dumbfoundry

Dear Malcolm Davidson/eeksypeeksy,

You have an interesting and quirky mode here of evaluating online journals, which I feel compelled to address since you cite Word For/Word specifically. I should say thank you for disclosing the contributors for issue 6 of Word For/Word. They’re all exemplary poets whose work is good enough, and read widely enough, to speak for itself.

However, all in all, I think your reasoning in this post, and in the first “Widows & Orpheans” post, is specious and, perhaps unintentionally, a bit crass. First, you’re applying what take to be the logic and economy of blogging to small-press online poetry journals. This is a mistake, as the two operate on entirely different principles. I’m not a blogger (one of the few remaining holdouts, surely) but I’m completely fascinated by the “blogosphere’s” excessive logic of extension and exposure. For instance, you have at least three seperate blogs, each one extending, as far as I can gather, from a different persona. August Highland does this as well with his extensive network of online personalities and journals. Plus, blogs extend their range by incessantly, compulsively linking to each other. A few blogs offer a limited number of links to online journals, but many of them offer extended links in which comprehensiveness seems to be the only common criteria. In fact, you ask your “readers” to send more links for your ever-growing list. Likewise, blogs operate on the principle of incessant exposure--the often daily exposure of one’s personality, writing, ideas. The more extensive this exposure, the more viable, so it seems. For instance, Ron Silliman’s blog, surely one of the prototypes, lists ALL of the webpages that refer to his site. Your own blog(s) rank websites by their number of referring links. In fact, I sense that some bloggers are nearly giddy with their exposure and the sheer volume/extend of their output. Again, this is compelling and interesting, but after blogging for a few days to catch up with all this, I sometimes feel as if I’m in a bog rather than a blog. No ground or end in sight.

To some extent, blogging simply continues the forms of networked art/community initiated by Fluxus and “mail art” in the 1960’s. And blogs are undoubtedly changing the nature of poetry communities and reading habits in ways that have yet to be fully measured.

But to use these criteria to evaluate such small online presses as Word For/Word, GutCult, and How2 (whose importance, despite its low number of referring links should be obvious to anyone who seriously reads contemporary poetry/poetics) makes no sense whatsoever. And worse than being useless, such an evaluation is misleading.

First, the number of referring websites is not the same as the number of “hits.” The number of hits at Word For/Word has always been steady. Plus, the fact that How2 only has 22 (or whatever it was) referring websites says nothing about its readership or the journal’s impact (which is considerable).

Second, it is a critical mistake to use the logic of extension and exposure to evaluate poetry journals. This would be the equivalent of critiquing, say, Radiohead for having less airplay than Jennifer Lopez. Absurd. Simply put, small press journals (online or in print) have always operated in a different kind of economy. Take the obvious and famous example of The Black Mountain Review. That particular journals was, from its beginning, academic and professional, intended in part to help promote Black Mountain College, but of course never achieved, nor desired, the exposure or circulation of other mainstream journals. Obviously, this didn’t diminish its importance, as the journal helped galvanize a SMALL, relatively unknown network of writers whose full influence has lingered long after the little journal (and the college itself) vanished. The difference between the two kinds of logic is also evident in the way most small online journals handle their list of links. Far from being “comprehensive,” most of these lists link only to similar, or like-minded journals. Mind you, I wouldn’t complain if every site on the internet linked to Word For/Word, but I’d find it baffling and not necessarily a positive indication. The fact that there’s a Starbucks in every town (there are even three here in Helena, Montana) is good or bad, depending on whether you happen to drink that particular brand.

Best,
Jonathan Minton
www.wordforword.info    

OK, Jonathan, first let's see what I wrote in those two posts you mention before we talk about it:

"I see so many web magazines with so few links to them, and I wonder how much work goes into things no one sees. Some of these magazines are the web counterparts of print magazines that, for all I know, have plenty of readers. But some aren't."

and

"It has six people on the masthead, including a usability expert, it looks pretty fancy, it has at least a couple of well-known names in the first (and so far only) issue, and it gets city and state supporting funds, but (according to a recent Google search) only three sites or blogs (including this one) link to it.

Does anyone out there read it? What can you tell me about it?"

and

"Here's another magazine, Word For/Word, that looks like a big show in an empty theater."

To complain about my reasoning at such great length ("specious" and "a bit crass" and "misleading" and "a critical mistake" and "useless" and "absurd"), besides making me wonder whether you are getting carried away and have a bit of a thin skin, is to ignore what I wrote. As you can see above, I wrote that it looks as if a lot of work goes into publishing things that very few people are reading. Are you here to say that you and the writers do not work hard on your magazine, or that a great many people do read it? I didn't say that therefore your stuff blows – there isn’t an ergo anywhere in those lines – but that seems to be what you read into (but definitely did not read from) what I wrote, or why would you be here complaining?

If you have tons of readers, that's great. (And in actual numbers, what is this "steady" hit count you mention? How many unique hits, not counting you and the writers for your magazine, does it get every day or month or however it is you measure it?) But a quick scan of the Internet (and you do not have a print edition, right?) suggests that that is not the case, and that you have relatively few readers even in comparison to a number of other web-based poetry magazines. Of course I could never know the real size of the magazine’s readership. Maybe people print copies and distribute them at hospitals and orphanages. Who could say? But it doesn’t look as if you get a lot of readers.

Now, if having a small readership doesn't matter to you because you believe the quality and influence of your readership is disproportionately great, and if you feel the need to defend yourself against something that was never said, you could have written it all in one sentence, something like, "Sure, I know I don't get many readers, but that’s no skin off my ass, bub, because I think I have X very special readers who are at this moment changing the future of poetry and the world thanks in no inconsiderable part to my magazine." And then I would have been told.

(By the way, you wrote: "For instance, you have at least three seperate blogs, each one extending, as far as I can gather, from a different persona." That’s not the case. One is for things I find online, one is a journal of what I see and do, and one is where I throw poems as I write them. Three different purposes, three different activities, three different blogs, like three different notebooks or sketchpads or bulletin boards, and not three different personae. Some people read one, some read another, some read two or three of them, and of course the great many read none. But that’s no skin off my ass, bub, because…)    

Ok, here’s the short version then. I never inferred that you disparaged the contents of Word For/Word, nor did I write that. I’m not quibbling over that. I’m taking issue with your logic. Your ranking of websites by referring pages reflects a kind of logic and a kind of evaluation that I don’t think is useful, and, worse, misleading. You included Word For/Word in this. Ergo, my initial response. Otherwise I wouldn’t have cared. I’d rather not be having this discussion. If you’d care to talk about the poetry at Word For/Word, it’s context or community, etc. that’d be great.