simultaneous submission can help you get your work to more publishers in that time span for which you’re waiting. However, in lieu of simultaneous submission, I offer that a well-placed rescinsion when necessary works much more efficiently and is far less confusing. I’ll get into rescinsion in another post, but for now, a ‘rescinsion’ is when you contact an editor and take your poems back because an irresponsibly undue amount of time has passed and you still haven’t heard back from them. This shouldn’t be done lightly. When I say ‘irresponsibly undue’, I mean that the magazine is out of line, and usually by leaps and bounds. Basically, if a publication states they received your poems and that they’ll respond in up to 6 weeks, and then eight months go by, and they aren’t answering your emails, they deserve to lose the poems. But that’s for another post. I only mention rescinsion as a useful and cleaner alternative to using simultaneous submission in the solving of long waits.

While the process does abound in the small press, I’d advise you to think it over before sending your work to multiple editors at a given time. Instead of debating how to out-maneuver the publishing process, and how to get a small number of poems out to more editors, you might want to ask yourself why you don’t have enough writing to avoid having to ponder these things. Again, you’ll have enough material to avoid simultaneously submitting if you're serious about what you do.

In conclusion, use simultaneous submission if you want to, but bear in mind the trouble you can cause, and the variety of bridges you can burn simply by losing track of who you sent what. Ask yourself this: Is getting a few more acceptances here and there worth pissing all over the longstanding conventions of the only place left that actually wants to print you and your ilk, for free, and often unprofitably?

**************

The following are some various viewpoints from several sources on the subject, as well as some information taken from guidelines of various magazine that use poetry. Some are fine with simultaneous submission, some discourage it, and some downright hate it. If anything, this should give you an idea that simultaneous submission bears with it some controversy, and the tolerance of it seems to vary nearly by press. Brackets are mine.

Here’s an approval of it from the submission guidelines at Pemmican Press:

“It is indeed difficult for poets to send out poems, wait weeks, perhaps months on end for a reply that, odds are, will be negative--and then have to start the entire submission process all over again. Therefore multiple submissions [at Pemmican] are understood and encouraged.”

Here’s a no-no, with the punishment, from the submission guidelines at Toasted-Cheese Literary Journal:

“We do not accept simultaneous submissions. Withdrawing a submission because it has been published elsewhere will disqualify you from future submissions.”

Several links to other articles of varying views on this subject:

http://clairelight.typepad.com/seelight/2006/03/simultaneous_su.html

http://www.writing-world.com/basics/simsubs.shtml

http://www.star-dot-star.co.uk/multi.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-Simultaneous-Submissions-a-Good-Idea?&id=455928

http://www.writehabit.org/journalfaq.html

http://www.marketlist.com/articles/artsimul.asp

An interesting article that also discusses a bit of rumored history behind how simultaneous submissions first began (purportedly Norman Mailer started it):

http://www.theroseandthornezine.com/Article/17SimultaneousSubs.html

The War

2007-04-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting question. Do public watchdog groups have the right to change a work of art?
This story poses an interesting and frustrating question. In essence it says that Ken Burns, the famous documentarian, has neglected to include Hispanics in his 14 hour long documentary The War and several Latino advocacy groups are calling foul and demanding changes to the film.

On one hand we have a group of concerned citizens with a noble cause demanding inclusion in a film that purports examining an historical event in an ostensibly even-handed manner. The group is right on many levels; Hispanics are an underrepresented culture in American history and it is important to acknowledge the advances our country has made because of them.

On the other hand you have a film maker that set forth with specific goals when documenting WWII. Burns only interviewed people from four small towns in America and took six years interviewing those people and finding documentary footage and researching their stories. to change the film now would involve hunting down Latino war veterans from any of those four towns, researching their stories, finding supporting documentary footage and lengthening the film significantly. None of this is a reason not to include Hispanic war veterans though, if a little extra work was all it took there would probably be no debate.

The real problem lies in giving outside influences the power to edit films, even historical documentaries. Should lobby groups be able to influence the media to such an extent? Should squeaky wheels really get the grease? even if those squeaky wheels have a good point? What will happen if a group with less noble goals begins lobbying for changes in documentaries?

As you might have guessed I have no answers to those questions. I believe that documentaries should accurately represent the lives of it's subjects but if the subject is as broad as WWII then it's inevitable that some people will be left out.

feel free to leave comments if you have any thoughts on the subject. Anything hateful of idiotic will, of course be deleted.

Protocol, Baby

2007-04-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

Just about every magazine or small press outlet in existence has something that sets it aside from other magazines, submission-wise. These requirements change depending on what you write, and who you're submitting to. For instance, a poet submitting to a small-to-mid press usually needs a simple cover letter that gives a brief hello and states what's been sent, possibly a small biographical note as well, though many publications don't require anything but the poetry and your name. Some ask that you send a truncated list of your publication credits, while some get annoyed if you send them this. A novelist, when submitting to a major publisher or agent, however, has more to think about: Query, synopsis, outline, complete bio, cover letter, strategic sample chapters... the works. I'll get into the poetry aspect of this here, and post an image of each in addition to some links, but will save information on novel protocols for a later post (later meaning: when I've written a few more novels and wouldn't be talking out of my ass).

I've done quite a bit of research over the last few years on the requirements of poetry mags (by 'quite a bit', I mean 'enough to make me sick', and by 'research', I mean 'submitted to over a thousand'.

This is the man I hired to haul my returned poetry off.

And not a one rhymed.

I have decided, for better or worse, to throw a little information down here. Rather than re-state what many other people have already stated (and better than I could), I've decided to resort to links. These all link to articles and outlines on basic protocols for submitting poetry to journals and the like, and I've described a bit of my thoughts, as well.

Cover Letters: Now, the two links at the end of this paragraph are fine. There are better ones, surely, but the best way to learn about getting down a cover letter is to find someone who publishes, and who is willing to let you see their current cover letter. Some poets write one for each magazine they send to, some use a kind of personal template, and some use a preformatted cover letter that they rewrite every few months, with a new bio, etc... In doubt as to what you want to put in your cover letter? Try emailing someone who has a few of them (an editor you've got a friendship with, another poet, an instructor who has published before...). And if you absolutely don't know any of these, email me and I'll send you an example or two.

http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/editors-on-poetry/thrquest.html#letters, http://www.suite101.com/lesson.cfm/19698/3150/2.

Bio: A lot of information exists about writing a bio, unfortunately most of the sources you run into tend to give you several paragraphs to really flesh yourself out, when most poetry magazines give you less than a hundred words. Some even say a good bio should be 2 or 3 sentences, tops. Why so short? Because poets are like _______; everybody's got one. Figured out what goes in the blank? That's right: biographies. And you thought it was gonna be 'assholes', admit it. For a bio, just write something to-the-point and don't make things up, unless you think the magazine wants you to. There are a handful of magazines out there that like comedic, bullshit bios, and if you're submitting to one of these, ham it up. If you still need links for some formats and the like: http://www.writing-world.com/basics/bio.shtml. There are others if you google the subject. The best way to write a poet bio is to look at the contributor's pages of various magazines at bios in action. Here's a ton of them: http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/contributors2.html.

I've also found that, especially with online publications, it's good to change your bio every now and then. If someone takes interest and looks you up in a search engine, they aren't going to be very interested if every link that pops up has the same bio text under it. While it can be difficult trying to trash-compact your literary life into a couple of sentences, it is a bit humbling to see what you, yourself think is most important, versus what you're trying to convey to an editor.

Submission Formats: These change nearly by magazine. In order to submit something to a magazine, you need to know the way they want to receive it, and your best chance of getting this right is to get your guideline from them, directly. Most magazines have websites, and most of these have guidelines. If in doubt, send something basic and simple. A good rule of thumb, when given no information or when you can't locate guidelines, is a brief cover letter with a short, short bio, and the poems. Put your name and contact info on every page unless you learn they don't want this.

How to Send: Again, this is heavily swayed by the magazine in question. Some will only accept a postal submission with SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), while some want postal WITHOUT a SASE and will only reply via email. Overseas publications for which you submit by post will likely require IRCs (international reply coupons), though some will simply put your acceptance in you CC (contributor's copy) and send it to you as one package. Some magazines only want online submissions, and of these many will want your poetry in the body of an email in plain text, while some will prefer rich text. Also with online submission, some will want your work in an attached file (and even in specific file formats: .rtf, .doc, .txt, .etc...). There are magazines that have online submission and tracking forms/pages (I find these to be a little grotesque), and there are even SOME magazines that prefer you post your poetry at your own site, and just send them the link (though truthfully, most magazines hate that idea). The protocols for sending your work change, also, with what you're sending. A poem that incorporates visuals or a very specific layout may need some special formatting. If a magazine wants one poem per page, but you've written a load of haiku, they may be fine with several on a page, owing to the small size of that kind of poetry. Read the guidelines. Read the guidelines. Read the guidelines.

Once you've got your submission ironed out and sent, your next task, concerning that submission, is to wait until you get your wondrous response.

