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Silliman's Blog
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<p class='description'><span>A weblog focused on contemporary poetry and poetics.</span></p>
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Showing posts with label <b>contests</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a>
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<div class='status-msg-hidden'>Showing posts with label <b>contests</b>. <a href="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/">Show all posts</a></div>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Wednesday, January 12, 2011</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><a href="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5004/5347823052_9b83c06bd5_o.jpg"><span style='color:black;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-no-proof:yes;text-decoration:none; text-underline:none'><img border="0" height="484" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/zA_eF9cLqpth2eWK8T7z7bNEm-uxj6P0QaFIMJv29kGFJkZFcxhfHa5P_D879m9KCQ7Fk_QmIve_bZTmjNV94JKEXtlAjwOs8bqIhrG6zqVmZ9E%3Ds0-d" width="445"></span></a><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint: 242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>It was <a href="http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-forgetting-shig.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Shigeyoshi &#8220;Shig&#8221; Murao</span></a>, not Lawrence Ferlinghetti, <a href="http://www.nikkeiwest.com/index.php/the-news/past-articles/145-murao-is-missing-bookseller-left-out-of-howl-movie"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>who was arrested</span></a> by the San Francisco police department for selling a copy of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl </i>on June 3, 1957. <span class=GramE>As I noted in <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-saw-best-exposition-of-poem-in-major.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>my original review</span></a> last September.</span> <a href="http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Shigeyoshi_Murao"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Shig</span></a>, the manager of City Lights Books from the mid-1950s until 1976, spent the night in the Bryant Street jail and was bailed out the following day. He was tried alongside Ferlinghetti, but where the latter had published the book as well as owned the bookstore in which it was sold, and thus really depended on the Judge Horn&#8217;s ruling that <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl </i>was not obscene, Murao had only to testify that he didn&#8217;t know its contents and had not read every single book in the store. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint: 242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://articles.sfgate.com/1999-11-28/books/17705832_1_north-beach-howl-and-other-poems-allen"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Having been interned in the US concentration camps</span></a> for the Japanese in the first years of the Second World War, Murao later served as a US intelligence specialist in the South Pacific. I don&#8217;t know of any other job he had during his career, though he must have done something between the end of the War and when he was hired at the bookstore in 1955. In his day, Shig was as much an icon of City Lights as was Ferlinghetti. He died in 1999. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint: 242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>The one person of color in the history of the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl </i>bust and trial, Shig does not appear anywhere in the <a href="http://howlthemovie.com/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>motion picture <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl</i></span></a><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> </i>&amp; thus nobody portrays him in the Epstein-Friedman film. </span><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>Of the first 68 entries into my little contest, somewhat less than half got the two questions correct. The first three to get both <span class=GramE>right</span> did so within 35 minutes of the contest being posted. They are, in order,</p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:1.5in'>Steven Coons of Salt Lake City<br> Stephen Ross of Oxford, UK<br> David <span class=SpellE>Wilk</span> of Weston, Connecticut </p>
<p class=MsoNormal>During the first couple of hours, most of the responses guessed Ferlinghetti &#8211; it was a logical choice, but way too easy, an obvious misdirection (or so I imagined) &#8211; but by early evening, most of the entries still trickling in were right. </p>
<p class=MsoNormal>It&#8217;s worth noting that Oscilloscope, the distributors of the film, knew in advance exactly what my questions were going to be, and the answers, and thought it was a great idea. <span class=SpellE>Shig&#8217;s</span> absence from the film may have been the strangest erasure since Tom <span class=SpellE>Bombadil</span> disappeared from <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'>Lord of the Rings, </i><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>but it&#8217;s in the <span class=SpellE>redactive</span> nature of filmic narrative, not unlike having none of the other major characters &#8211; Kerouac, Cassady, even Ferlinghetti &#8211; say a single line, not explaining the historic nature of the reading at the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Six Gallery, </i>tho it&#8217;s shown on screen, or leaving out more famous witnesses than those presented, including Kenneth Rexroth, Mark Linenthal, Walter Van Tilburg Clark &amp; Herbert Blau, or maybe even &#8211; I think the jury&#8217;s out on this one &#8211; filming the bulk of the movie in New York City. