Monday
Oct132008
for godot's sake
Monday 13 October, 2008
Looks like 'Issue 1' by the team at for godot, has taken on an ant-in-the-magnifying-glass significance, or non-significance (but still significant enough to post about its non-significance). Here is an excellent summary of what has happened so far, along with some salient commentary on the whole saga. For context before we continue, see DBC, Silliman (along with the comment thread), a couple of posts by Jow Lindsay, and one by farfalla press. You get the idea.
So, the for godot team have issued a polite clarification. Stephen McLaughlin explains:
Shocking, I know. For instance, let's attribute some kind of condition of irreparable reputational fatigue to what is featured in this 'issue'. The name 'issue' for starters implies that after the first 4000 poets there's likely to be another 4000 poets. So every every poet who's any poet (my name is not, sadly, on the list) is going to be published with a, let's call it 'fake' work against their name. That's if we can even class that list as names, which in one sense they are, but in another sense they are flarf procedure.
Also, the people on this list are not Stephen King, or Michael Crichton, or Danielle Steele, or JK Rowling. They have a specific, proactive audience that seeks out their work or work like it, discovering new work through association, recommendation and research. A person who knows the work of Silliman is going to deduce, assuming they take it at face value, that an anthology of 4000 poets is going to be both poorly edited and of an overall mediocre standard at best, through sheer volume. Even if they were to seek out the work of Silliman in this publication, they would recognise that it was not his. If they were new to Silliman's poetry, the chance of them stumbling across his name as one of 4000 in an anthology, and then choosing to read that over the Google search results which have his work isolated, on web pages, for easy reading, is going to be incredibly slim. There is no way this publication could adversely affect any of the names on the list.
Well, one way.
I've read a lot of negative reaction to this publication. The polite clarification by the publishers alone is indication of how offended some have been. How can people of such obvious intelligence, at least in their chosen field, find time to be taken aback by a project that is - while its merits as a work of poetry can be debated - so... harmless?
So, the for godot team have issued a polite clarification. Stephen McLaughlin explains:
I expected its size, format, and (to my eye) clearly algorithmically generated content to make our intentions clear.
Shocking, I know. For instance, let's attribute some kind of condition of irreparable reputational fatigue to what is featured in this 'issue'. The name 'issue' for starters implies that after the first 4000 poets there's likely to be another 4000 poets. So every every poet who's any poet (my name is not, sadly, on the list) is going to be published with a, let's call it 'fake' work against their name. That's if we can even class that list as names, which in one sense they are, but in another sense they are flarf procedure.
Also, the people on this list are not Stephen King, or Michael Crichton, or Danielle Steele, or JK Rowling. They have a specific, proactive audience that seeks out their work or work like it, discovering new work through association, recommendation and research. A person who knows the work of Silliman is going to deduce, assuming they take it at face value, that an anthology of 4000 poets is going to be both poorly edited and of an overall mediocre standard at best, through sheer volume. Even if they were to seek out the work of Silliman in this publication, they would recognise that it was not his. If they were new to Silliman's poetry, the chance of them stumbling across his name as one of 4000 in an anthology, and then choosing to read that over the Google search results which have his work isolated, on web pages, for easy reading, is going to be incredibly slim. There is no way this publication could adversely affect any of the names on the list.
Well, one way.
I've read a lot of negative reaction to this publication. The polite clarification by the publishers alone is indication of how offended some have been. How can people of such obvious intelligence, at least in their chosen field, find time to be taken aback by a project that is - while its merits as a work of poetry can be debated - so... harmless?
Reader Comments (5)
[...] 1 has produced all manner of reaction in the blogosphere and on the listserv for British poets. Openned have also commented on the [...]
yes we are not stephen king etc... but our names are what we do have and small and pathetic as our names and our works and our accomplishments may be... they are what we have and there are reasons why it is not a good practice to take someone's name and publish somthing under that name that the someone did not write.... would you not find it annoying if i published something on line under your name... alex davies saying this is what alex davies wrote, this is what alex davies believes and i can use his name because he is not stephen king and what he actually does write has little importance so if i want to use his name, that is okay... i don't buy it and stealing my name or stealing the five dollars i have in my pocket may not amount to much because my name is not stephen king and the five dollars is not five million... but well, yes, it is a big deal to me when i take what i write seriously and somebody asks me if i wrote something in this issue one deal.... it is the kind of dishonest shit i expect from wall street not from poets...
I would find it more amusing than annoying. The reason being that if I had a name to protect I would trust that those whose opinion would matter to me would be able to discern between something I had written and something that is undeniably fatuous and ridiculous. Norman, I think your point is completely valid in the context of say, a fake anthology of 50 or so poets, but it's all about context. Only someone with no concept of poetry or writing in general would think that an anthology of 4000 poets was a) possible or b) anywhere near good. So yes, I think names are important and I would never devalue yours or anyone else's name in a realistic context. But this publication was clearly meant as a joke to either provoke or entertain, which it has.
well... you got me there... and i would certainly not want anything i wrote published in an anthology of 4000 poets even if it were seriously done... i would rather print a hard copy and leave it in the bus depot.... to get my work around ... but it is shit like this that keeps me mostly publishing in hard copy journals and not submitting much to the internet journals which don't seem to amount to much... and it is hard to take the e-journals seriously even without snooty existential jokes by bored grad students... or whatever this issue 1 deal is....
Interestingly at the last Openned night Harry Gilonis, reclaimed the poem that he didn't write that was published in For Godot under his name. This was a nice twist.