A response from a magazine can take anywhere from ten minutes (with an online submission and email response), to 2 full years (I've had it happen several times). This also brings in the idea of rescinsion, which is when you contact a magazine and take back your poems due to extended irresponse or other bizarre problems that can arise. I'll post something on rescinsion next time around. It's a very touchy subject and difficult to manage for a variety of reasons.

A note on guidelines: Most publications, agencies, and publishers have guidelines posted somewhere you can find them, and more often than not, you can find them online quickly. These guidelines can be extremely specific (Send 5-line standard bio, 80-100 words, at bottom of one paragraph cover letter, address in upper right corner, atop a submission of no more than 3 poems, each labeled with line and word counts, as well as your name and contact info on each sheet, in an email attachment, either .rtf format, or .doc, to the following four email addresses...), or they can be enviolably vague (send us good work, just not porn or hate, and be yourself), but these guidelines, no matter how complex or simple, exist for a reason. The most important facet of extending your work onto an editor's desk is following the rules they ask you to. An amazing and well-written synopsis is only an impediment to the editor who requests no synopsis. The idea is to be professional and human, like the editor. Follow the rules, show your stuff, then wait and wait for whatever response you get:

If you get the notion that a certain press has a good sense of humor or a laid-back demeanor, then by all means, have a bit of fun with your submission, but I've found that, in general most magazines, even the humor mags, and publishers prefer a professional approach that adheres to their format and reception system. Don't begin your cover letter with 'hey, what's up?', unless you know the editor, and even then it's still goofy. The basic tenet I use with just about everything is as follows: Submit and interact in the manner you want to be received. Want to be taken seriously? Be serious. It's the submitters version of 'do unto others as you would have them...', that whole thing.

That's about it for now. Submitting is something you should be able to pull off when half-asleep, once you've done it a few times, though I wouldn't advise doing it in this state:

"Dear Ray,

We appreciate your thinking of Skulk Magazine and sending us your interesting poems. Unfortunately, this is Boston Terrier Monthly, not Skulk. Mixed up your email list? Better luck next time, and get some sleep. Sorry to pass on these fine poems you didn't technically send us.

-Editors"

Comics writers take note.

2007-03-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

Jesse Hamm has some interesting (though not entirely convincing) things to say about why comics writers should step off and let the artist draw. I'm not sold on his line of action "rule," his ideas on visual cliche's seem a little too vague, I kind of like the "archie andrews two-face" and a few of his examples are really worse-case-scenario kind of things where the artist should just call the writer up and call them names. Hamm's always pretty insightful though, when it comes to the technical conventions of comics and it would do everyone well to read his post and mull it over.

I'll have some of my own opinions on the collaboration process for comics in a day or so.

words and pictures.

2007-03-26T15:06:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a topic on the ever irritating comics journal messboard I've decided to tackle the heady topic of text in the creation of comics.

Many people, me included, see comics as a primarily visual art form but there is no denying that the use of text, punctuation, speech and thought balloons and various types of linguistic gymnastics has an equally long history in the creation of "sequential art."

The Reading Experience

In his book The Act Of Creation Arthur Koestler introduces the concept of bisociation. Bisociation is described as "The perceiving of a situation or idea [...] in two self consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference." Koestler then goes on to explain that this process is the mental basis for the creation of all art, science, and humor. The concept is similar to the very definition of abstract thought and connects very strongly to Scott McCloud's definition of comic as "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in a deliberate sequence" and his concept of “closure”

These concepts point to how we as thinking and reasoning humans can see two images and connect them together in a sequence to infer a type of meaning whether it be representational art or abstracted symbols such as letter-forms. This is why comics possess an inherent and almost unavoidable reading experience with or without the use of text.

Silent comics

Silent comics are comics that play out without the use of text. Usually involving characters acting out in a pantomime and can range from deeply moving and thought provoking work to stooge-worthy slapstick.

Silent comics are ubiquitous and have an advantage over other, more text oriented work by being generally legible to an international (and even illiterate) audience. I have seen examples of many kinds of stories told in silent form from all over the world. One of the drawbacks of silent strips is the loss of nuanced character development. Dialogue has a way of offering insight into a character that we cannot fathom otherwise. Many silent strips have attempted to surpass this hurdle by offering visual representation of thoughts and dialogue within balloons but this approach often falls flat. Visually representing a persons thoughts is often equally broad and lifeless as drawing an expression onto someone's face and hoping and audience gets it. Imagine daffy duck with a thought balloon and a baseball with a screw going through it. Thus dialogue has been added to comics to make a character more concrete in a readers mind. This is not the only reason for dialogue of course but most other reasons (advancing the plot, formal play) could also be accomplished visually with negligible loss of narrative information.

The words and pictures kind of comics

This is the most common kind of comic and the type of comic most people think of when they think of comics. The reason this kind is most common is due to the obvious amount of experimentation possible. There are almost limitless permutations of drawing and text that can be placed with a panel. Some comics offer straightforward narrative stories where characters interact and have relationships much like movies on paper, there are strips with wildly imaginative flights of fancy in writing style and idiosyncratic uses of pictorial representation. There are strips where the words and pictures work in incongruous ways to add up to a more cumulative meaning. One of the primary risks of this type of comic art is redundancy. I recently was reading an old issue of Daredevil (you know the superhero comic?) and Stan Lee’s script could easily have been removed from most of the pages. There’s a scene of Daredevil on a rooftop looking over the city or something. The narration reads “Daredevil looks over the city” and a thought balloon bubbles over Daredevil’s head as he thinks “I’m looking over the city.”
The concept of text versus picture is discussed in Understanding Comics chapter 6

Text heavy/text only comics

Occasionally a cartoonist will experiment with the idea of creating a comics composed entirely of text or use text in a page to convey information economically. This effects the reading process in various ways. Effective reading often relies on the continuation of a type of rhythm set forth by the author and the understanding of various rules set forth by learning to read when we are in school. The reason we can read text quickly is because we have learned (been brainwashed) to recognize familiar rhythms in written language. When that rhythm is broken we seize up momentarily and are jarred away from the reading experience. Same goes for the rules laid out in written language, if we understand that grammar or punctuation work in one way and a text is working in another then we are similarly jarred until we can reconcile the two frames of reference. This same concept can be extrapolated to encompass comics as well. We learn to read comics and when the rules get broken we get momentarily confused. Sticking large amounts of text with boxes and laying the boxes out in a page is a jarring and provocative corruption of how most people have learned to read comics as well as how we've learned to read text. Sometimes this is a worthwhile pursuit and causes a reader to begin thinking and reading in a new way but often it is frustrating for a reader who just wants to keep up the rhythm of reading.

Some sort of conclusion

Like any experiment the use of text in comics is a tricky proposition. A cartoonist using heavy blocks of words to convey information runs the risk of ruining an audiences reading experience as well as being redundant and verbose. It is important to try to see your own work through the eyes of a reader. Like any act of experimentation you should begin with questions, some of those questions might be "will readers understand why I've incorporated so much text, will they even read the text or will they move on to the next comic that conforms more to their expectations?"

images stolen from

bugpowder

Phoebe Gloeckner

some fumetti site (Italian)

lazy links.

2007-03-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

because I've been neglecting the ol' blood and ink I thought I'd get back into things by posting some links to cool shit because I'm too damn lazy to write anything substantial.

James Brown (not that James Brown) has started a blog in preparation for his master's thesis. The blog is an interesting examination of architectural presentation. This includes many comics references and cool pictures of weird buildings.
no words no action

chances are if you're into comics and you're on the internet you've seen Lambiek's giant cartoonist encyclopedia. I could spend forever there.

I hesitate to post things that read like "news" here but here's a couple of time wasters.

tom spurgeon has a link to booklist's top ten children's comics that might interest those with or around kids.

I hesitate to mention this but there's a big nerd battle going on all over the internet about whether or not comics of the nineteen seventies were more or less important or good than comics of other decades. start here and follow some links if you care. I would weigh in with my own opinion of the subject but it would just boil down to a big "who fucking cares?"

come back tomorrow and I'll have something a little more interesting (seems like I say that a lot lately)

Shake the Box

2007-03-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I’ve developed some odd and even innovative means for salvaging a terrible poem. Maybe it’s a poem that, no matter how you revise it, nothing seems to happen, yet you’re not the sort of author to destroy it. You end up stuck with it rotting somewhere in a folder or electronic wasteland in the back of your hard drive. I am this way. It’s the pack-rat mentality in art, and like many, I’ve got it bad. I can’t get rid of anything, even if I’d be embarrassed to ever put my own name on it. What can be done with these lingual chunks of concrete stuck on your hard drive, besides ignore them with the hopes that one day you’ll be ingenius enough to figure out what they need? I have a few tricks that, to date, I’ve horded to myself. These tricks, in all of their forms, represent a sort of revision / rewrite ignition-device that I call ‘Shaking the Box’. It’s similar to jumbling the letters in a Scrabble game before you try to make words with them. I’ll list some of these tricks and, when I’m willing to part with some of the others, I’ll post them here as well.

All of these tactics involve rewriting. These are only diving boards into the mental space you need to be in to rework your poem into something you prefer. They’re idea-sparkers, or at the very least, stave off the boredom that may have infiltrated your routine. Some of these I’ve used to a small degree, and some of them I’ve used heavily. They also work to re-innovate your old, old work that simply isn’t up to par with where you are now.

