Robert Sward at the Writers House

Agenda

Monday, October 28, 1996, 5:30 pm -- Reading
Tuesday, October 29, 1996, 5:30 pm -- Panel Discussion with Robert Sward, Dave Deifer (editor of Xconnect), and Bruce Schimmel (former editor of City Paper, who put CP on-line)

For the panel on Tuesday 10/29/1996, see Swards article, "Why I Publish in E-zines".

Bio

Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Sward is the author of 14 books including Four Incarnations -- New & Selected Poems. Chosen by Lucille Clifton to receive a Villa Montalvo Literary Arts Award, he teaches for Cabrillo College and the University of California Extension in Santa Cruz.

From Dave Deifer

Sward has 14 books to his credit. His most recent book. A Much Married Man, a serio-comic novel will be available in late June. Aside from novels, Sward is an accomplished poet, his Four Incarnations, New & Selected Poems was published by Coffee House Press. He has received various awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry. Sward has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Cornell, Connecticut, and currently teaches at California State - Santa Cruz Extension and Cabrillo College.

Xconnect will help by doing press releases to local papers, hanging flyers throughout city, helping to set up dinner, hosting reading, cleaning up afterwards.

This is an excellent opportunity to receive an experienced writer at Penn. He is a new breed of writer that chooses to release his work on the World Wide Web. Swards excerpts from A Much Married Man appeared first in Xconnect WEB Version where his poem "The 1950s" also appeared and was selected to be included in Xconnect's first Print Journal.

Why I Publish In E-Zines:

One Writer's View of Online Publishing

by Robert Sward

Computer-phobic writers, fellow teachers and fans of olde style lit- mags ask why I have chosen to publish in e-zines like Blue Penny Quarterly; X-Connect; eSCENE; Fiction Online; Gruene Street; Hawk; Realpoetik; Recursive Angel; Transmog; and Zero City, to name a few.

  1. I publish on the Net and World Wide Web because it/s cheap: e-mail after all is free.
  2. It's more efficient: no SASEs, no International Reply Coupons; fewer trips to the office supply store.
  3. It saves time: I don't have to wait 18 months to hear back and the rejections, when they come, are less annoying because a) I/ve invested less in the submission process and b) it/s easy enough to send the work somewhere else.
  4. It gives me the opportunity to improve on what I write and make changes even after publication. Zen Buddhists say First thought, best thought. I say, Think again.
  5. It allows for interaction: timely feedback from fellow writers, editors, publishers, agents, and students.

I recently sent a poem to Realpoetik (_rpoetik, the little magazine of the Internet, a moderated listserv..._), got an e-mail acceptance message and saw the poem published, all within 24 hours. Editor Robert Salasin claims he has approximately 1,000 subscribers. All I know is that over the next few days I got more responses ("fine work...," "wish you continued success in Cyberspace...," "would like to use excerpts from A Much-Married Man...") from that single appearance than I got from 30 years of publishing in magazines like The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Transatlantic Review, etc.

Yes, it/s a form of instant gratification. Just what the world needs, right? In my opinion, instant gratification has gotten a bad rap. Or maybe I'm late to the game and am just beginning to catch on. Anyway, I write for myself and always have, but I still agree with Whitman: it doesn't hurt to have an audience.

I still use pen and pencil to write and revise and turn to my Olympia portable to type envelopes. I'm still doing what I did in my 20s: writing, revising and sending the best work I have to the editors of the journals I admire.

Writing is re-writing and I spend just as much time revising now as I ever did. To this day I send poems and stories to traditional print journals and, when the publication appears, sometimes long to remove a line or two or correct a typo or printers error. A while back The Transatlantic Review published Thousand-Year-Old Fiancee and destroyed the poem, made it meaningless with a record thirteen typographical errors. They never sent me page proofs and, once the poem was printed, there was nothing I could do except rage at the editor, the inattentive, lackadaisical schmuck.

Now, when I submit work to an e-journal there is no typographer involved because there is no type to set. And if an error occurs or I change my mind, voila! I can e-mail corrections and see the fix made promptly and at no expense. I like that.

Apart from a responsive audience, what's the payoff? Payment used to be in contributor copies. Now with magazines appearing in electronic print, there are no contributor copies to send. Still, a few mainline lit-mags and e- journals do make an effort to pay. In all the years I've been writing, I haven't come close-not one year have I come close-to covering the cost of postage. How much is poetry worth? In 1958, in an effort to determine the dollar value, if any, of my poetry, I engaged in an experiment. A student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, I sent half a dozen poems to the local phone company as a way of paying my bill. Not only did Ma Bell send them back, but she disconnected my phone. So be it.

I'm doing multi-media stuff now combining poetry, fiction and non- fiction with photographs, paintings and-soon-music and the human voice. I'm collaborating with visual artists, computer scientists and other writers.

My first computer was an Apple IIe and my first word processing program was Magic Window. Today I use Microsoft Word on a Mac Performa supercharged by my 18-year-old son. How does it all work? I have no idea. I just switch on my modem, gaze into cyberspace and type away. It's still Magic Window to me.

"So what's the point?" my partner wants to know. "Isn't this just one big ego trip? Who really reads those e-journals? Do you actually think you're going to sell copies of your book on the Net? And what about copyright? How do you know someone isn't going to rip off that new novel of yours?"

Of course she's right, but I have all those virtual magazines and editors on the Net waiting for me to check in.

"Gee, honey, I don't know," I say. "I'm just gonna go upstairs for a moment and check my mail."

Copyright (c) 1996 Robert Sward
All rights reserved.

Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Robert Sward is the author of 14 books. His newest work, _A Much-Married Man, A Novel_, has just been published.