On 10/19/05, mairead byrne <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I don't like print-on-demand. I have been engaging in quite a few
> conversations about the economy of poetry recently. That economy, for
> me, is warm. Print-on-demand is a broken link: stone cold. If you
> can deal with a pod company you know, where you have contacts, can
> call etc, it would be different. My experience has been no human
> contact and I didn't like it. Opinions vary widely on this topic.
I hadn't thought of that. Interesting...
> I publish a lot online. It's indispensable to me. I love it. Having
> a blog surprisingly does not replace books, however. I need those
> little demons. They are the handshakes of poetry, to say the least. I
> put them in people's hands and they put their books in mine. We all
> lose out (financially!).
> There's nothing to beat a book designed and printed by someone you
> know or will meet, I think. My best readers in the world are my
> publishers. I learn most from them. Also because of the investment I
> know they are making, even more in time than money. I am asking them
> to take time to move a letter one space left and they do. It
> strengthens my relationship with and understanding of poetry.
> Opinions on this vary of course.
I feel the same way about books. I love the book as an object. I
have books of poetry that I hate that I would never throw away because
they're old and I like the binding. I also love the spatial relations
that the page enforces on a piece of poetry that are, to a large
extent, missing from a piece of work on the web. When it comes to the
web, no matter how hard you work, you can never get something to look
the same for everybody (well, except if you distribute your work as a
pdf or as an image, but this goes against the philosophy of the web
somewhat).
I have often watched a scene in a movie where there is a bookcase in
the background and found myself looking at the books rather than at
the actors.
> The idea with paper is to make the poem worth it somehow.
I think this is the thing that print on demand demolishes. This stuff
is now so cheap that you don't really have to take such things into
consideration if you don't want to.
> I have taken to enclosing short poems like dollar bills in envelopes I send.
:)
Much more of a handshake than a book can ever be.
> The web and print complement each other madly. They are a crazy
> couple. Who would have thought it would work out.
I'm not sure that they are, which is why I brought the topic up in the
first place. I have the feeling that a lot of people who publish on
the web want to "graduate" to being published on paper. This is not
to say that everybody thinks this way, of course.
> RE vanity: have you ever heard that recoding of Pound in his last days
> reciting "Pull down your vanity ... This is not vanity ... Pull down
> your vanity..."
> Oh spooky scary chilling fractured sad.
No, but if you had a link I would love to. In fact, if anybody has
links to any recordings of Pound I would be delighted to get a hold of
them.
> I would so totally love to have "a nice website." All I have is a
> primitive blog and the couches of friends. I'm an oldster and print
> is in my bones. Time, money, opportunity: these are the criteria when
> it comes to a choice between books and web. There's no need to set up
> a false choice.
> Many people have a truly excellent both. And more. But of course
> there's a wide variety of opinion on this.
I should use this opportunity to say that I enjoy your blog very much.
The advantage of a service like blogger is that what you describe as
a "primitive blog" is much, much, much better than the sort of thing a
lot of people might cobble together by themselves. This way you only
need worry about the content, and I need not worry about having to
wade through terrible ugly web design to get to the content.
bob
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