On "humankind & nature"

Graphic from the homepage for the course "Human Nature and Human Diversity" at Rutgers University.

The following text was included in a call for submissions sent out earlier this year for our journal of nature poetry:

      Hawk & Whippoorwill, whose theme is “man and nature,” is now reading submissions for our December issue. We invite you to submit yourselves, or, to share this call for submissions with other writers in your circle.
      Originally published back in the 60s, H&W has been host to poets from all walks of life, and we hope to continue that tradition with the “new series” revival of the magazine ... We will gladly accept any unpublished poems which deal with our theme of man and nature. (Of course, we read “man” as “humanity” here, not as a gendered term. While we inherit the original tagline, we are definitely interested in challenging its restrictive implication!)

Among the replies we received to this solicitation, we got a particularly thought-provoking email from Barbara Ras. She wrote:

Sven Birkerts on the Digital Submissions Tempo

The monthly email newsletter AGNI sends to subscribers and supporters is worth reading, but as far as I can tell, the mini-essays that editor Sven Birkerts contributes to these newsletters aren’t available elsewhere. Wanting to share these more widely, I’ve elected to re-print some of these newsletter essays here on Ampersand.  Enjoy! 

- ZB 

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“AGNI's Own Midnight Madness”
by Sven Birkerts

[The AGNI email newsletter, October 2018.] I've been thinking a lot about the literary arts just recently. I don't mean literary in the already-between-covers-and-on-the-shelves sense. I'm focused, rather, on the poetry and prose now coming to AGNI over the transom.

 

Pouring in, I should say. On September 1st - as every year - we re-opened our online Submission Manager, which had been closed since the end of May. Opening day always brings a deluge from writers who've been waiting to send work all summer. It's Midnight Madness - quite literally. That's when the sluices open.

 

Having been out of town for the first few days of the month, I was braced to find more submissions than usual on my return. I was not braced to find 970 lined up in a queue. 970! Screen after screen of stories, poems, and essays - all to to be opened and read, all bearing the invisible good-luck hexes of their authors.

 

The number shocked me backwards out of my chair. I saw in a flash what I would be doing for the next weeks, maybe months. The thought of so many hours nearly overwhelmed me. But then, as if in compensation, there came a new and more lifting recognition.

It was a recognition, simply, of the unending stream of the new. Having been caught up for years in the unchanging repetitions - click, read, evaluate - I'd all but lost sight of what was - is - going on under that grid: a movement not unlike that of history itself. All of us at AGNI are posted right at the intersection, where private visions meet the cultural moment. I think of myself as a broker, a weatherman.

Energized by the realization, I started in on my reading. And, as always happens, I found myself asking the old questions: What is it that makes for freshness? What compels my deepest attention?

This time the answer was quick in coming. I'm looking for (we're looking for) writing that catches experience before the crusts of habit form - poetry and prose that has a genuine pulse. I'm especially interested in work from younger writers who are not yet curating themselves as a brand-in-the-making. They have the least pre-filtered sense of our times. They are likely to be the most in touch with the atmosphere of the now, the so-called Zeitgeist.

The culture, we know, changes constantly. I've been minding the store here long enough to assert that the work coming to us now is different from ten years ago. How could it not be? A writer's expression encodes the times in all sorts of ways. It foregrounds new themes, tweaks syntax and rhythm, and often tries to veer away from former innovations that have become stale.

Reading, I'm watchful. I can't help but note the subtle changes of tone and the effects that go against expectation. They indicate the particular momentum of the times.

 

What are writers doing that feels different?

Years ago, I wrote some essays that asked how the features of our flourishing virtual culture would ever find their way into literature. Could our screen-intensive lives be conveyed in interesting ways? Could writers be of the times and also use the materials of the times to create strong narratives? Maybe those writers had the same hesitations, because for more than a few years I saw little evidence of change.

But times are different now. A generation of digital natives has joined the ranks. They're everywhere, striving to render their lives. Reading submissions, I find that Google, YouTube, Twitter, and dating apps are not only part of the subject matter in all three genres, they are affecting modes of narration. Fewer stories and essays, I notice, rely on sequential telling. Lateral association is far more common, perhaps reflecting the logic of the link.

 

So our fast-changing world presses steadily against the supposedly closed order of the written work. How could it not? We all track the news cycle nowadays, absorbing its energies and anxieties. Submissions have grown more dystopian, and utopian - both. I also see - no surprise - more exploration of the tensions around race, around gender imbalances, around acts of violence and coercion . . . 
 

