Shann, thanks for hearing me.
Materials and talent cost money. So if you have something produced using material and talent in a rare edition it tends to cost accordingly. )Universities aside, let us say. They mark it all up, even tuitons, do not be surprised.) Chapbooks in the end tend to cost more to produce and are often more labor intensive. Not talking your bristol vellum + 20lb kinkos copy job here but a chapbook of decent ilk, your usual fare of fine printed matter. Your hand-touched savory libro that tends to reward a respectful reader with a respectful presentation. Living artifact? Well we hope not but a book has a better chance of surviving than bytes on silicon but whose to say? Time will tell on that one. But thanks for proving my point that it is in the public mind that length/spine/barcode equates to value/currency/legitimization.
The word that is more loosely defined than "chapbook" is "publishing".
This paranoia poets have of reproduction. What does it mean to publish I wonder. For aren't we publishing now, our conversation, Shann, to the internet? I promise more will see this buzzkill conversation than will see some cheapbooks that were sweated over in small rooms where the beer got warm but the fervor was never too hot and the machines were rudimentary but completely vital.
Let there be more kinetic energy involved than check-writing.
See, I don't see the problem with handwork. Exercise and serious intent are for you, and you, and you. There is an issue of outsourcing here in our complainy poetry world too, see. It fits into the big-ass picture. I don't see how it is vain to go to the end of what you've started. What if, bear with with me, what if you are an artist. Say a mind and body not wholly satisfied or sated by merely writing, by merely seating the buttocks in the chair at the machine and its hypnotic glow. What if the artist writes and then the artist wants to do more with the words, wants to wrap them in silky cornleaf too, wants to make art of the vessel, maybe extend another of one's interest in the arena of graphics and textile manipulation to blend together in a thing called Book? What is a book.
A business so small and crucial you will be allowed to keep your day job. You will be allowed to think of others.
Is the choreographer that performs her dance vain for doing so? Is it a vanity dance?
Vanity art: a new movement in the age of inkjet?
I wonder if the inventor who tests her own creations is vain. Did not the Lumiere bros not make their own films with their own cameras? Wright bros? Did Ford drive a car?
Chefs cook vanity meals when they taste their own recipes?
Take long hard loving looks at the books on your shelf.
What is it they have in common.
paper, glue, board, thread, ink.
Don't be a (yokel) Shann. Live free or die. Think of CA Conrad's middle finger, Shann. Think of Joseph Massey's leaning shack. Think of the exotic bookcase of Edward Dorn.
Chose yourself, Shann. Don't wait for permission, for some person of many ribbon to tell you you have arrived. Or that somebody else has. Don't sweep til it comes Shann! Don't hide your love away.
In this time I have typed this my monkey has sewn 13 signatures and has hung as many printed covers up to dry. I wonder, Shann, if we worried less about what it means to make, what would we make?
People have said as much here - the world is changing. The internet makes things sooo new. Why not, why not change some notions of poetry reproduction and distribution and promotion and value and note that poetry does not die, but strict attention to it can, and does.
If I were to get up and help my monkey bind those signatures out I can double our output before Extra! comes on at midnight. I can beat the yokels! I can win the bigger contest!
Poets need to get there hands dirty in words is all I'm saying like so many drunk idealogues. Sure, let our genuises sit and think in their chambers, let us help them remove themselves from this mess so they can write the opus to save us all. But the rest of us, let us move our bodies for our arts.
For who else will, Shann? Who else will?
hey-
I have enjoyed the discourse.
and I do hear you.
shann
Posted by: someone named shann | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:47 PM
thanks Shann. you are good people. I hear you too.
Posted by: scott | Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:51 PM
may we read the original volley?
Posted by: Farid Matuk | Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 10:38 AM
it's an aside mostly in the comments of this:
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2006/04/last-july-16-i-posted-following-note.html
hey, i get excited. i was mostly tongue n cheekin' but at the core i was me.
Posted by: scott | Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 12:56 PM
YAY! That is all I have to say.
Posted by: Shanna | Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 08:17 AM