'ok, people, let's stay in
the game, we got a close
here' (taken from ER, heard from the telly
right after reading the e-mail
just back from Devon, so belated response
here which is likely to drag out over the next
couple of days as sediment whirls around.
I heard this line of dialogue uttered over
a dying patient, left the room, started to type this).

Thanks to Keith (again, pin to that ballooning head dood)
for saying much of what i might have said less capably. Also
to Pierre for a useful addition re - Cambridgean insularities.
There are many other entanglements into that mix (funding
policies during the mid 70 until recent period - the ill
fated Poetry Society fiasco  -  Thatcherism  -  poverty
-  transitional print technologies), to the extent that
whilst Keith should write up his points from a US
perspective there needs to be exposition here, as well as Eire.

That's partly why Romana Huk's 'Assembling Alternatives'
might prove to be such a pivotal gathering.

What interests me are ways in which paratextual aspects impact
on distribution and reception of the work. Many of my favorite
books are anathema to most, sometimes all, bookshops. Prynne's
work in books such as 'High Pink on Chrome', 'Down Where Changed'
and other such book environments produced by Prynne himself
are ill-served by the Allardyce Barnett edition with which
presumably a wider readership is familiar.

Much the same can be said of most of the more exacting writers
in the UK. This might seem like another argument for 'clerisy'
but far from it. I value the small press production ethos. No,
not the fine laid vellum signed and numbered end of that. I
favour small press in more numerous editions using the www to
develop direct marketing and direct mail ordering networks.
Cut out the mediators .

This is NOT intended as any form of criticism of intermediary
presses such as Reality Street, Pig and so on here  -  nor
of Sun & Moon, Roof in the States.

One of the reasons why Bernstein's quote appears on 'Clean
and Well Lit' is because of differing paratextual strategies
developing between presses in the UK and the US over the past
twenty odd years. In relation to marketplace of course. But
something of a fresh start beckons.

Let it not pass unnoticed that little of the earlier work
by US writers has been available here. I recall Miles Champion
being almost chained to our bookshelves, saying that
this was the work he'd heard about and wanted to read in
their original editions, or read at all, he'd found it nowhere
else. Well that's bunk, because i could name another half
a dozen houses around the uk where he could just as easily
have seen say 'Ketjak', 'Shade', 'a.k.a.', 'Sonnets (memento
mori)', 'The Middle', 'Writing As an Aid to Memory', 'Opera -
Works', 'Down and Back', 'Ow's Waif', 'Clairvoyance Journal',
'As Is' and many others. Let alone the extraordinary 'Talks'
issue of Hills, or This, Temblor and so on.
I mean what's the problem (just in case anybody takes this seriously . . .)!

Robin, what do you mean with that old chestnut Form and Content  -
these are books.

love and letters
cris







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