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span class=GramE><span style='color:#0D0D0D'>My thanks to Oscilloscope, to all who sent entries, and especially to the memory of Shig Murao, who took the hit for poetry readers worldwide.</span></span><span style='color:#0D0D0D'> We owe you. </span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Tuesday, January 11, 2011</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight: normal'><span style='font-size:20.0pt;line-height:115%;color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>A contest for<br> &#8220;<a href="http://howlthemovie.com/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor: text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>the best minds of my generation</span></a></span></b><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><span style='font-size:20.0pt;line-height: 115%'>&#8221;<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><a href="http://www.oscilloscope.net/films/store"><span style='color:windowtext;mso-no-proof:yes;text-decoration:none;text-underline: none'><img border="0" height="389" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/nU1NAD81uLTKP2vJmBA9P8nF4zNtOnLuu5jUHCUkX7hsnmA2uw6maW_3_tMyAKLnHfn4FCHAWJUAgprFte1dykPiHwrtRqdaoWXE6siY7E0Dmyc%3Ds0-d" width="585"></span></a></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://howlthemovie.com/"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1; mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Howl</span></a>, </span></i><span style='color:#0D0D0D; mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D; mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%; mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>the motion picture by Rob Epstein &amp; Jeffrey Friedman, starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, a film that I have called both &#8220;<a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-saw-best-exposition-of-poem-in-major.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>a wonderful motion picture</span></a>&#8221; and &#8220;the best exposition of a poem in a major motion picture,&#8221; is now <a href="http://www.oscilloscope.net/films/store"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>available on DVD &amp; Blue-Ray</span></a>. You no longer need live within driving distance of a major urban center or a good college art house film scene in order to view it. And view it you should. Franco as the young Ginsberg is fantastic. The DVD also has extra features not previously available and comes with English &amp; French subtitle options. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>The film was nominated for a Grand Jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Berlin Bear prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Carter Burwell was nominated for film composer of the year award for this and four other films at the World Soundtrack Awards. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'>Howl </i>won the Freedom of Expression Award from the National Board of Review. </p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>I have a copy</b> of the new DVD of Rob Epstein &amp; Jeffrey Friedman&#8217;s motion picture <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl, </i>starring James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>for the</b> <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>first three readers</b> of this blog who correctly answer the following two questions:</p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight: normal'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Who actually spent time in jail when the SFPD &#8220;busted&#8221; </i>Howl<i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b style='mso-bidi-font-weight: normal'><i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Who played this person in the film?<o:p></o:p></i></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Members of my family, immediate &amp; extended, and regular contributors to this blog are not eligible. Neither are current or former employees of City Lights nor residents of Nowhere Zen, New Jersey. Send your entries via email to Silliman AT <span class=SpellE>gmail</span> DOT com. You <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>must</i> put HOWL CONTEST in the headline. </p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint: 242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color:#0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor: text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha:100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms: "lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'><a href="http://web.reed.edu/news_center/multimedia/2007-08/howl_unedited1.28.08.html"><span style='color:#0D0D0D;mso-themecolor:text1;mso-themetint:242;mso-style-textfill-fill-color: #0D0D0D;mso-style-textfill-fill-themecolor:text1;mso-style-textfill-fill-alpha: 100.0%;mso-style-textfill-fill-colortransforms:"lumm=95000 lumo=5000"'>Here</span></a> is Ginsberg at Reed College in February, 1956, giving the earliest recorded reading of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Howl. </i>This may be the only recording of the poem where an audience has never before actually read the text. Ginsberg was hitch-hiking around the Northwest with Gary Snyder at the time, and reads only the first part of the poem. Interesting to note where (and how nervously) the laughter falls. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Monday, February 01, 2010</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:black;mso-themecolor:text1'>I have noted on occasion that, in the Middle East, one can watch poetry contests conducted in the fashion of an <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>American Idol </i>(or, in the UK, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Pop Idol, </i>Simon Cowell&#8217;s original show in this format). I have seen the show called both <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million%27s_Poet"><span style='color:black;mso-themecolor:text1'>Million&#8217;s Poet</span></a> </i>&amp; <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Articles/article96.htm"><span style='color:black;mso-themecolor:text1'>Prince of Poets</span></a> </i>&amp; am not certain if in fact that is one show or two. But if one hunts around on YouTube for a bit, you can find some examples. <i style='mso-bidi-font-style: normal'><span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span></i>Not knowing the language transforms it into a mode of sound poetry,<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>but even in those terms one can get a sense of the verbal devices &amp; tone of the poems. It&#8217;s a fascinating mode of music. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<h2 class='date-header'><span>Saturday, April 26, 2008</span></h2>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My comment here on April 10, that the William Carlos Williams Award<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;color:black'>wasn&#8217;t your usual exploitive, pay the readers&#8217; fee &amp; hope your manuscript gets picked, book contest. Those contests always appall me, and I feel as badly for the winners &#8211; whom nobody ever takes seriously &#8211; as I do the losers who fund such ventures<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>has predictably taken <a href="http://treyrec.blogspot.com/2008/04/everyone-acts-like-theyre-so-different.html"><span style='color:black'>some heat</span></a>.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <span class=SpellE>TC&#8217;s</span> presumption of my &#8220;armchair of established success and canonicity&#8221; may be amusing (I don&#8217;t see anyone offering me a teaching job, TC), but the question is serious enough to deserve being looking at more closely. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>What does being the winner of a book contest tell us about a writer? That he or she got their work published <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>outside of a literary community, </i>predicated presumably upon anonymity. <span class=GramE>Unless the award itself is an extension of an existing community.</span> <span class=GramE>Or unless the judge or judges did things that would make Foetry.Com steam &amp; sputter.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Consider the best known of these awards, the Yale Younger Poets, and the piece I linked to last Monday from the <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'><a href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/main/5691580.html"><span style='color:black'>Houston Chronicle</span></a> </i>about <span  class=SpellE>Fady</span> <span class=SpellE>Joudah</span> winning the current round. The article states, reasonably enough, that<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:.5in'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana;color:black'>previous winners include such iconic figures as John Ashbery, Adrienne Rich, John Hollander and W.S. Merwin<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>without quite noticing that not one of these figures is under the age of 78 and that maybe more recent winners have not gone on to such iconic status. But <span class=GramE>it&#8217;s</span> worth remembering that anyone who is 78 began at a time when the number of publishing poets in the </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>United States</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> was in the low hundreds, not the tens of thousands. Further, if these four poets didn&#8217;t come out of the same community, exactly, the world they arose from was small enough: as undergrads they attended Harvard, Radcliffe, </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Columbia</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> and </span><st1:place><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Princeton</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, in that order, and all were picked by W.H. Auden (who <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>asked</i> Ashbery to submit a manuscript, rather than picking one that had been sent in according to the rules). <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>If the Yale hasn&#8217;t had the same status-bestowing impact in recent decades, it&#8217;s not necessarily a sign that the quality of the writing selected for the award has eroded. If anything, I think the quality remains quite high. Louise Glück may not be my kind of poet, and she may have been the quietist (in every sense of that word) poet laureate ever, but she does know what she&#8217;s doing. The problem is that the </span><st1:place><st1:PlaceType><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>School</span></st1:PlaceType><span  style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> of </span><st1:PlaceName><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Q</span></st1:PlaceName></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> no