1. Machine Translation

Machine translation is generally conducted by a program that translates text into another language. You'll find thousands of these online, some free, some online only, etc... It's just a translation program.

I go into phases where I’ll use this often, and then I’ll pass out of it and forget about the process for a few months, maybe a year, but I always come back to this one as a unique and striking means of wiring my head back into poem I’ve previously ditched. Machine Translation works like this: You take a line and use a translation program to translate the line into another language like French, Greek, Jive, whatnot. Since machines aren’t very bright about this yet, you’ll get a very literal translation. Now, take that line of translated material, and have the program translate it BACK into English. What you’ll get is a very literal translation, word for word, not by meaning, of the line. This tends to break up your more anglicized notions into a more communicative, simple, cross-border terminology. This is essentially using a machine as a kind of automated thesaurus, except it's not finding the best word for you, it's finding the closest match in another language, and it's finding that match in a very rigid way.

Let’s use a translating program (we’ll use Systran Personal) to translate this awful line:

“You’re eyes are dumbass satellites, and your breath smells of puberty”

Now, if we go from English to Portuguese, then Portuguese back into English, we get something like this:

“You dumb is eyes is as satellites, and its cheiros of the breath of puberty.”

Okay, sure. What the hell does that mean? Nothing. It’s literal machine-translation. What you would do now is start trying to make a sensical line out of this result. Do whatever you want with it. Destroy it, rewrite it, associate in it a while... ‘Cheiros’ might remind me, just briefly, of the word 'churro', or 'Charon', or ‘charity’, and so forth... You might come up with something for this line like:

“Dim and circling, those eyes come around like Saturday, while the breath of that pubescence is but wild charity.”

Well, it’s just a start. Eventually you'll have something much better. Whatever you get, it’s yours, just a little unlike you. So, not great, but the idea is that it sparked something, and you did something with it, and now, different line, poem, etc... The point is to have something better to work with than what you previously had. To stir up the pool. After using machine translation, rewrite normally until you’re content, or go mad. I’ve found that either tend to satisfy my page. Of course, for machine translation to work, you should try to find the worst possible, and most literal and simple translator you can find. One that really spits out the oddity. I use Systran Personal (Portuguese works well, though French can get you some interesting results. I’d love to mess around with Russian sometime...).

I’ll post links to various translators and things at the end of the article.

2. Poetry Generators

These are usually awful and obviously, don’t work well. They create, for the most part, random streams of gibberish that ‘sort of’ keep within the rules of English, but in a strange and coded kind of way. Occasionally, you can find one that will ‘read’ a text file, and then create it’s haphazard streams of gibberish based on what it has read. In this case, you make it analyze a handful of your bad poems. What it spits out is crap, but it’s your crap jumbled up into bizarre machine-like lines that mean nothing. What this can do for you, however, is stimulate a sound or unexpected phrase, similar to what you’d get from the above-mentioned machine translation. It gives you an entirely new take on your poem that you might never have found on your own. It’s not cheating because every word it spit out was yours, and you’re doing the rewrite, and you’re not using the generated material anyway, just bits here and there. These will become new lines you’ll go over and add to and alter to your liking.

You might think while seeing the results of this: “Huh, I would have never thought to put ‘shack’, ‘biped’ and ‘face broom’ together in a sentence... Weird, I think I can make something neat out of that...” Eventually, the poem you end up with is nothing like what the generator puked out, but you wouldn’t have it if the generator hadn’t spun your mind a bit with some odd word placements.

Want to have some fun? Have the generator read a text file that contains many of your terrible poems, as well as copied versions of the numerous rejections editors have given you for those poems. You end up with both in the same poem. Or, have it analyze a file of your poems, as well as several XXX stories from an adult site, and then spit out the mixed result. Interesting stuff you’ll get.

3. The Reversal

This is when you start taking the lines (or stanzas, or even the words, one by one) of your poems and reversing the order they appear in. The level and exactitude with which you do this is up to you. You don’t have to do it exactly, but just seeing what happens when you start with your ending, and onward, backward. Usually, you’ll nitpick a little, reverse a few things, then realize you like what’s going on, and stop there. You’ll get a line or two, in a certain order that you end up being fond of, and then, with rewrites, you can find yourself with an entirely different poem, or several of them. The idea here, and with most of these tricks is that you can get dirty in you poem. Make a mess. Some painters come out of their art rooms, after hours of working, messy and covered in paint... just because you use words doesn’t mean that you can’t make a pig sty out of your page. If you’ve got a terrible poem you want to work on, you should know you can kick it in the head, smash it, twist it up, spatter it back on a page... It’s open game.

For a quick example, let’s reverse the following end of an awful poem:

Then
the tongue shot out, dripping

in toll of the hour,

sick.

Reversed:

Sick,

in toll of the hour,

the tongue shot out, dripping.

Then,

There you have it, a start into something else. Not very interesting or good, but a start. Now you can figure out what happens after ‘Then’, and move forward. Your brain is on. That was the point. Mission accomplished. You can also reverse something you like, write a poem around it, and then switch it back into it’s original order. This can get you yet another unique spin in the poem.

4. Dissection

Have you said too much, or gone off on a great tangent that was just too odd or unnecessary for the poem at hand? Pare your poem into more stanzas, and then try to make several poems out of them. Add where you need to, see what happens. Taking several lines out of a poem and using them as the base of a new poem can completely re-tune your ear and get you writing something you weren’t expecting at all. Also, at the end of this process, there’s a good chance you can end up with two good poems out of one bad.

5. The Every-Other

This is a tricky one, and I only use it when I’ve been working a lot and have begun playing myself out. It’s a last-ditch effort for me. The results of the Every-Other vary depending on the fodder you use.

It works like this: You rewrite the poem (or retype, if you compose on screen) double spaced, line by line, so you’ve got room for a line between each. Now for the fun part. You need to find a source of strange lines (strange for poetry, at least). An example: Start by typing in some random thing in Google and searching. Go through the results you get and try and find a line in those initial blurbs that will fit grammatically between two of your poem’s lines.

For instance:

Your line 1: This is the moment when I

Google: purchase the ab-flex and

Your line 2: get rid of him, though still

Google: having sex with no longevity,

Your line 3: mention my urge to

Google: replicate the real thing and

Your line 4: sock his face back, then look

Google: in the busy, clean zoo

Your line 5: for the candy.

It doesn’t need to make sense at all (and it probably won’t). Complete the poem in this manner. Now, you’ve got something very odd and unpublishable. Also, it’s not entirely yours because you’ve only written half of it. Take this ‘poem’ and begin rewriting it, trying to make sense of the new lines you’ve added, reworking the poem as if you wrote the entire thing like that on purpose. Try to bridge the difference in lines by adding a few more (no tricks, just write), taking control and rewriting all the while. You can get something out of this that is unique, yet also very you. It’s just a way to quickly turn on your engine and start down the road to a poem. In the end, it’s all you. What’s really happened is that you’ve managed to force yourself into your work-mode, by confusing and startling yourself with general nonsense and the occasional nifty find (in this example, I rather like ‘replicate the real thing and / sock his face back’). This is a good way of salvaging your poem by infusing it with strands of garbage or miscellaneous debris.

I only mention Google because it’s always around. I tend to get better results when I take random, odd lines from newspapers, magazines, appendices of first lines from author’s books, children’s books, film dialogue... on and on. Hey, somebody left it lying around. Use it.

6. The List

This is probably the most common trick that I know of, and it’s not mine at all. I’ve seen it in use in various places in the poetry world, so I try to avoid it, but have gotten good results with it in the past. It’s also very simple (read: gimmicky). Basically, you turn on your eyes and ears and crank up the dials, making a list of things around you that you find interesting, especially things you think not many others may have noticed. You write them down as a list. Then, when you’ve got enough items, you start adding verbs, adjectives, a metaphor or two... until you’ve got the skeleton of a poem. Worry about the subject last. Once you have a barebones version of what will be a poem, you start trying to connect the dots of these details into a cohesive purpose. What do they have in common? What don’t they have in common? Does number 3 on the list (Horrid, Pulsating Smell) relate very easily to any other item on the list, for example, number 7 (Mentally Challenged, Half-Dead Cat)? Write a line or two bridging these. Or a stanza, or an entire poem. Once your brain is stimulated on something, it’s yours.

***

That’s about it for now. I have others I’ll mention at some point, but these should keep you busy. I use most of these during revision of my older, more naive work, and can attest that all of them work well in certain circumstances. These are also quite good at knocking you out of writer’s block enough to get some work done. It’s forceful, but effective. The basic idea, with all mental trickery like this, is that you get moving and into your zone. You’ll know how to do this better than I could advise, so these are more for when else fails. But give them a try (I recommend machine translation over the others).

Lastly, I get it. You wrote something not so good and you’re still proud of it, or you just don’t want to meddle with it. This makes perfect sense, but just because you cherish something you wrote, doesn’t mean you can’t fuck it up and shake the box a little from time to time, especially if you’ve got some things sitting around you don’t think you’ll ever do anything with. There are no abuse laws for poems, so if one starts aggravating you, punch it in the face, rearrange it’s organs. See what happens. The important thing is that you’re getting work done.