I also notice more specific trends. I'm reading more "premise" stories - stories in which some unusual situation is set out and then worked through. A man wakes up to find his wife has vanished; a forgotten girlhood friend appears on a woman's doorstep . . . There are dozens of variants, most focusing on actions and reactions in the outer world and steering clear of murkier psychological interiors. I wonder about this. Are we losing the taste for inwardness? And what if we are? 
 

In nonfiction submissions, meanwhile, I'm encountering all kinds of "instruction" or "hermit crab" essays, where a non-literary structure serves as basis: numbered how-to lists - for example, "How to break up with your girlfriend" and so on. I'm also reading many more so-called braided essays, which weave a personal strand together with a counterpoint - about the history of hot-air balloons, say. The expository threads are clearly pulled together from online research. The writer arranges interesting bits to play off of the more personal narration. It's for the reader to integrate the dissonance. Both of these modes seem to me responses to the almost unmanageable complexity of our new world.
 

Finally, in the poems we receive, I have to remark how many proceed by chopping what are ultimately prose narratives into lines. Freed from formal expectations, the poets seem to ramble garrulously, and the idea seems to be that the digressions are often where the meaning is to be found. The poet trusts that voice and quirky turns will carry the day.
 

These are only a few of the trends - there are of course others. It's like we are all crossing a rickety bridge across a chasm. We can still see the ledge behind us, but there's no clear view ahead. Writers respond as they need to. Some of the pieces I read feel like old patterns and conceits retooled for fresh uses - true originality is always in short supply. But I also see work that takes on the new unknown in brave and original ways. Stories, poems, and essays arrive that are attuned to what Seamus Heaney called "the music of what happens." This is the needed thing that we want to keep passing along to our readers.

If Abebooks shuts you down, where will you go?

The following message was posted to the message board of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and is reproduced here with the author's permission. - ZB

To whom it may concern:

Antikvariat Valentinska is a large antiquarian bookstore based in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic. We have been selling books through ZVAB for about 15 years now. In 2014, we joined AbeBooks; in 2015, ZVAB definitely ceased to exist as a distinct website for booksellers.

Meanwhile, Abebooks has become the largest and almost singular marketplace for selling antiquarian books on a worldwide basis. The simple truth is that whether someone likes it or not, there is no reasonable alternative to AbeBooks at the moment.

In all those years, we have done our best to satisfy our customers and to maintain the best seller rating. We have never encountered a major complaint, neither by our customers nor by the administrators of AbeBooks. Whatever money we have taken in, we have regularly shared the agreed upon portion of our profit with the owners. Currently, we offer more than 20,000 individual titles on AbeBooks, from the Late Middle Ages to brand-new books.

On Thursday, 18 October, we received the following email from the seller support of AbeBooks:

Effective November 30, 2018, AbeBooks will no longer support sellers located in certain countries. Your business is located in one of the affected countries and your AbeBooks seller account will be closed on November 30, 2018. We apologize for this inconvenience.

The decision to close our account on such short notice has come as a complete shock, especially since no reason was not given even upon request. Just our company alone will almost certainly have to dismiss at least five employees. Furthermore, we do not have any idea where else to sell about 20,000 foreign books.

We are deeply concerned about this step, not only because of our own financial losses to come.

In light of the monopoly position of AbeBooks, closing all seller accounts in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary (as far as we know, these are the countries concerned) will basically mean nothing short of cutting these countries off from the worldwide trade with antiquarian books. Which countries will be next?

Whatever the reasons may be, the fair worldwide trade with antiquarian books will not profit from this step.

We therefore kindly ask the AbeBooks and Amazon administration to reconsider this unfortunate and discriminatory step.

Jan and Ondrej Schick
www.valentinska.cz
Antikvariát Valentinská
Valentinská 8
110 00 Praha 1 - Staré Město
Czech Republic

Translating the meta prefix

Amit Majmudar's new verse translation of the Bhagavad Gita, Godsong, includes extensive commentary, much of it illuminating in an accessible level to the typical reader. Here is an excerpt.

