As a bid for posterity hard to cap a lacustrine conflagration, though I'm not sure youtube will prove more durable than paper. I certainly hope not.
  Only a few poets' manuscripts may stand much chance in the future of being consulted, so it seems rather heroic for libraries ever to buy them. I was about to write that apart from hailing "readers ages hence" much needed funds may be a factor in poets selling their stuff when Pierre explained this point. What I hadn't thought of was the inducement of having a kind of better organised external filing system.
   Having a book published, or gathering work in some alternative form, is surely a claim of sorts on futurity, even if that happens to be a sadly abbreviated future. It's often considered vain and presumptuous for writers to have any hopes beyond the present moment but I think it goes with the territory.  
   Because of most writing's ambiguous material status (transferrable intact from one to another piece of paper, one screen to another, or from voice to memory) there might seem something fetishistic about treating a manuscript as a unique art object. But it has been, and despite David's point about computers I suspect it continues to be, the way most poets work: with pen on paper. Even when a poem is printed the page is likely to be revised by hand.  So hence such archives: for those interested there is a way of tracing the evolution of a particular work.
   I may belong to an all but extinct species. I fear emails have ousted letters pretty effectively, but have computers made such a difference to the way poems are made? How do poets these days actually write?

Jamie


> On 26 Aug 2016, at 18:30, Kent Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Despite some recent interests from a couple institutions, I burned all of my remaining papers about four months ago, in a bonfire, by a lake. But I had it filmed for "posterity." It is going up on YouTube after I die. The music and production values are quite good. I figured I would get many more YouTube hits for it than I would applicants to rummage through my archive. Plus, it was all such a hopeless mess, I never could have prepared it properly.
> 
>>>> Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> 08/26/16 12:03 PM >>>
> I plan to be cremated and live out eternity on the mantle. I've instructed my son to burn the occasional poetry book and mix its ashes with mine so that I have something to read: eternity can be such a bore.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: David Lace <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Aug 26, 2016 9:31 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Have any of you prepared for posthumous recognition?
>> 
>> Not being a poet myself, I’m fascinated by the concept of posthumous recognition for ones poetry. Some poets I know of are also fascinated by it, and have gone to some lengths to ensure that their poetry (indeed also themselves) gain some sort of posthumous recognition. Many of them have been quite proactive in this regard, and have taken measures to ensure that their poetic output (and other relevant miscellany) is regularly deposited in various university archives and Special Collection departments around the world. Are there any on this list who this applies to, and if so can you tell us something about your motivations and experiences of doing this.
> 
>