Some Machine Translators (I recommend Systran and most online translators)

Some Text Generators: (I'd recommend Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet (costs, though), and especially Babble)

How to make comics

2007-03-10T12:40:00.000-08:00

tools:
Obviously you like to draw right? I mean, you DO like to draw? If you don’t like to draw then screw you… do not make comics. Comics involve drawing and you should get something from the process of making them. Don’t get me wrong there’s nothing better than having a finished product, finishing up a nice crisp page/strip/book and sitting back with a satisfied almost post-coital grin on your face but there’s a lot to be said for the actual deed itself you understand? Don’t make me drag out the sex metaphor any more than I have to.
So when you start out you’re going to need some stuff to draw with. It doesn’t matter what you draw with just as long as it makes a mark. There are a million “how-to make funny doodles” books out there and they all basically say “use what works for you.”
That’s kind of a cop out though right… I mean who buys a book so they can learn that they need to figure it out for themselves?
Pencil:
With few exceptions the pencil mark is not the mark that people will see. Cartoonists use a pencil to build a cohesive underdrawing and to figure stuff out on the page. These pencil marks will eventually be inked over and erased therefore the type of pencil to use is largely unimportant. Keep in mind that you’re going to need to erase the marks left by said pencil so you won’t want something too dark, don’t use soft lead, don’t, for christ’s sake, use charcoal or grease pencil.
Graphite pencils come in a range from soft to hard lead. Soft lead is smudgy and darker while hard lead is light and often hard to see. Since we don’t want to see pencil marks on the finished page I say the harder the better… uh, you know what I mean. You can tell the hardness of a pencil by looking at the end down where the eraser usually is. Those jive-ass yellow pencils we used in grade school were marked 2, the hard leads will have a number and an H, 2H, 4H, etc. the higher the number the harder the lead. Soft lead is marked with a B.
Eraser:
Do yourself a favor and get a decent eraser, it will save you much heart-ache and ripped pages. Those pink pearl monstrosities are for the birds. Either a kneaded rubber eraser like the ones I stole from the art-room in high school or the harder white plastic erasers. Magic rub is the brand name I prefer, I think Mars also makes some which, in my opinion, are of slightly less quality.
Paper:
This I can’t really help you with. Everyone has their preference and everyone like different things about the paper they use. A lot of cartoonists today work on paper like they’re going to be hanging that shit in louvre. If your intent is to have people see the finished pages then by all means get a good quality illustration board and really work on that mother. If you’re going to be scanning the page in and printing it out in a book then the page only has to look good long enough to scan it. For a novice I’d recommend just working on bond paper like you have in your printer. For someone a little farther along I’d recommend some kind of cheap bristol that comes in pads. Bristol is a cardstock paper that is sturdy but still affordable there are different variances of smoothness and weight. Unfortunately I can’t tell you what would work best for you. Try out a bunch of different brands and weights, you’ll figure it out. I use cheap, smooth, 11X14 Bristol board from Strathmore.
Ink:
Again, this is a tough one. Ink comes in a variety of types and flavors. You’ll want to find a good black India ink that doesn’t bleed out too much. I hear Dr. Marten’s super black is good as well as Windsor and Newton (the one with the dragon on the side I think) I usually just use cheap Sumi ink and let it evaporate a little. Note that sumi ink is non-water resistant so if you’re going to watercolor over the ink then you’ll be screwed… when I need a waterproof ink I use koh-i-noor rapidograph ink.
Pen and brush:
Generally people use a brush or dip pens to draw with. I like to switch it up and use different tools for different jobs. I usually use a big ol’ drawing nib (I can’t tell you the brand or anything because it’s so worn that I can’t read the side of it) I also tend to just beat the hell out of my pens until they are completely useless… I drew a bunch of pages not too long ago with a nib that was split apart like a piece of firewood. Just because I’m a lazy bastard when it comes to tools doesn’t mean you should be… take care of your stuff and when it does go bad, throw it out and get new stuff.
Anyway there are a few different kinds of nib, go for the kind with smaller points that can spread out a little and offer you some line density. A crowquill nib is a special, smaller, pen nib that fits into a different size barrel than the others. I think Hunt 102 is the standard. They take a little more finesse than the kind I normally use but if you can get it they give excellent lines. I’ve only recently been able to draw anything with a crowquill.
Brushes are another story. A brush gives a good line weight but can be tricky to master. Every cartoonist nerd out there swears by the Windsor and Newton series 7 sable brush… they are more expensive than your first child though. Many cartoonists I’ve talked to just buy cheap knock off synthetic brushes and throw them out after a few pages… this is also really expensive. Let’s face it, inking with a brush is for rich yuppy assholes… just kidding, brushes are great but they do put a damper on the pocket book if you want to be able to work consistently.
go to your local art supply store or here, buy some cheap material and start drawing.
More later.

Submission Vs. Subscription

2007-03-01T18:55:00.000-08:00

There is a particular sore spot with many magazines in the poetry world regarding contributors/submitters that carry few subscriptions to magazines. Most publishing poets can’t possibly subscribe to all the magazines they send to, or like, for that matter, just as most editors can’t print all the poems they receive, or like. It can be a source of contention with editors that they might receive hundreds of submissions in a very short period of time, yet not a single one of those submitters has a subscription to the magazine. On the other hand, most publishing poets get enough contributor’s copies and read enough books that they aren’t necessarily hurting for poetry (not to mention the fact that they’re constantly writing it, as well), and so more than a few subscriptions simply becomes an expense to avoid.

Struggling writers have a symbiotic relationship with struggling editors. Poetry is a hard sell, and the larger the press, the harder the sell. The bottom lines of poets and the editors of poetry don’t often match, or collaborate much. While a poet may expend a great amount of energy trying to get his/her work out, editors are doing the same thing. A poet often can’t afford dozens of subscriptions to magazines, and most of these same magazines can’t afford to keep printing poets and their ilk for free.

I think a better approach to describing the situation would be to stretch out some thought on both sides of the tension.

Editors:

For the editor of a print magazine, good will and love of poetry can go a long way, but these things won’t distribute the next issue. A great piece of work from a writer can help the magazine, but again, this won’t pay the printer. Therein lies the trouble. Who DOES pay the printer? There are several avenues for this. Some magazines can qualify for various grants (not many, though), some can manage to get advertising (very difficult for a smaller press, and sometimes unwanted), and a more common answer is to maintain a fully-functioning press for authors that wish to self-publish or whatnot. The most common route, however, for paying the printer is through subscribers, and when there aren’t enough of these, the editor and staff themselves often pay from their own pockets, sometimes for long runs, issue after issue. This can cause a magazine to slowly bleed to death. The money, staff, and even the will to want to continue putting out a magazine can begin to erode when enough losses begin to accumulate. After this begins happening to the editor and staff, it may take only a single issue wherein very little good poetry was submitted to make the editor question whether this is worth his/her patience, money, and time, and even if it is, they simply may not have much of these resources left.

Most editors are writers on some level, as well. They know the gauntlet you’re making your way through, and with magazines coming and going with such expediency, cropping up all over the place, it can be difficult spotting their own among the mix. Over time, or even right from the start, it may grow easy for a struggling editor to conclude that their publication is unimportant, or making no progress. If only there were more subscribers...

Poets:

The poet isn’t making any money with the poetry. Oh, on occasion, a magazine will pull a slipping of 5 bucks, or a token payment, but in general the writer gets published as his payment, and often there can be expected a contributor’s copy* or two. The very idea of ‘struggling poet’ is the poet part, but we can’t forget the struggling part. Struggling means trying write, then trying to get your work out there, and to do this well usually requires a lot of submitting. Gaining subscriptions to so many magazines is improbable and expensive. In addition to this, many poets feel there is a big difference between a poet and a subscriber, while some editors may want to unify these two into one.

So, the poet pays to write the poems with his/her time, thought, and whatever vices needed to create (escaping domesticity for a short spell to write, coffee, pens, pads, a laptop, books, maybe cigarettes, etc...), and all of this adds up. The poet is doing research on magazines to find out where their work may be wanted, which takes time and charting. The poet buys envelopes, printers, and box after box of paper, in addition to staying up late nights gathering select addresses and whatnot from the multitudes of magazines out there. After finding a magazine of interest, the poet pays to send a selection of poetry to the magazine, and the poet pays even, for the response, which arrives in the SASE. The poet pays much more if the magazine is overseas and requires IRCs (International Reply Coupons), as well, which cost quite a bit, especially if some magazines request that several be included. When every postal submission ends up costing around a buck each (and 3 times that for overseas submissions), sending out a large batch of submissions can break the poet’s bank. After paying to write, paying to revise, paying to submit, waiting long periods of time for a response, and then paying SASE postage to be rejected day in and day out, while trying to gain more time to write in the interim, there is little time, money, or patience left over for ordering subscriptions to the numerous magazines out there.