The first task of translation is finding a way to sound as little like a translation as possible while still maintaining accuracy. The terms that Arjuna asks about gave me great trouble. They consisted of familiar terms -- self, God, being, sacrifice -- but linked to a prefix that made them specific theological terms which have no English equivalent. The solution of other translators, from direct transliteration into Roman script (Sargeant) to "material manifestation" (Prabhupada) to "elemental-basis" (Feuerstein), were not for me. I decided I would carry out a process in English identical to the one carried out in the ancient Sanskrit. After all, these were not terms used in the everyday parlance or poetry of ancient India. They were theological terms, unusual enough that Arjuna asks Krishna to define them. So I hooked the familiar word to the equivalent English prefix. Adhi and meta are similar, and both have theological connotations. So it metaself, metagod, metabeing, and metasacrifice seem neither spoken nor poetic English but more like theological jargon, that is because I'm staying faithful to the original Gita.

Submissions call: poems for endangered and threatened animals

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: In conjunction with the latest revival of the nature-themed literary magazine Hawk & Whippoorwill, Pen & Anvil is pleased to announce a series of chapbooks dedicated to endangered and threatened animals in the New England area.

Poems for Plovers is a chapbook about plovers. To protect the eggs and chicks of the piping plover (Charadrius melodus), beaches along the Atlantic coast close each nesting season--a conservation effort that has benefited the species greatly over the past thirty years.

Songs for Salamanders is a chapbook about salamanders. Four species of salamander are threatened or of special concern in Massachusetts: the Jefferson salamander, the blue-spotted salamander, the marbled salamander, and the eastern spadefoot. They live under rocks and logs and they deserve your love and poetic tribute.

Music for Myotises is a chapbook about mouse-eared bats. Five species of bats are endangered in Massachusetts: the Indiana myotis, the small-footed myotis, the little brown myotis, the tricolored bat, and the northern long-eared bat.

Cicada Sex-song is a chapbook about cicadas and their summer songs. Five species of cicada are known to call Massachusetts home; we call them all "cicada." They are not endangered, but we are concerned about them, and hope that they have all that they need for a good life.

Direct your art and poetry submissions to chapbooks@penandanvil.com.

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Contributors will each receive two complimentary copies. Previously published material will be considered. Pen & Anvil does not require exclusive publication rights. Physical copies will be available for sale via the Press website; PDF copies will be available for free.

Pen & Anvil is a not-for-profit literary publishing operation based in Boston. Its chapbook catalogue includes the Komma Series and "Breakfast All Day," a collection of poetry dedicated to breakfast.

Translators and interpreters needed in Albany

Alex Zucker is one of a small cadre of volunteer lawyers and interpreters for the locally based Legal Project out of SUNY Albany. After spending Thursday of last week interpreting at the Albany county jail, he reports that they've never seen anything like this.

The jail houses over 200 migrants detained by ICE; check the Albany Times Union for more information about this story. These individuals have been sent here from all over the country and the Legal Project is overwhelmed. There are lawyers to do the intakes, but not nearly enough interpreters. Persons with expertise in ALL languages are needed: Spanish, French, Hindi, Punjabi, any Mayan languages, Mandarin, Polish, Russian. Alex writes: "you name it, we can probably use it."

Please spread the word to any language speakers other than English that you know, who can get involved in Albany. If you're able to translate, please contact Christina Armistead at carmistead@lsu.edu. She is coordinating the schedule.

And from the Legal Project website:

We are looking for interpreters—all languages—and attorneys. Please contact cric@legalproject.org if you are able to volunteer. For more information, call 518-435-1770 ext. 327. Your help is needed NOW!

Updated after hearing from Alex Zucker: "I am not volunteering for project. I was just passing the info along. I realized too late the way I tweeted it gave the wrong impression. Regardless, if you scroll down to the end of my thread, the last five tweets have the latest info. Could you share that instead? 'ATTENTION: Legal Project seeking interpreters to assist immigrants in Albany County Jail says training will take place *JULY 11 IN ALBANY* from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m. Interpreters needed for interviews; no paraphrasing, word for word.' Many thx!" 

On Existence and the Justification Thereof

Nature is. That is a complete sentence; nature exists. Further, nature does not tell us why it exists. It is a prerequisite for life, an unrelenting force, and an ineffable beauty. Without nature, there would be no man. Nature does not have to stoop so low as justifying its existence to we impermanent leeches, fattening ourselves with its bounty.

We at this journal have no such power, and therefore no such privilege. Hello! My name is Cory Willingham, and I am the new editor of Hawk and Whippoorwill. H&W is a simple journal with a simple goal: to provide exposure to figures concerned with the ever-relevant themes of "man and nature." In this post, I will make a first sally at justifying our existence.

