On 22/4/05 1:39 PM, "Stephen Vincent" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On the question of editing - to throw the light on editors instead of
> writiers - I would like someone to query editors (online and in print) to
> see how many are what I call "active editors" and how many are "passive".
>   a. "Active" editors actually engage the work - question lines, choice of
> words, etc. - and work with poets to achieve (ideally) a more realized poem
> and/or series of poems in mag or book.
>   b. "Passive" editors go yes or no to a submission and rarely make
> suggestions of any sort - accepting or rejecting the "authority" of the
> author. A kind of consumer position, I think. The editor takes it off the
> shelf into his "basket" or goes on to the next shelf.
> In asking the question, I think it also important to see if an editor's
> decision to be passive is an economic one or philosophical one. The
> financial position an indication that there is not enough reward from sale
> to justify the time. Or, in the case of the "active" editor, given time
> resources - in terms of making writing - what kind of world view does that
> editorial position represent. ("Existential and improvisatory" or,
> alternatively, editorially coercive. Editorially we "might make something
> better" or we "will make your work correspond to our editorial point of
> view.")

Robert's post made me remember that I meant to get back to this one.

On the whole, I'm what you'd call a "passive" editor.  I used not to be, and
blush rather when I look back at some of the suggestions I used to make to
hapless poets.  On one hand, I will make suggestions where I think a work
might be improved, but these will generally be copy editing type questions,
and usually I won't make any such question about a poem, just about prose.
If I have doubts about a poem, I don't accept it.

I don't think of it as a consumer position.  If I invite a contributor to
send me some stuff, I set up a kind of contract of faith between us.  Part
of that faith is that I accept that this person is a writer who knows what
he or she is doing.  If I don't believe that, why am I publishing their
work?  But another reason I accept wholesale is that I do not look for
perfection, but something much less easy to define: a sense of life in the
writing, a vitality (I told you it was hard to define, it's hard to speak
outside cliché here) which may mean that something that has flaws might be
chosen because of some other quality that for me shines beyond its
imperfections.  But I don't pretend to publish anything for any reason
except that I like it (sometimes I think Masthead should be subtitled "Stuff
I Like").  

I had a particularly interesting experience once with a editor of the active
sort, who edits one of the more prestigious print mags here.  I was asked to
contribute and so, a little wickedly, sent a sequence of mine - A Requiem,
now in The Common Flesh.  It seemed to upset this man; we had quite a long
correspondence about it, in which he complained about the unstable "I" and
other things that I had done quite deliberately (he seemed to think they
were mistakes).  He said, among other things, that he felt bullied by it.  I
was rather taken aback by this: but I did have a feeling that it was rather
the other way around, that in order to get this poem into the magazine I was
being coerced to turn it into something else, that was not the poem I had
intended.  So I withdrew it from consideration.  But it made me very
thoughtful about intervention.  There is a place for editorial advice, but I
do think editing any text is a very intimate act that requires an informed
relationship which takes in the ambitions and context of the work.  That's
hard to find, and a magazine editor will rarely have the time to do
something like that.

All the best

A


Alison Croggon

Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com