As with electricity, water, and poverty, the answer to the dilemma of subscriptions and submissions settles at the lowest point. This resolve is that most poets will subscribe to a few magazines at a time, if that, and with enough poets doing so, many magazines manage to stay afloat above the bottom line. Locality can play a crucial part of this situation, as many people will subscribe to something local over something that is not. Otherwise, magazines use whatever tricks they might need, as do submitters.

The big miracle would be if the general public started taking up more interest in poetry, but whether this is going to happen anytime soon is a hotly debated thing in the poetry world, especially among editors. For now, heavy competition for the poet and the act of keeping a magazine afloat for the editor are both intensive, creative things, and I have to believe these facets are directly responsible for the miriad of voices and styles you can find in today’s magazines and poetry. At the end of the day, we are not lacking for avenues or material. We are lacking only for assurance.
ray succre

how to make comics

2007-02-27T13:21:00.000-08:00

Introduction.

So I’ve been laboring over this for a while, wracking my brain as to how I should start out. Should I go full on Scott McCloud and start defining terms and building taxonomy, or maybe go for the freewheeling “this is just my personal process” sort of thing? The problem is that comics are a broad topic in art history and I’m not entirely qualified to cover every aspect of the form. I’ve got my personal tastes and method, I have a specific type of pen and ink I prefer and to be honest with everyone… I really don’t read a lot of comics nowadays anyway.

So why in god’s name do I feel qualified to impart my “wisdom” onto the masses? Why am I doing this? Why am I here? Lest I get bogged down in some existential funk and decide to just give up my answer to these questions is “well, I’m doing my best and hopefully it will do some good.”

In other words take all this with a grain of salt… a big grain, like that non-iodized sea salt, that should do you well. These are my opinions and I’m not writing a guide book to the ultimate successful comic strip. I’m jabbering away on a weblog and seeing what sticks. If you, the aspiring cartoonist, find my advice does not work for you or you have a different working method then by all means have at it. Do good work and let me know where I went wrong.

An aspiring cartoonist will notice the slew of action adventure “comic book” movies in theatres lately. You’ll notice the abundant collection of thick little Manga books in Borders. You’ll notice everywhere you turn someone is trying to convince you that comics are a viable and interesting art form. These are not reasons to become a cartoonist though, sorry. No one decides to become a painter because painting is considered “viable and interesting.” People make art because they enjoy it, they have a little encouragement along the way and they realized they can express themselves in unique ways. It’s my hope to impart what passes for wisdom in making comics and add a few inspirational tidbits along the way. Later in the week I’ll get into the meat of making a comic and examine the unique structural elements of comics. In the meantime here is a brief reading list for aspiring cartoonist and would-be ink pushers. This is just a beginning… I’ll have more books and resources for you later when we really start to get into it.

Comics and Sequential art by Will Eisner

Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

Making Comics by Scott McCloud

How to read nancy by Paul Karasik and Mark Newgarden (pdf)

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Story by Robert McKee

Academia and College Mags

2007-02-22T16:21:00.000-08:00

This is a post designed to touch down on a subject that seems prevalent in poetry. It isn’t comprehensive and by no means conclusive, and certainly more can be found through a basic online search.

There is a kind of divider right now between academia and everyone else concerning poetry. This has existed since the notion of teaching first became understood on a public level, but lately, there’s some excess anxiety over the role of academia in the realm of poetry. If you keep up in the small press to even a small degree, you’ve no doubt heard snippets of this division on occasion, and they can be found all over the place, dug in here and there. It has always existed, of course, but right now there seems to be bottleneck of complaints and praise going back and forth between them. You should be aware of it. There are arguments all over the place both denouncing and praising the MFA programs, as well as the rather ambiguous nature of editorial preference in the world. There is also a longstanding history involved, and the repercussions of poetry movements, academic movements, national affixion, and plain, old-fashioned righteousness.

The academic aspect of poetry generally seeks to define good poetry as such, and develop a longstanding measure and understanding of it through socially historic notions and exacting scrutiny, and do so by studying, summarizing, and teaching the results. Those outside of academia tend to favor gut instinct more, and whether they feel moved by the work, whether they find it unique or original. These are generalities, of course, but fairly staple. Within either of these houses, there is much bickering and indecisiveness. Outside of academia, publishing poetry is largely left to individuals not associated with particular schools or agencies, and in these people, tastes and preferences, as well as opinion and belief about poetry can be highly unpredictable and scattered. A poem you write in a more classical vein can be praised all to hell by one editor who finds it relevant and intriguing, whereas the next might dislike it greatly, believing it to be old hat, or too obviously modeled. What one editor finds to provide a sense of risk and unique language, another will find to be overblown, and not accessible enough. Get used to it.

Look around some poet’s blogs and you’ll find a lot on this topic. Many poets fear and hate what they feel to be hegemony and the equivalent of a poetry good-ol-boys network in the academic world, whereas others support the more academic magazines, respecting them and, in some cases, wanting to be counted within them. You know, not biting the hand. There seem to be shells firing off from all directions on the subject of poetry contests right now, and the potential for favoritism and the fear of cheating, and it’s affecting everyone in the poetry world, academic or not, and some more targeted than others. The foetry thing has been digging in the ground for some time, and there are poets and editors who support it, and some that dislike it greatly, but both sides of this poetic scrimmage seem to be writing a lot of poetry, so something is happening, at least. There’s also quite a bit of heat being applied to the scam presses, which have always been around but have flourished more, and on grander scales with the wider accessibility of the internet. One of the most notorious of these is Poetry.com. Look around online and you’ll find a lot of animosity toward that ‘press’.

On to college mags. For me, getting into the college mags and university reviews has proven nearly impossible. In over three hundred submissions to U.S. college mags, I’ve been picked up by two. Both in Kentucky. I’ve been mulling over the idea of simply ignoring the university mags, for better or worse. I have some theories on why these are difficult to get into for uneducated writers like myself. The first is that these magazines usually have a specific purpose behind them other than simply printing good material. They have the contributions and submissions of their own students and faculty to think about, their local towns, alumni, competing schools and schools in which there is a more sibling connection or relationship, then there are regions many prefer to read from, then possibly the state... Also, as academically linked publications, there is a natural push and expectancy between them to exhibit some of the larger names in poetry. There may be precious little room in these magazines after wading through all the submissions from the abovementioned sources for someone that has no connection to their magazine or school. Also, most of the people who staff these magazines prefer a more worldly approach to their submissions, and like to see submissions from across the various seas. Couple this with the current salivation for translated work and the prevalent use of themes, and you have a lot of competition for an ever-shrinking bed in a very little room.

In addition to there being little room, many of these magazines are run by various advisors and students, which means every year, and in some cases, every term can provide a barrier to how easily the process might flow. Many of these magazines go under for a year, then are reborn under new advisors and whatnot, then go under for a quarter, then start up again. Sometimes a decade will pass while a magazine goes on ‘hiatus’. It depends on funding, staffing, and interest, as well as time. Give it a shot and submit to a few. It might work out better for you than it has for me. They might like your work. You’ll have to find out on your own.

As a last note: There are a lot of editors out there that seem to enjoy categorization of poems, specifically in the academic world (again, summary is key when trying to explain something broad). In their guidelines, these editors will mention enjoying ‘western poetry’, ‘New York school’, ‘Classical’, etc... This works for them, but not for you. Aside from basic type (poetry, prose, visual poetry, spoken word...), forget about all this. It’s important for categorization, study, affinity, and sales, but it generally means dick in regards to your writing. Stating that you’re a neo-classicist or that you only write New York school is silly and jock-sure. You might as well decide whether you’re a blood or a crip, while you’re at it. Do what you do and send it to whoever you think wants it. In poetry, there’s no reason to confound things by aligning yourself with some genre, or an old movement, or any other bullet. If you come across a magazine that only wants work prescribing to one of these, that’s their thing. Deal with it however you want. There’s a definite confidence with summary and connecting to someone through it, but summarizing yourself and work so stiffly is damaging and an easy route to writer’s block.

As for the role of academia, the laureates, the MFA, and all that happens inside and outside of this realm concerning poetry and its prolix users, I feel only time and the poetry itself will realize the outcome.

ray succre

minicomics

2007-02-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

Steven Stwalley (yeah him again) has posted a guide to making minicomics PDF over at the cartoonist's conspiracy site...

He also has a list of parlor games that cartoonists can engage in while hanging out. I've never been too big on the parlor game thing but I've got to admit when I'm in a group of people all I usually want to do is retreat into my sketchbook... this is a good way for nerds like me to be able to draw but still interact socially.

for more minicomics tutorials there's this (the metric system... Americans beware) and this
I'll be posting my own hairbrained ideas about making mini's whenever I can get my notes together.

Proust Questionnaire

2007-02-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

I present to all of you the prestigious Proust Questionnaire. This smattering of questions has helped me out of a creative slump or two. I've used it to jump start poems and for free-write exercises. But I think it works best as a "get to know you" between the writer and character. How would your character respond?

The Infamous "Proust" Questionnaire

In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire, a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values, and experience. The young Marcel was asked to fill out questionnaires at two social events: one when he was 13, another when he was 20. (Curious about Proust's responses?) Proust did not invent this party game; he is simply the most extraordinary person to respond to it.