It is becoming increasingly commonplace to say, "Our planet is not dying, we are killing it." This is a fair statement, but it perhaps distracts from the point with a sardonic rhetorical flourish-- our planet is dying, and we are killing it. I will not say that it is important "now more than ever" to be concerned with nature, but I will say that it is as important as ever. I was at a conference about a month ago, and one of the speakers (a brilliant professor of classics whose name I have unfortunately forgotten!) bemoaned the fact that we as a species have become more distant from nature, and as such we read nature poetry differently. The specific point was that we no longer immediately recognize the smell of donkey urine, but we shouldn't get bogged down in details. The speaker's point was much deeper than his casual tangent would suggest: we, as a species, simply don't think about nature as much as we used to. This is due in large part, of course, to wild urbanization, but there is another point which deserves scrutiny. We are, generally, separated from the world around us by a layer or two. I refer here to the ubiquitous presence of technology.

I don't mean to attack technology; I'm typing this post on a laptop which has provided me untold hours of entertainment, and using the Internet, a resource which has provided me with truly fantastic knowledge. My cell phone keeps me in touch with my friends across the world. Central air is cool. But the growth of technology, and specifically of screen-having-devices, has led to a decline in our collective connectedness with nature. While we know more, we have experienced less. I have seen marvelous rainforests, but I have not stood in their majesty. I have seen the peaks of tall mountains, but I have not breathed their thin air. I am content in my perceptions, erroneously believing them to be suitable replacements for experiences; because of them, I do not think about the natural world around me as much as I should. I do not give it the reverence it deserves

Beyond the obvious complaint that we mostly only touch nature to kill it, there is another complaint which ought to be addressed. So much great poetry has been written because of nature! Wordsworth, Hesiod, Vergil, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Akbar, Stallings, Bos-- these myriad poets have made art inspired by the natural world. But today, nature poetry is hardly the norm. We have poems of loss, of love, of atomism, of fear, and those poetic themes are all intensely valuable. Just as I don't mean to attack technology, I certainly don't mean to devalue non-nature-poems.

The problem is thus: nature is dying around us, and our nature poetry is waning as well. One or the other of these situations may be acceptable, but the presence of both at once presents an alarming concern. We don't think about nature as much anymore, and we don't write about nature as much anymore, and because we don't write about it as much, we don't think about it as much, and because we don't think about it as much, we don't write about it as much, et cetera ad perpetuum. We can't live inside our urban heat domes and leave our progenitor to wither away. Nature is like Tinkerbell. If we don't keep her in our thoughts, she dies. (I've never seen Peter Pan. Isn't that how it goes?)

So, I present to you: Hawk and Whippoorwill. A revitalized and reorganized magazine of nature poetry, designed to give people who write about nature or our role in it an opportunity to remind the rest of us, we world-weary urbanists, to call our mom. Let's get started.

An editor's reply to #MeToo in bookstores

What a relief to read that bookstores have at last assumed their proper role as censors and arbiters of public morals. Banishing Diaz, Alexie, and Wallace is, I assume, only the beginning. I mean, we all know about the Beats—Kerouac (misogynist), Ginsberg (Man-Boy-Love Association member), Burroughs (murderer). But what about Mailer, Bellow, Salinger, Updike, Hemingway, and that notoriously bad father, William Faulkner? Don’t forget antisemites like Pound and Eliot. And you know that Robert Lowell could be savage to people? If you stock Plath and Sexton, aren’t you glamorizing suicide? People say Mary McCarthy had quite a tongue on her. And what about cranks like John Milton—anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, pro-regicide….And please don’t get me started on Byron (incest), Shelley (cheating), Baudelaire (whoring), Rimbaud (gun-running). But these literary cats are the low-hanging fruit. Imagine the moral probity of those bookstores deciding not to stock the shelves with work by and about bona-fide mass murderers—not only the obvious ones, like Hitler and Stalin, but also our own men and women: Nixon, Kissinger, Johnson, the Bushes, the Clintons, Madeleine Albright, Janet Reno (Waco—never forget!)? Then there are lesser criminals like Martha Stewart, who will also need to be purged. But we’re just getting started, aren’t we? From here on, as in any self-respecting theocracy, shelf-space should be reserved exclusively for the works of bona fide saints. Here is where it gets tricky, though, because surely the Bible will have to go—what other book has led to as much bloodshed, from the Crusades to the present? Keep in mind how Jesus provoked a crowd to stone the adulteress: “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”

(Source)

Food for thought. Another Biblical precept: "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

"Thanks for the rejection!"

