More Foetry

I decided to kick my response to Hannah’s comment (in the previous post) up to the top level of the blog.  So here it is:

"Second, young writers often benefit from having an established relationship with a press or a publisher that believes in their work. You can’t bind the hands of editors (who make little or no money off poetry) by restricting which young poets they allow into their contests, whether or not those young poets have some “connection” to that editor in the past or to the judge. To do so would create a situation where young poets would publish only in periodicals that couldn’t possibly subsequently aid them in publishing a first or second collection of verse."
Steering clear of the silly Foetry witch-hunts, I'm still curious about some of your statements. Can you elaborate on what you mean by the one above? Specifically on the correlation between not entering contests where you know the judge and publishing only in periodicals? Just curious to know what you’re really getting at here.
-H
Posted by: Hannah | December 01, 2005

Hey Hannah – good to see you blogging again.  Well, I hadn’t meant to sound mysterious.

Why would I, as a young poet, submit to journal X for periodical publication, if I knew that journal X also ran a first book contest I’d like to apply for one day (and under the Foetry paradigm, be categorically excluded from)?   
Why would I, as an editor, publish a young poet, if I thought they might one submit to a contest I ran, (one which, under the Foetry paradigm, be categorically excluded from them)? 

There’s just a pointless tension there that flies in the face of building relationships between publishers and writers.  Historically, you’d often see publishers (and/or local/independent bookstores) “finding” an author or a poet and encouraging their work.  The publisher benefits by getting an inside track on promising books (Rainer and Unwin did pretty well to pick up Tolkien when he only had The Hobbit and some odd manuscripts).  The writer benefits by having a publisher who might be willing to entertain more uncertain or daring manuscripts, as well as provide guidance, potential readers and editors, etc.  Basically, it comes down to the publisher believing in the author’s work to the extent that they want to establish a personal relationship with them.  (This has ties to the whole patronage model you might find in the 1800s (think of Coleridge getting his yearly grants from Wedgewood.))

Hmm.  Let’s take a step back and look at this in light of those first-book contests, which for young poets are the primary route for initial (and hence all subsequent) book-level publication.

The Foetry paradigm is based on a false idea of meritocracy; it assumes one over-arching “aesthetic” and the relative “equal worth” of all manuscripts (submitted to that aesthetic) such that all manuscript submitters have a “fair chance” which can be grossly impacted by “prior contact” between other submitters and the press and/or judge.  As the quotes indicate, there are a fair number of assumptions here.   

First off, not all contests are “equal” in the sense that they’re interchangeable – each press/contest will have its own aesthetic and will pick a judge with a comparable aesthetic (or in the case of something like BAP, an editor who will import their aesthetic to flavor that year’s selections.  Obviously, all manuscripts submitted to any given press/judge will not have an equal chance of publication; some manuscripts will be dismissed for lying to far afield from the judge’s sensibilities/aesthetic, or from press’s sensibility/aesthetic.  Yet no one is calling for reading fees to be returned to individuals who simply make bad choices in which contests they apply to; nor is anyone calling for reading fees to be returned to people who submit their completely incompetently written poetry to a judge with an otherwise comparable aesthetic.  I could send my good lyrical poems or my awful language poems to contests run by or affiliated with the Bernstein circle all the live-long day – those poems are not going to win any prizes; this isn’t like doing an ice-skating routine in different contest venues.  In reality, the reading fees are not only there to subsidize the contest, they’re there to discourage people from flooding contests with inappropriate or substandard manuscripts.

Arguendo, let’s skip this first problem and just assume we’re actually dealing with a viable manuscript – a submission of high quality poems within the press and judge aesthetic.  The next issue is how much and what kind of “prior contact” must exist to bias the contest in such a way as to render it a grossly unfair contest (or a “non-contest”) for my viable submitter.   That’s far more subjective.

On one hand it seems that if a judge or a press picks a manuscript of someone known to that judge or to that press, there’s at least the chance that bias has operated in favor of that known person.  But there are a number of problem with this assumption.