1. What is your greatest fear?
2. What is your current state of mind?
3. What is your favorite occupation (way of spending time)?
4. What historical figure do you most identify with?
5. Which living person do you most admire?
6. Who is your favorite fictional hero?
7. Who are your real-life heroes?
8. What is your most treasured possession?
9. When and where were you happiest?
10. What is your most obvious characteristic?
11. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
12. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
13. What is your greatest extravagance?
14. What is your favorite journey?
15. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
16. What do you consider the most over-rated virtue?
17. On what occasion do you lie?
18. Which words or phrases do you most over-use?
19. Id you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
20. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
21. Where would you like to live?
22. What is the quality you most admire in a man?
23. What is the quality you most admire in a woman?
24. What is it you most dislike?
25. What do you value most in your friends?
26. How would you like to die?
27. If you were to die and come back as a person or an animal, what do you think you would be?
28. If you could choose an object to come back as, what would you choose?
29. What is your motto (words you live by or that mean a lot to you)?
30. Who had been the greatest influence on you?

wish in one hand...

2007-02-21T18:22:00.000-08:00

European screenwriters issue manifesto... world yawns.

• The screenwriter is an author of the film, a primary creator of the audiovisual work.

• The indiscriminate use of the possessory credit is unacceptable.

• The moral rights of the screenwriter, especially the right to maintain the integrity of a work and to protect it from any distortion or misuse, should be inalienable and should be fully honored in practice.

"What we tried to do by naming it the 'manifesto' is to challenge the international film community and to start a discussion about what has gone wrong and how we could set it right," says Christina Kallas, president of the federation and a screenwriter, story editor, author, producer and teacher. "It is a step in our campaign to give the screenwriter her rightful place, as in the theater and, indeed, in any other form of writing. We hope that it will be an important tool in our efforts to develop and enhance the status of screenwriters."

this thing seems to be getting some real backing from certain film industry honchos. It seems a little caustic and reactionary to me but whatever makes screenwriters feel better about themselves I guess. I’ve personally always thought of a manifesto as that thing the Unabomber wrote.

The Austin film festival is coming relatively soon so you better get those submissions in. I’ve never been to Austin but the Butthole Surfers have and any film festival they’d go to I’d go to too.

(please not that I have no idea if the butthole surfers will be there this year... I'm just saying is all.)

some comics related links.

2007-02-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

the daily crosshatch, a new comics themed blog is looking for people knowledgeable about comics to write for them. but what are you doing going there when we want people to write for us? jeez.

Steven Stwalley (of soapy the chicken which, for some reason I really dig.) has some tips about putting comics on the web... the second part is where it really gets rolling and he's planning on further installments.

the New York Comic con is going on the 23-25, looking at the exhibitors list will give you a good idea of what to expect. Lots of movie people but Archie comics is going to be there.

Markets and Method

2007-02-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

This is more of a beginner’s reference, and I am well aware that the following would be better served with a series, or in sections, but let’s face it: You’re busy. I’m busy. Read on and go publish. If you’ve been printed in even four or five magazines, you probably won’t find this post very useful, as you’re already doing something right.

Listen, you have a handful of poems (or hundreds), and you’ve been putting off publishing them because it’s such a big deal. I know how it works. Every time someone notices you writing, they ask “So, are you in school?”. No, you explain, you’re just a writer. They then ask: “Oh really? What’s your book about?” because, though you’re a poet, most people will hear ‘writer’ and assume you’re a novelist, complete with a big black typewriter somewhere and a wastebin full of wadded up page ones, and when they DO ascertain you write poetry, will most likely assume you’re into falling leaves, flowers, rhyme, and break-ups. So you mention you’re working on some poetry and they get that blank face. “Huh.” the face says. Then they ask the one question you’ve heard hundreds of times, and that makes you want to decay into a puddle of shit right there in front of them:

I know, you’re tired of coming up with new excuses why you’re not published and you figure it’s time to get printed somewhere. You want to publish some poems. The process is simple. You find a magazine or anthology that you think wants what you write, and you send it. There are loopholes and procedures along the way, but that’s essentially how it works. Rights are important, but you don’t have to concern yourself with most of that world until money is involved. Until then, follow the magazine’s guidelines and send your work however they prefer. After that, wait around. Voila, you’re a struggling poet, instead of the previous ‘regular’ poet that just wrote a lot.

Where to find magazines in the small press? You might be tempted to buy a who’s-who book, or a step-by-step guide to publishing, how to be your own agent, etc... skip it. It’s dreck. It’s one of the only ways people can make money with their knowledge of poetry publishing, by explaining it to you for a price. If you want to pay to have someone else tell you how it works, take a class. You get credit for those. Otherwise, save your money for postage (you’ll need it).

Now, after you’ve ditched your ten-steps-to-print books, you might want to pick up something a little more useful. A market book. These are books that mainly list magazines and places that accept poetry. Many of these magazines not only accept poetry, they do it without grudge. Some even look forward to it and actively seek poetry, even when little is submitted.

The most common market book in book stores is the Poet’s Market. It’s published by Writer’s Digest, and has a large number of markets you can flip through. They set up the listings in a simple and keyed way so you’ll have some information on the magazines beyond their name and address. I’ve found they tend to check their sources pretty well. I get less return-to-senders when submitting to magazines I’ve found in the Poet’s Market. Of course, don’t submit blindly. You might read an entry in the Poet’s Market and think, “My stuff is perfect for this magazine. I’m sending right now.” Don’t be tempted to do this, it mostly ends in rejection. Instead, find out more. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes because most magazines have websites these days. They do so for several reasons. One of them is you and your poetry. Visiting these websites (or more than visiting) is free, and you’re writing for free, so let’s face it, you should study the magazine with a keen eye and up your chances of getting printed for free, too.

The Directory of Poetry Publishers is another popular market book, put out by Dustbooks. This one seems rife with problems for me. It generally lists more magazines and reviews than the Poet’s Market, and the way in which it is designed actually works a little better for me, but I’ve had trouble with this directory. I used it for a couple of years to unearth many magazines I wanted to check out, and about a third of the magazines I attempted to locate online or submit to turned out to be defunct. It’s embarrassing to receive a response from an editor’s wife stating that the editor, as well as the magazine you’ve submitted to, have been dead for five years. Most of these horrible situations can be remedied by looking the magazine up online. A good portion of them have some sort of web-presence (though I very much wish more of them would put dates on their pages, as you often can’t tell from a webpage if they’re still going when they have no dates anywhere. For all you know, those submission guidelines and samples were posted three years ago, and the magazine shut down shortly after). So, the Dustbooks Directory has much to offer, but use it at your own peril. I did find my way to some very good magazines through it, certainly.

Note: I know Simon Perchik submits via the Dustbooks Directory, and he’s one of the most prolificly published poets around. Publish in a handful of magazines and you will most certainly run into Simon in there somewhere, in addition to Lyn Lyfshin, Virgil Suarez, Taylor Graham, Michael Estabrook, and throngs of others. These people have been publishing for long periods of time. They’ve got the ins and outs down pat, and I’d bet they all have different tactics for publishing. If even three or four of these poets got together and published a book on the technical side of small press publishing, from their perspectives, I’d pay a fortune to read it. Until then, you’ve always got interviews you can take a look at. Though the tactics someone might utilize in getting their work out is only icing, really. It’s the work itself that will finally see print, not your cover letter, publication history, or the chart of magazines you’ve made from digging around.

If you don't feel like shelling out for one of these books, there’s also the link page method. Here’s the drill: Locate a magazine you like online, and that prints the sort of thing you write. Preferably a place you’ve published. Hit the links page for that magazine. Look for other magazines among the links (some list them in groups). Follow any that appeal to you and have a look. Read some poems if they’ve posted any, read the ‘about us’ link that most magazines have. Do you like these people? Does the magazine interest you? If so, while your there, go through the guidelines. If all is well, get the information you need and submit what you think will work best, when it’s time. And read what they print. It keeps you current on what’s going on with small press tastes and is a lot cheaper than buying loads of books by people you haven’t yet heard of. Subscribe to a few, if you can afford it (I’ll post more on the submission/subscription dilemma at a later point, as both editor and poet can get quite sore about it).

After you’ve obtained the info you need, go to the next magazine you found. When you eventually run out of magazines, go to the links page of one of the newest ones you found. There you go. Considering most magazines only link to things they’re into, on some level, this process of using link pages can take you through loops of magazines that have similar tastes or aesthetics. If you fit in one, you might fit in a few more they link to. Find out. You’ll never run out of magazines that you might be a good fit for you if you keep current and see who likes who.

Another way to find magazines, similar to the link page method, is by visiting a site or subscribing to an email newsletter that compiles lists of magazines. This hasn’t worked out so well for me, but I’m sure it does for others. To start you off, here are a couple of useful ones: http://www.duotrope.com/ , and http://homepage.ntlworld.com/su_bainbridge/aaipg.html. Duotrope has a running statistics system as well, but I haven't felt it to be all that useful. Dee Rimbaud's AA Independent Press Guide is useful as hell. It's a good place to start if you need one.