(Annals of an Editor, #78)

The subject of this blog post is not ironic or rueful. We actually do receive many notes of thanks from authors who, after having their submissions rejected by Clarion, find that they are nonetheless grateful that our editors took the time to reply thoughtfully to their work. Not everyone receives a page-long note, but anyone who specifically asks for feedback on their writing or for an account for our reason of rejection, gets exactly that. We'll talk about other venues they might wish to submit to, if their work is simply out of our scope; we'll mention other authors whom their writing reminds us of, and encourage them to seek them out; and we'll share whatever several points of technical feedback felt salient enough to pass along.

Here are a few messages we've received this year, from authors who took our rejection of their work in a very positive way.

• Message from RD: "Thanks so much for your remarks. You are one of the VERY FEW who makes this effort, and from the void of bottomless submission piles it is both useful and appreciated. Again, many thanks."
• Message from WC: "Thanks for the feedback on my story. I look forward to using your thoughtful input in revising and, hopefully, improving it. Once again, I really appreciate your time and consideration."
• Message from GC: "I sincerely thank you for this kind rejection letter and the very helpful encouragement. I've reread my story and believe your readers are astute. I've re-worked the piece to rein-back the complexity of the language and create more consistent syntax. Thank you again for reading and taking the time to comment so specifically on my work. I hope to submit other stories to you in the future."
• Message from AM: "I appreciate your comments and thank you for them. At some point I'll try you again with deeper characters and language."
• Message from AK: "As a poet who has received many rejection letters, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your encouraging, positive, constructive response. It truly means so much to me. I will take your suggestions into account with all of my future work. Also, I'll remain hopeful that I may one day re-submit to your publication and then receive a response about publication! Again, thank you for your very thoughtful response. I know how many submissions you must receive, and your time is much appreciated."

All those sound like our rejection process is winning us new friends, not making new enemies.

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Our Clarion editors don't send out discursive, collegial rejection letters just to have something to brag about on the blog. We find that when people understand that our (unpaid) readers paid close and careful attention to their work, they feel valued. When they see that our decisions are made in a context of broad understanding of and appreciation for the contemporary field of small press publishing -- its diversity, its personalities, its opportunities and pit-falls -- they feel Clarion is a hive of knowledgeable operators. And when they see that a rejection isn't the end of their relationship with Clarion, but just the next step in an ongoing correspondence, they're so much more likely to look for our email updates, to follow us on social media, and to recommend our magazine to their fellow readers and writers.

Kindness, in short, is good business. Of course, we'd likely wish to make generosity, acumen and kindness our guidelines, even if it were NOT good business, but its fortunate for us and our goals that our temperamental inclinations happen to align with professional best practices. And we count ourselves generally fortunate that our editorial structure happens to allow for this kind of long-form feedback; not every lit mag out there can find the time to engage so deeply as we do.

All in the name of book-buying

In which our man in Nigeria reflects on the hustle of the local book-seller.

The man who sells second-hand books close to the University's gate, from whom I get most of my novels from, is in the habit of wanting to recommend books for me. 

Apparently, he has read a whole lot of them and feels he is in a better position to decide the best for me. I am often amused at this. I agree that I am quite terrible at making the right choices for commodities I need, but definitely not when it comes to books. I like to browse through and have a good look at them before I decide, and I like to make the decisions myself. 

The few times I decided to humor him so as not to hurt his feelings, and go with his recommendation, I ended up not enjoying the reads. The man is a fan of sci-fi. I hardly understand sci-fi (unless it has a touch of reality, as in Lesley's or Innocent's) and I have tried without success to make the man understand that I would rather select the books on my own. He doesn't even seem to notice I usually don't go with his recommendations, Oga would still jump up to select books for me the next time I drop by wanting to buy. And I observed that he sells far cheaper to me than to others. 

A few days ago, he asked me why I hadn't been coming to check out the books this semester. I thought of how he successfully led me to starve in Year 1 all in the name of book-buying, until I took on the form of a dehydrated okporoko.

In this season, who has that kind of money to spare? 

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a stringer for New England Review of Books, studying in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.