There is the possibility of bias working *against* “known persons” – perhaps the judge is nervous selecting someone they know but feels that, hands down, that person clearly has sent in the best manuscript.  In the case of a tie-breaker, that bias could work against the “known” party.

There’s also the possibility that the judge does not know that a particular manuscript is authored by someone they know.  (Keep in mind all names are removed from the manuscripts, so that the judge would have to correctly ID one of the poems in it to discover the author of the manuscript.)

Ex Post calls seem easy to make in cases of grossest nepotism; say a judge chooses his son – a red flag goes up.  However, even there the current system of the press sending “final manuscripts” to the judge makes a good deal of sense in terms of preventing or, from another perspective, *justifying* the judges’ final choices.  In this system, the press effectively vets which manuscripts they’d feel comfortable in publishing by sending a small pool of “final manuscripts” to the judge.  The press implicitly says “any one of these manuscripts is something we’d publish – please pick the one you think is best.”  (This guards against a judge saying to a friend, “submit to X contest, which I’m judging,” insofar as the press would have to be comfortable with the overall excellence of that manuscript to send it onto the judge in the final batch.)

Ex Ante constraints are much harder to put in.  Foetry’s call for a ban on Prior Contact (or prior business relationship) does not make much sense; their ban won’t deter any corruption that’s out there.  In fact, it will only unduly burden and constrain publishers and poets from forming legitimate relationships.

First, assuming Foetry is correct about wide spread corruption, their suggested measures won’t correct the problem.  Crooked judges will just arrange to “swap” top picks with other crooked judges, attenuating the trail of “prior contact” to an unobservable level.  Any judge could find out the name of any “blind” manuscript via google, simply by searching for poem titles on the internet (how many manuscripts have not had a poem published in a periodical?).

Second, Foetry would rather not have *any* connection between the press and the finalists AND/OR the judge and the finalists.  They’d sweep deminimus contact, like randomly appearing in the same publication as the judge, into “suspect” relationships. While I’ve touched on some of the problems with this above, I’ll look at it further in my hypothetical “Poet X” example below.

In reality, the standard ought to be similar to a business or corruption model – does the judge or the publisher in question obtain some benefit by picking the poet, or is the connection between the two of such a nature that it rises to nepotism?

Let’s look at this in a “real life” context:

Let’s assume I’m a young poet who likes the work of Poet X;  Poet X writes in a certain style, and I think she’s the bomb.  So I start to produce my own work that’s more or less influenced by Poet X’s style.  As I begin to produce poems, I decide to send them out for publication.  At some point I send them to editors and publications that have published Poet X – our styles are similar, perhaps they’ll like my work.   One day I’m quite happy to learn that one publisher (Publisher Y) accepts one of my poems and – even better!- that my poem will appear in the same issue as Poet X.  I’m so excited I shoot Poet X an e-mail saying how happy I am, and how much I’ve always admired their work.

Little do I realize that under the Foetry paradigm I can now never:
a) send a manuscript to any contest that Publisher Y sponsors
b) send a manuscript to any contest that Poet X judges
c) send a manuscript to any contest which features a publisher or a judge significantly connected to Publisher Y or Poet X.

If Poet X happens to write in an obscure vein – say she’s an experimental writer in a small circle of writers, I’m pretty much shit out of luck according to Foetry.  Publication (establishing my credentials and putting my work before the public) has just guaranteed my non-publication in the future.  That’s rather perverse.

Similarly, under the Foetry paradigm, Publisher Y would be forbidden to:
a) consider manuscript publication (via contest) of any poet previously published by them, no matter:
   1. what the quality of that manuscript,
   2. how neutral the final judge would be.
b) consider manuscript publication (via contest) of any poet with prior contact with the judge.  (more on that below)

I can see someone making a case if *all* of the anonymous final manuscripts put before the judge were drawn from a small pool of the previously-published, creating a de facto categorical exclusion that would not be revealed in the contest definition, but I’m at a loss to see how even a small percentage of “previously published” anonymous final manuscripts would create any kind of undue burden on the chances of someone randomly submitting a valid manuscript to that contest.  That valid manuscript has two protections – “judge known” manuscripts would have to make it through the press vetting, and “press known” manuscripts would have to still be selected from the final pool by the judge.