There is something to be said for submitting almost blindly to absolutely everything you come across. I’m sure it works for some poets but it’s ill-advised, and requires a fucking ton of poetry. I don’t know... this tactic seems cold to me, and a little slutty. But hey, how you get your kicks is your business. In the end, it’s whether the writer, the editor, and the subscriber are all pleased with the outcome that matters most.

For most magazines, you’ll need a cover letter and possibly a short bio. You can find examples of these all over the internet. Find one you like and figure out why. Then write yours. You will change it over and over again as you go, and you’ll customize it often for certain magazines.

You should be aware that most poetry magazines, or magazines that handle poetry, dislike being thought of as a ‘market’, and who could blame them? You wouldn’t want to get email from these magazines addressed to ‘poem marketer’ would you? So remember, a list of magazines is only that. Don’t submit unless you know how they do things, and follow their guidelines. Editors are busy, and the simplest way to keep their endeavors running smoothly is by utilising some sort of system or regiment. When things step outside of that system, it slows them down and interferes with the flow. When you send to a magazine, do it the way they want to receive it. If they don’t want a cover letter, don’t send one. If they want a bio, include it. If you’re still confused, send an email. Keep it short.

Of course, the important thing isn’t that you submit to the biggest and best magazines around, because those are figurative ideas. You should submit to whoever you think could best utilise your work, whoever you think wants it, and doesn’t get on your nerves. Sending to the Atlantic Monthly, Colorado Review, and New Yorker right off the bat is great and all, but don’t forget the lady with the zine that’s hungry for a good poem or two, even if her mag has a circulation of twenty-two. I usually send my best to these smaller magazines. They deserve it. No one is paying them and they’re not making any money. Not many people are reading their magazine and it’s highly likely they won’t keep fighting against the thanklessness, exhaustion, and especially the slow, painful leak of money for too long (I’ve known a lot of writers that have quit for these reasons, as well), so the least you can do for these editors, whether they’re appreciative or not, is send them your best. Shit, you owe it to your self and work at large, anyway.

It’s wise to keep track of where you sent what. There will come a point where you won’t know, so keeping records is pretty key. Do this however the hell you want.

A note on statistics:

Having a record of responses and various magazines can produce some interesting statistics for you. I’ve been accepted by magazines wherein my odds were less than half of one percent, and I’ve been rejected by magazines that state they accept 90% of what they receive. The point is, stats are interesting, but they can be deceiving. I have a rather unhealthy preoccupation with the statistics of poets. I enjoy coming across someone’s personal site and seeing something in the way of a percentage and ratio or two regarding their vitae. It can be interesting to compare these people, as well. Writer A might feel great with a 17.94% acceptance rate over the last two years, but what if she runs into someone with a 38% acceptance rate? Is Writer B doing better than A? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe B has only sent out about 14 submissions in the last two years, whereas Writer A sent out just over 900. Who knows? Again, stats are of interest, but they mean very little. What means the most is whether you like what your doing, because odds are (with magazines shutting down left and right, small circulations, and larger circulations where primary readers are actually your competition), enjoying what you’re doing might be all you’ve actually got, as well as a hard drive full of poems and the occasional ‘you-have-talent’ email from an editor. This is supposed to be what it’s all about, not just getting your tiny-spined collection of 21 poems into Barnes and Noble for $14.95, wedged between Maya Angelou and that dying kid that writes the inspirational poems. That’s a great outcome, but not if you don’t like the process.

Money? I’ve made $90 bucks in the poetry world. I’ve spent around a thousand dollars on postage thus far. And about as much on exhausted printers and a perpetually vanishing supply of paper and ink, both cartridge and pens, printer paper and writing pads. Want to be a rich poet? Be rich first.

ray succre

I...uh...er...um

2007-02-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

from this slate article comes the following bit of wisdom.

"Interjections are suitable for online writing, as I say, because of the way online writing mimics speech. But newspaper and magazine writers who spell out interjections and other vocalisms run the risk of coming off as cute—as in yucky ew rather than adorable awwa. Most egregiously abused are what linguists call "discourse markers"—short sounds (it seems a stretch to call them "words") that speakers use to register hesitation, agreement, encouragement, ambivalence, and other responses. Uh, er, and um, in particular, have been flagrantly overused by feature writers and columnists to signal an impending attempt at irony or humor; the maneuver is now well beyond cliché, somewhere in the neighborhood of desperation. A LexisNexis search of major English-language newspapers for um yields 132 hits in just the last week, including a striking number in various newspapers' coverage of the Grammy Awards:
The Toronto Sun's preview: "Watch for Justin Timberlake pairing up with someone in a duet (which often can be quite, um, revealing)."
The Chicago Sun-Times, looking back on a winner of yore: "the Starland Vocal Band, who gave us the, um, unforgettable single, 'Afternoon Delight.' "
The Oregonian, referring to Christina Aguilera: "the girl who was once known as much for her, um, dirrtyness showed she cleans up real nice, too."

So there you have it. stop using UM so goddamned much. it makes you sound stupid.

I agree that these interjections can become a crutch, a shortcut to sounding conversational but I can see the benefit of these "words." They do indeed make for a looser reporting style and in the world of entertainment news breeziness of reporting has always been valued over say, facts. If I read an article about Iraq that read

"George bush is, um, an idiot."

George Bush might well be an idiot but I'd think the writer was a cutesy dumbshit for putting in that "Um." Somehow the use of interjections is more acceptable when the stakes aren't so high. People covering the Grammies know they aren't reporting anything earth-shattering. People reading an article about the Grammies know they're going to find some useless information peppered amongst some flippant commentary. If everyone is in agreement that the "news" doesn't really matter then why not throw in a "Feh" here and there?

these are a few of my fav-o-rite thiiings!

2007-02-17T18:54:00.000-08:00

above, one of the funniest god damned photos ever.

click here to see some of Mr. Dave Coopers favorite studio equipment.

also here to see a great step by step account of his painting process.

internet killed the radio star

2007-02-17T16:36:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the blessings of high speed internet I’ve recently been enjoying some comics podcasts. I’ve also been severely irritated by a few.
So far the two that I’m able to listen to are inkstuds and indie spinner rack… both shows display a relatively broad knowledge of comics and the hosts are usually pretty entertaining, usually.
Anyway, I’ve been enamored with the podcast idea for a while. I’m sure I’ll never get around to doing one because I have a deep seeded fear of saying things out loud but anyone interested in radio should check out this site for some pretty good nuts and bolts tutorials, resources and ideas.

How to survive a comic book convention.

2007-02-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

By Elijah Brubaker

Introduction.
I’ve wanted to be a cartoonist my entire life. Like most aspiring ink pushers I've had ample opportunity to attend comics conventions both as a fan and a minor "professional."
Those of you unfamiliar with the world of comics shows might have some preconceived notions about these strange dens of sequential iniquity but I’m here to set the record straight for you. A little luck will afford me the grace to advise both fans and table humpers alike.

the small mainstream convention.
Example: Eugene comics and collectible show
Most larger cities have a comics convention somewhere in their midst. These shows are usually billed as a comics and sci-fi convention, comics and toy fair, comics and (fill in the blank.) The point of billing a show as comics AND something else is that the people putting on the show are trying to appeal to nerds of every stripe. These shows are generally for collectors and people who like superhero comics, you can probably pick up a nice bust of the Hulk while you’re at it. These shows are usually put on by older collectors and fans. There’s a quaint nostalgia at work at shows like these. You can usually pick up old superhero books for pretty cheap and reflect on how much the industry has changed.
Advice:
Fans should be polite and patient, this is generally good advice anywhere. I’ve seen people fighting (literally fighting) over a long white back-issue box. I think the scuffle involved some rare old copy of phantom lady or something… Trust me; no issue of phantom lady is worth a black eye.
At small mainstream shows a fan can expect to see some local superhero writers and artists (superhero comics are generally written and drawn by separate people.) who have been offered twenty bucks to come and sell their books, sign autographs and do sketches. Many fans don’t know how to relate to pro’s. The biggest tip I can give is that these people are here to promote their work. No one wants to see your poor drawings of Catwoman. I once met Mike Mignola at a small show like this, I asked if he had any advice on becoming a cartoonist and he told me I should have brought a portfolio… so maybe people DO want to see bad drawings of Catwoman. If there’s a line to see this person please keep your visit brief.
Professionals who have the opportunity to sit and sign autographs should count their blessings that people read their work. I’ve heard all kinds of complaints about comics shows and it always boils down to cartoonists not knowing how lucky they are to be able to draw little pictures of people punching each other and get some recognition for it. Take a vitamin, drink some coffee, stay in a good mood.

