> Incidentally I think the responses to the phrase "most prestigious journal"
> have diverged into a discussion of which journal is best. But that's a matter
> of opinion, whereas the prestigiousness of an American literary or scholarly
> journal is a matter of socially determined fact.
Yes, the discussion of "best" & "best for what" seems core here. The other
night - at a dinner including collectors and curators - the question came up
as to whether or not it was still possible to have a "movement" or "school"
among the arts - as in "Abstract Expressionism" or "Pop" or whatever. The
question was asked because right now there seems to a void of such. Some
people argued it was no longer possible - the Internet access to new works
had rendered obsolete the currency and need for one site to claim hegemony.
Global intermingling has neutralized the primacy of New York or Berlin.
I did not quite 'buy' the arguments. But argued that historical events and
situations create artistic signatures. That something major will eventually
emerge around which the work of artists and poets will take a particular
shape, tone, etc. - even if it is not an obvious association.
Which is to say, in terms of poetry journals, the ones (Poetry and Am Po
Review) we are discussing serve, at best or worst, some kind of 'pantheon
function.' From which someone(s) may cement a career or an acknowledgement
that is usually belated or of little interest in terms of a place where a
contemporary reader goes(as in WCW) to get 'the news.' That is a place here
the language and/images are electric and contemporaneous with both the
collective and one's own sense of the personal. It's not like picking up
the early numbers of Transition or Black Mountain Review (or even the Poetry
magazine of the sixties under Henry Rago).
So, I suspect those of us who send to Poetry or the American Poetry Review
(in 'my' country) or send to the London Review of Books (??) are basically
in career or anthology "send-up mode" (all quite legitimate - might even
help sell a new book') -- where we are battling things out or nourishing
things on and between our blogs (or say sending things to "Poker" - a hot
magazine right now - we are in "the foundry" of our time. Indeed I think
it's an exciting initiatory moment here - among blogs, print and, for me,
mixed with local, mainly house readings.
At the dinner I brought up a movie about young graffiti artists in New York
in the early nineties (name forgot), but the kids are outside a subway yard
and look up and see this freshly painted white train car come out on the
trestle and you see the electric, unmistakable glee of relish of getting
their work up on that fresh, pure clean canvas. (My own son - who was
watching - was off and running, spray can in hand, as if he had just seen a
confirmatory anthem!)
I don't think many of us have that glee when we think of opening Poetry or
the Am Poetry Review - I, at least, look at them for the exceptions - or, as
Mark W says, not any editorial vision that will startle or take me to a new
place.
Yes, I believe should be eternal, too!
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
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