But to return to the example of the young poet and Poet X.  We’ve looked at first cut “casual” contact, but ‘contact’ can get deeper.

What happens if Poet X responds with a kind note?  Or if Poet X refers me to a workshop that she’s teaching in the area?  Or if Poet X writes and says, “Hey, I liked that poem of yours and I edit Journal X.  Please send me some of your other poems.”  From one perspective this is simply aligning poets (and editors) of similar tastes and interests.  From the Foetry perspective, this is an unholy kind of collusion.

Given the fact that most first books are published via “open” contests (described in my prior post), if the Foetry paradigm were to be adopted, you’d see a lot of anxious scrambling between contacting mentors and developing good and friendly professional relationships with other writers and wanting to limit that contact to the extent it would allow you to use that same “most aligned” aesthetic circle to publish your first book.

**

I think Foetry’s initial impulse was as good as far as it went – if you look Ex Post and see a lot of hugely suspect decisions from a single press or a single judge, it makes sense to point that out and then see how the market (of young poets) reacts.

Their Ex Ante recommendations don’t make much sense – neither do their analyses of what is and what is not a “corrupt” contest.  In the case of Three Candles (and other presses), it’s just laughable.

Comments

[Steve S]

I think this is a really good analytical trouncing of the more tenuous connections Foetry makes too big a deal about. Richard Howard consistently picking his students for awards is disgraceful. Ditto Jorie Graham. But "I once mentioned him on my blog" or "He's from the same state"? Gah.

Here's the last message I was going to post on the Foetry forum, which I think ate the post, but I'll be damned if I'm going to go back and find out now

--

Alan:

I didn't say private forum, I said another forum. This one's poison.

Now you're getting all defensive. Perhaps it's because you posted something using what was demonstrated to be woefully inadequate research. The halfhearted apology/renewed attack doesn't do much for me--you didn't post and say "I'm interested in finding out more" or even "This looks bad, what's the deal?"

No, you reached a conclusion based on your faulty research and without input from anything or anyone else, and you used these faulty conclusions to be snide and nasty about something you were demonstrably incorrect about, as evidenced by the fact that your post opened with "From the Department of Just Doesn't Get It" and closed with "This contest turned out just how I'd hoped it would not."

And while we're at it, I'm going to reiterate my original point about your own conflict of interest. How is it possible for someone whose nearest-and-dearest is an entrant in the poetry publishing/contest community to be impartial in deciding what is and isn't okay in how contests are run? Conflicts don't come much more cut-and-dried than that, save for the people here who actually do enter contests. Someone who isn't in the contests and doesn't owe either side anything is required.

A brief aside to Eric Dickey regarding "So what's the deal 3c-ers? "We don't have to answer" admits more guilt." Of course, saying you don't have to answer doesn't admit guilt--otherwise, there would be no such thing as unreasonable search and seizure. Say I want to look at your hard drive to see if you have child pornography. Does refusing my request make you a child pornographer? Of course not. Second, how the fuck hasn't anyone answered? Steve and Tony have both responded. Looks like answers to me.

Look at what you have in this case. A bogus connection involving Tony Trigilio. A publication of Stobb that Steve explained in his post and that you either missed or ignored. A dubious geographical connection (Someone lives in the same city? Holy shit!) made to look silly by the fact that Alan admits he's ALSO in the same city and doesn't know who the guy is and made completely irrelevant by the fact that Millar didn't pick the finalists and Morrison didn't win. (You can research your own forum and figure out which finalist was originally picked but opted for a win elsewhere.) And the fact that one other finalist had prose published in three candles at an unknown time. A grand total of one minor potential conflict? That's meager stuff, sorry.

This site has done some really worthwhile things--exposing the Georgia Series selection of Sacks, for example. But there's so much wrong with it from top to bottom that I've decided the site itself (though not the concept of an actual impartial arbiter of poetry contest fairness) can't be saved. Best with your further endeavors. Feel free to crow if you catch me coming back here barring an actual attack on me or something I'm responsible for.

Steve S.

[Hannah]

Thanks.