The small indy convention
Example: STAPLE, Portland zine symposium, local craft fairs.
These small venues are where comics take on the feeling of folk art. Where zines and minicomics and hand made beaded seat covers all compete for the attention of vegan, bike riding, anarchist, pregnant lesbians. It’s at these shows that a photocopied minicomic can really be appreciated. Often the line between creator and fan is blurred at shows like these, the point being that everyone can make art so everyone does. The point of these shows is to support your peers and trade. Commerce is a little shaky when every single person at a convention is a cartoonist trying to sell their book.
Advice:
Any fan that wanders into something like this is probably a librarian or someone who read about it in the local weekly and decided to check it out. Be prepared for these shows to be insular and cliquish. It’s pretty difficult to horn your way into a group of minicomics creators. It’s like walking into an AA meeting and saying “Hi, I’m not a drunk.”
Fans should do a quick walk through the convention hall, noting what looks good to you and what doesn’t, this way one can avoid spending all you’re money before you get to that one priceless artifact. Zines and minicomics are not collectible, there is no minicomics price guide that I’m aware of but they are rare and special. Everyone should have a shoebox full of mini’s and zines.
Cartoonists shouldn’t worry so damned much about sales, we’re all poor as dirt otherwise we’d be at the mainstream comics conventions. Be open to trades, and be open to those that walk by your table. It always seems like these small shows attract cartoonists who either put on their ‘hard sell’ face and talk their book up like it’s the second coming or they sit moping behind the table talking with their buddy about the war.
That’s another thing I’d like to rant about. Comics are apolitical, the last thing a bunch of left wing anarchist bandana wearing Che Guevara’s should be doing is arguing politics at a comics show… leave that shit to the bar later that night. If that guy over there wants to put out his skin-head manifesto then he should be allowed to sell it if he wants as long as he’s polite about it… you don’t have to buy it or trade with the guy if you don’t want.

Uh….

The medium sized mainstream show
Example: wizard world
These shows are big spectacles with so much going on that you can’t possibly get to it all. There are panel discussions about industry mumbo-jumbo and Q&A with whatever hot name of the hour. Portfolio reviews and interactive high def video game action on every wall, in other words a circus.
Advice:
Everything I said about smaller mainstream shows applies here except these are the shows you want to bring a portfolio to. Prospective superhero artist can expect to wait in line for hours only to have their work shat upon by industry bigwigs. The point here is to actually listen to what these guys and gals have to say. No one is trying to crush your dreams. They might be a little unfair at times but most editors are pretty unfair. Mainstream industry people see this stuff as a commodity and if you can’t deliver the right quality yet then you should know that… and if you can’t break into Marvel or DC then you can always make mini’s or put stuff on the internet to get feedback.

Most larger shows have an itinerary they give you as you walk in listing off all the cool events going on that day. Take a little time to schedule the stuff you want to do… remember, if you want to see someone famous then get there early.
Professionals traveling in from out-of-town should arrive the day before and spend some relaxing time in the city. Get a good nights rest, wake up early enough to shave and shower. Get to the show early to pick up your badge and figure out what the order of the day is. Be prepared, arrive early, bring a sack lunch, a bottle of water and maybe some aspirin.

The medium sized indy show
Example: APE, SPX
Here is where the larger independent publishers push their new books and try to get people to realize “comics aren’t just for kids… blah, blah, blah” There’s usually a lot of schmoozing and boozing.

Advice:
Essentially the same as the above but the portfolio reviews will be a little different. Indy publishers admire craft but generally value uniqueness over composition and anatomy. Most indy publishers nowadays want to hear a complete proposal for a book. If you only do pencils or you only write the script then you’ll probably need to team up with someone on your own.
Fans of indy books will be pleased at the accessibility of some of their favorite cartoonists. The fact that Hollywood hasn’t yet glommed on to most of these people means they aren’t generally surrounded by crowds of admirers, there are some exceptions but at the moment I can’t think of any.
At shows like these there will be a mixture of small press minicomics makers and larger industry names. The general dynamic seems to be the minicomics people trying to get their work into the hands of the bigger publishers. This seems a little foolhardy seeing as most big publishers will go around and actively scout for talent. Minicomics people should just concentrate on being friendly to potential buyers and have a good short pitch ready in case anyone asks (and only if they ask, most people don’t want to hear it, trust me.)
Cartoonists should avoid drinking so much. Most indy people drink like it’s illegal and this usually leads to hangovers and regrettable nighttime trysts and subsequent drama down the road. Please look at this as if it’s your job, don’t come to work hungover, don’t sleep with your co-workers.

Big mainstream show:
Example: San Diego Comic-Con
The bitch-goddess of all American comic shows. This multi-day excursion into collector mania and debauchery is enough to make you want to puke. It’s shows like this one that put images of people dressed like Wolverine into people’s minds. San Diego even has a costume contest. At shows like this you’ll find that a little money will go a long way and everyone in the comics industry is a raving lunatic. You know that part in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas where Hunter Thompson is writing about Circus Circus? Well that’s the San Diego Comic con right there.

Advice:
Remain calm. Breathe in, breathe out. Buy as many back issues of Swamp Thing as you can, Hit on Julie Strain.
San Diego in particular is a star attraction for Hollywood types, there’s as many movie people hyping stuff in SD as comics folks. Be prepared to see movie stars and people dressed as superheroes. By the end of the weekend nothing should surprise you.
Those that like to meet and bullshit with cartoonists should make a note of the older pro’s that attend shows like these. Not to be morbid but you may not see them there next year. It’s great to shake hands with Frank Miller but you never know what that old geezer over in the corner has done for the industry.
It’s important not to get too high and mighty about shows like this, sure they’re repulsive in a child-beauty-pageant sort of way but since you’re there you should enjoy it. Go to the costume show, go to the award show, and try to remain respectful in the midst of all the crassness. When you get home you can take a long shower and thank god that it only happens once a year. Oh and you know all that stuff I said about drinking too much and sleeping with your editor or whatever… that doesn’t apply here. Drink all you want, I’ll see you in the emergency room.

big Indy show
Example: America doesn’t really have a big comics-centered art festival yet. I’ve never been to Angouleme but I think it’s generally regarded as a big “art comics” festival.

Like I said I’ve never been to a big indy show. I think that’s kind of why we still use words like “independent, alternative and underground.” I imagine Angouleme is a pretty nice yet thoroughly exhausting experience. I have no advice for a show like this. They have a big sculpture of Herge’s head in the middle of town.

Text Message Novel??

2007-02-16T19:51:00.001-08:00

Last month a Finland-based publishing company published a 332 page novel comprised entirely of text messages: Hannu Luntiala's The Last Message.

"I believe that, at the end of the day, a text message may reveal much more about a person than you would initially think," Luntiala recently told the Associated Press.

Despite being completely disgusted by this ludicrously gimmicky idea for a book, I went to work the next day and asked everyone to take out their cell phones and read their messages out loud.

To my suprise, each message did reveal quite a lot, not only about the person receiving the call, but about the sender as well. Some messages were a mish-mash of letters, barely even abbreviations, "R U Mad?", "Gr8", "Fkface!","lvd u" (I didn't even ask the guy what his girlfriend meant by this), some written out every word, "Are you busy tonight? Would you like to meet at Aalto for a drink?" or the more formal, "Hello. How are you? I'm fine." (Serously. A real message!). Others cracked me up, but I learned it was just because I was uneducated of the text lingo or the innerperonal lingo -- "D&D" *apparently* stands for dinner & drinks, and NOT Dungeons & Dragons.

But certainly it was the voyeurism of it all and not the writing that was so entertaining, right? Like reality TV or when you find a journal of someone you don't know and read excitedly for 3 pages then immediately get board with their weird self-indulgent ramblings.

And then one person read her text message, "I wish you'd stay." When I asked her what it meant she said, "I think he meant 'I wish you would HAVE stayed'...because I left early...from the party." She assumed this, even though she never outright asked him.

I left work feeling a little confused. Do text messages really say a lot about people? About modern language? And how about blogs? Websites? How do these change literature? How does this change our personal interactions with one another? What do we gain...or lose?

Big question hurt brain.

All I know is when it comes to gimmicks, I've often found the idea is much more interesting then the end product.

computer comics

2007-02-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

d'isreali shows us how to draw comics on a computer.

groundrules, introduction, why we're here.

2005-11-04T01:19:00.000-08:00

Hi, welcome to blood and ink. This is meant to be a repository of information pertaining to the technique and creation of various art. please check back soon for some interesting stuff.

contributors wanted:
email me
if you'd like to contribute regularly to this blog please send me a brief explanation of who you are and why you want to contribute. please note that if you don't post something within three weeks you'll be removed from the contributors list.
If you don't want to be a regular contributor but still have something to say please email me at the above address.

blood and ink

we've moved!

Small Press Editorial Changes

some exercises

Formal Construction in Poetry - Part 2

Formal Construction in Poetry

more cartooning links

two people I know who make comics.

Getting an idea.

I'm back!

Publishing Rights

Rescinsion

John August and Shazam

that's a-DOR-able

Simultaneous Submission

The War

Protocol, Baby

Comics writers take note.

words and pictures.

lazy links.

Shake the Box

How to make comics

Submission Vs. Subscription

how to make comics

Academia and College Mags

minicomics

Proust Questionnaire

wish in one hand...

some comics related links.

Markets and Method

I...uh...er...um

these are a few of my fav-o-rite thiiings!

internet killed the radio star

How to survive a comic book convention.

Text Message Novel??

computer comics

groundrules, introduction, why we're here.