longer has anything like the monolithic control of publishing it had in the early 1950s, and in a more diverse universe these books have a much harder time reaching an audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>There is an important &amp; complex relationship between audience and community. Think of any press that is well edited and has a personality of its own: Subpress, Copper Canyon, Pressed Wafer, Adventures in Poetry, Omnidawn, Roof, Apogee, O Books, <span class=SpellE>Atelos</span>, Chax, Cuneiform, Flood Editions, Singing Horse, Faux Press, <span class=SpellE>Meritage</span>, Burning Deck &#8211; the list is long (if not exactly endless). To the degree that all these are well edited enterprises, their lists themselves can be understood as a series of literary communities. A book by somebody I&#8217;ve never heard of before from one of these presses comes to me with a context that may help me to understand what the writer is trying to do. In marketing, this gets called brand equity, but in the low-level economics around poetry it really has to do with the degree that any well-run press is itself a concrete manifestation of an aesthetic community. It can be a geographic one, like Pressed Wafer, which tends to print the very best of </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Boston</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, or simply an aesthetic one. Just coming from one of these presses directs a book toward a community of readers, a range of sympathies and expectations. As a poet, you can&#8217;t ask any more of a press. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Contests, however, tend to do rather the opposite. Unless the judges stay in place year after year and only pick work from a narrow range of contestants &#8211; two things that actually made the Yale award meaningful &#8211; the list of winners over the course of a decade or two is going to be scattershot at best. So let&#8217;s say a contest does these things &#8211; what does it mean then for any entrant who is <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>not</b> already a part of that community? What about all those entries to the Yale that were <b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>not</b> by John Ashbery? <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>In this regard, what is probably the best book competition currently in the U.S., the <a href="http://www.nationalpoetryseries.org/"><span style='color:black'>National Poetry Series</span></a>, excels to the degree it does because there usually is some rational connection between the individual judge and the press which ultimately commits to publishing the winning manuscript &#8211; this may make it the competition most likely to run afoul of Foetry, but it ensures that the resulting book has some chance of reaching an audience primed to appreciate the volume&#8217;s virtues. Donna <span class=SpellE>Stonecipher</span> is an excellent poet for a Coffee House Press book &amp; would be, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>whether or not she had been chosen for the role by John Yau</i>. Rodrigo Toscano fits well with Fence Press <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>whether or not he was chosen by Marjorie Welish. </i>I don&#8217;t how much say the presses have in picking who will judge the volume they publish, but hopefully it is a lot. Yet <span class=GramE>it&#8217;s</span> worth noting that, because the series has tended to shift at least one press each year and has multiple judges with different aesthetics doing the choosing, there is almost no brand equity, to use that term again, in being a National Poet selection. Even though its web site promotes all 150 books that have come out through this series since 1979, while the Yale doesn&#8217;t bother to keep a complete list of winners online. What matters more &#8211; that Ange Mlinko&#8217;s <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Starred Wire </i>was a National Poetry selection or that it was an excellent book? <span class=GramE>Exactly.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>But most contests aren&#8217;t the National Poetry Series <span class=GramE>nor</span> even the Yale Younger Poets. Judges are cycled through too quickly, there&#8217;s no aesthetic focus, <span class=GramE>the</span> resulting book series has little if any connection to an audience. One of the five books that I eliminated from the William Carlos Williams Award for utter incompetence was itself the &#8220;winner&#8221; of such a contest, one I&#8217;d never heard of before. The absolute number of such contests is daunting &#8211; the back pages of <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Poets &amp; Writers </i>are cluttered with them, a phenomenon that never fails to remind me of the ads for escorts &amp; adult massage that bring up the rear of so many &#8220;alternative&#8221; weekly newspapers. Or consider <a href="http://www.winningwriters.com/"><span style='color:black'>Winning Writers</span></a> &#8211; if you&#8217;re a contest junky, this is pure smack. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>What the growth in such awards really is responding to, I think, is a new problematic in American poetry, one that I frankly did not have to put with when I began publishing books in 1971. If there were only a few hundred publishing poets in the 1950s, by 1970 that total had swollen to some number over 1,000, but not so dramatically over it that it was difficult for a new poet to get heard. <o:p></o:p></span></p> 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My first book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Crow, </i>was published by Ithaca House, a student-run press bankrolled (oh, more like piggy-bankrolled) by Baxter Hathaway, a major figure in the writing program at Cornell for many years. The person who selected my book &#8211; who asked for it &#8211; was David McAleavey, who was getting his PhD at Cornell and whom I knew from our days together at </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Berkeley</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. The printing was funky, the pages aren&#8217;t exactly aligned perfectly, but it got read and generated a number of correspondences with other poets, among them Bob Perelman. My second book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Mohawk, </i>was published by another Ithaca House poet (remember what I said about how presses <span class=GramE>become<span style='mso-spacerun:yes'>  </span>communities</span>), Ray DiPalma, then teaching at </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Bowling  Green</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> in  </span><st1:State><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Ohio</span></st1:place></st1:State><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. My third book, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>nox, </i>was <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>and still is</i> the only book I&#8217;ve ever had published that resulted from me sending a manuscript out cold, in this case to Rosmarie Waldrop at Burning Deck. But I knew who she was from the various little magazines where we&#8217;d appeared together and I presume that she knew my work from them as well. In sending her the manuscript, I was asserting my belief that I belonged in that community of innovative writing Burning Deck brings to life. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>My fourth book, the one that really transformed how much attention I got as a poet, <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ketjak, </i>was published by Barrett Watten. Watten was still in high school when I first met him, and I was only just out of it. I wrote <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ketjak </i>while we shared a flat on Potrero Hill in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>San  Francisco</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. It went through a single print run &amp; then was out of print for over 20 years. But after <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>Ketjak </i>was first published, I was in a position to publish anything I wrote. When TC writes of my &#8220;armchair of established success and canonicity,&#8221; this is literally what he or she is writing about. <span class=GramE>Editions of 300 to 1,000, mostly done by personal friends.</span> But it&#8217;s much more direct and effective than any other road to market, because these presses reached exactly the audience my poetry needed to reach. <span class=GramE>Much <span class=SpellE>much</span> better to have a book from This Press than from Yale.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Today, however, there are at least ten thousand publishing poets working in the English language in &amp; around </span><st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>North America</span></st1:place><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>. Unless all the MFA factories shut down at once, that number can be expected to double in the next decade. And there are more books of poetry published &#8211; roughly 4,000 a year. The 150 books I got to wade through for PSA was less than five percent of the ones I could have gotten (another way of looking at it would be that just submitting a book for an prize like the PSA Williams Award puts one up ahead over 95 percent of what is out there). These numbers too will grow. If you think it&#8217;s </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Babylon</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> now, just imagine what it will be like in another ten years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>The enormous growth in the number of practicing poets has some interesting consequences, not all of them bad. Rachel Blau DuPlessis likes to talk about what </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Philadelphia</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> was like in the bad old days when &#8220;the scene&#8221; for post-avant poetics consisted of her, Toby Olson &amp; Gil Ott. Then a magazine like <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>6ix </i>came along, and other folks like Eli Goldblatt moved to town, then Bob Perelman &amp; I, and all these young people either showed up or &#8211; more importantly &#8211; didn&#8217;t go away. The scene in Philly now is absolutely better than, say, SF in the early 1970s &#8211; more poets of more kinds doing more things &amp; with more events. If you can&#8217;t find people who share your interests in </span><st1:City><st1:place><span   style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Philadelphia</span></st1:place></st1:City><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>, it really is a statement now of personal isolation, not the thinness of the scene. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Yet I think for a lot of young writers, in particular, especially those coming out of MFA mills (and especially the programs that don&#8217;t quite &#8220;get&#8221; contemporary poetry, which is to say most of them), I think the transition to becoming a practicing writer can be a daunting, even crushing task. It&#8217;s when most people stop writing. They find that the context they had for poetry in school no longer exists in the &#8220;real&#8221; world and don&#8217;t know how to build one out of whole cloth. These are the people for whom contests exist, and it&#8217;s why I think they&#8217;re ultimately damaging. For one thing, the odds are preposterous. For another, unless they actually know the work of the judge, and know who the judge is, there is no way to ascertain if there is any reasonable expectation of even being competitive. They send in their money and their manuscript, they hope and they can feel crushed if they lose, sometimes again &amp; again &amp; again. <span class=GramE>Where if they would just get together with their friends and publish one another, they would be making enormous headway much more quickly.</span> And their books would be reaching the right audiences. <span class=GramE>Which is (again) why it&#8217;s far better to have a volume published by Pressed Wafer, if you&#8217;re a </span></span><st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>New  England</span></span></st1:place><span class=GramE><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> poet, than in the Yale Younger Poets Series.</span></span><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'> <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Even the Williams award, which is for already existing books by small, nonprofit or university presses, has some of  these problematic elements, which is why I was so ambivalent at first when they asked me to judge this award. What does it mean to <i style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'>not </i>win this award, especially to the 18 other poets whose books I found to be completely wonderful? Does it mean you&#8217;re a loser? In fact, every one of these people is doing luminous work. They&#8217;re brilliant &amp; challenging. But they just didn&#8217;t win. One could say something quite similar about the 50 poets who were in that next pile (it turns out that there were 69 poets writing 70 books there, as one writer had books, both quite good, nominated by two different presses). I would not want to discourage any of these people, even slightly. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php">I: The Age of Huts<br /><br /></a>             <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10742.php"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/u_VsYLU9NS_tJXOrl6A4RM1Dne7QkuSslpBc0StgKSXXoIDStYoXqSwDo2tuxST00QD3ynVJH4yjAhcEzTWyM0F_RriCRx9yZdyygceY2wm-%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br />II: Tjanting<br /><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/tjanting-9781876857196"><img src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/efy1lIcVIKeKSdy_WUDIxV8WLN0OJmA3f7enQ2XDwxwt7Bh5ssfQQAkW_o4oG6FqrB1RGf7CX-Rw-VQ4u36RIuwSsCMxWjjHFDP4c7CbW2d_%3Ds0-d" /></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx">III: The Alphabet<br /><br /></a><a href="http://www.uapress.ua.edu/product/Alphabet,1897.aspx"><img id="ctl00_MainContent_ProductInfo1_ctl00_PrimaryImage_PrimaryImage" onclick="javascript:window.open(&#39;http://www.uapress.ua.edu//images/temp/212-1897-Product_LargeToMediumImage.jpeg&#39;, 1, &#39;resizable=1, width=500, height=700&#39;)" src="https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/images/lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OnaMjXm2h6XxneM04RgHx1Bkf2Wi9UE3a8c3o0NDvW5wXo7BK3MaM5VP9YfbEIpHYxAstTorwhNW4lhhkNuua5bDX7Ogr2UgZ1NMDDjeh-0bNnuo-WH-9pGHIR6lv-4-_UDHVNe36xB6%3Ds0-d" style="border: 1px solid Gray;" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div>IV. from Universe</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
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<h2 class='title'>Other Books in Print</h2>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">MEMOIRS &amp; COLLABORATIONS</span><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Leningrad-American-Writers-Soviet-Union/dp/1562790056">Leningrad</a><br /><a href="http://www.thegrandpiano.org/">The Grand Piano</a><br /><a href="https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/under-albany-9781844710515">Under Albany</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">CRITICISM</span><br /><a href="http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/0937804207/the-new-sentence.aspx">The New Sentence</a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ANTHOLOGY</span><br /><a href="https://secure.touchnet.com/C22921_ustores/web/classic/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=327&SINGLESTORE=true">In The American Tree</a><br /><br /><br /><br />
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<br /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Desktop/silliman2a.jpg" / /><img alt="" src="file%3A///Users/Lynn/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/moz-screenshot.png" / /><span style="color: #990000; font-weight: bold;">RON SILLIMAN</span> has written and edited 40 books, and had his poetry and criticism translated into 16 languages. Silliman was a 2012 Kelly Writers House Fellow, the 2010 recipient of the Levinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts, a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council, and a 1998 Pew Fellow in the Arts. Silliman has a plaque in the walk dedicated to poetry in his home town of Berkeley and a sculpture in the Transit Center of Bury, Lancaster, a part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />(c) 2002-2019 by Ron Silliman.
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