I'm what Steve's calling an active editor, but I hope tactful. I don't
accept a book manuscript unless I can live with it as is, and I let authors
know that there's no gun to their heads to make changes. But I'll fight,
explain, persuade to get my suggestions listened to, if not accepted.
Usually the author understands my concern about this or that and comes up
with a better solution. In almost every case we both wind up feeling that
the book is the better for the process, and it's led to some enduring
friendships.
Which doesn't mean that the path is without stones. I grumble about
suggestions for my own work, and so do a lot of those I edit. The question
is what one does with the suggestions the next morning. And the assumption
is that the poem and the book are independent objects and not extensions of
one's ego.
They're not the extension of my ego as editor, either. For one thing, I
never edit in the direction of making the poem or book read like something
of mine--it's rather a matter of helping it read more consistently like
itself. And of course if the poet says no to a suggestion and won't budge
or come up with an alternative that's the end of it--published as is.
When I ask a translator to do work for me I always make clear that I'll be
editing actively. I don't know how anybody manages to produce decent
translations consistently without editing, but translations are almost
never edited, and most translations in print are pretty ghastly as a result.
I tend to like best books in which the poet is creating something new to
him/her, and sometimes a midwife can be helpful. My own work has been
enormously helped by the suggestions of others.
All of that said, when I did a magazine I rarely made suggestions except to
very close friends. I simply didn't and don't see magazine publication as
demanding the same degree of finish as a book.
Which leads back to internet publication. I feel absolutely free to submit
for print publication anything that hasn't been in print, regardless of
prior appearance on the web, unless the print editor says otherwise. And I
don't trouble the editor by informing him/her unless asked. The only
exception to this is ebooks--always acknowledged, never republished on
paper without permission. My reasoning is that both the editor and I have
gone through significant labor and agony over the text, which is
final--"sacred"--in the same sense that a book on paper strives to be.
Which doesn't of course mean that I'll never tinker with it again.
The ebook also invites downloading onto hard copy, and it's in hard copy,
whether as a printed book or a download, that I want my work read. Ezines
can be wonderful things, but they don't invite the slow contemplation of
text in the way that the object held in one's hand does--quite the opposite.
Web editors display a very wide range of opinions about all this. Recently
I was asked for a significant contribution of translations for a website
the nature of which is still to be determined--it may turn out to be
nothing more than a blog. The author of the originals asked me to go along
with what was asked because he likes the editor. The restrictions were that
poems that had appeared in print were fine, but not poems that had appeared
elsewhere on the internet.
Mark
At 06:15 AM 4/23/2005, you wrote:
>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
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