OUR PERCEPTIONS, OUR SELVES
NUMBERS TROUBLE, CONTINUED

Before heading out yesterday for Jackson Heights, I pulled down a copy of Ironwood 20 from the shelf to read on the hour-and-a-half subway ride from Kensington.

Published a quarter of a century ago in 1982, the magazine is divided into two sections: the first is an extended feature, including poetry, by the late, great New York poet Hilda Morley. The second half is a language-writing anthology-in-a-magazine, “Realism,” edited by Ron Silliman, bookended with an intro by Silliman and something of an afterword by Kathleen Fraser.

I hadn’t read it in at least ten years. I was struck by how contemporary it felt. Not just the poetry, but the concerns as expressed by Silliman and Fraser in their essays.

Doing a “numbers trouble” on the “anthology,” I note that there are 18 men and 7 women, or 28% women included in the anthology itself—or 18 men and 8 women, or 32% women, if we include Fraser’s essay at the back.

Looking at numbers alone, we’re obviously not seeing gender balance.

But Ron brings up both sexism and feminism in the essay, and does so a number of times. He in fact suggests that feminism has had enormous impact on the poetry culture at large, and that feminist thought and intervention informs the writing—and, one presumes, the selection of writers—associated with the language-writing trend. Fraser, too, concentrates on feminism in her essay.

Is this lip service?

If we judge “Realism” by numbers alone, with present expectations of more-or-less 50/50 male and female representation, perhaps. But this doesn’t tell us the whole story. It in fact erases the larger context in which this “anthology” appeared. And it ignores the quality and concerns of the writing itself.

Social change does not happen overnight. Should Barack Obama be elected president, one argument goes, it will have a positive effect on race relations in this country. But will his election erase centuries of legal and economic and other social policy in this country? Hardly. It’s a step in the right direction. One of many we’ll need to take in the coming years.

One problem with “Numbers Trouble,” and a good portion of the responses that have followed, is the extent to which feminist writing—whatever that may be—or writing informed by feminism—whatever that may be—is not taken up.

Johannes Göransson points to one response that foregrounds this: Joyelle McSweeney’s “anthological thinking” on the Delirious Hem “Numbers Trouble” response blog.

McSweeney’s argument is that feminism, as such, opposes the very kinds of thinking that would lead anyone to value hierarchical or patriarchic values. It’s a complex argument, and one that I’m likely going to oversimplify here. That said, the upshot is, how can we expect to change anything, or more importantly to sustain change as it is made, if we fail to constantly and consistently assign value to positive change, and most importantly to the models that support this change, as it takes place?

McSweeney points to the How2 site, a living model of feminism as expressed through poetry and the poetry subculture. How2 is one of numerous positive examples mentioned in the original “Numbers Trouble” article, but as McSweeney notes, rather than pick up and focus on what is different about these other sites, how they organize information, how—in fact—they value information, that Spahr and Young then dive back down into anthologies as a primary site of evaluation.

The anthologies in question—from Eliot Weinberger’s 1993 American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators to Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin’s 1999 The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry—indeed skew hugely male.

McSweeney argues that the anthology model itself is problematic. I would also argue that the anthologies mentioned do not include any edited or co-edited by women, and like Spahr and Young’s list of experimental poetry presses, skew towards editors in their 50s and 60s. What happens if we include An Anthology of (New) American Poetry, Bay Poetics, Out of This World, and The New Coast issues of O.blek?

The phrase “self-determined destiny” pops up numerous times in Silliman’s introduction to the Ironwood 20 “Realism” anthology. It’s an idea echoed by Fraser in her essay/afterword, “Partial Local Coherence Regions with Illustrations: Some notes on Language Writing” Fraser writes:

“We know … the rage of having our limits dictated by others whose station in life gives them that power; to suggest to us, to imprint upon us the appropriateness of a certain social, political, or esthetic set of values or behaviors. Admiring ‘admired’ works of art, only. … The canon appears fixed and cocked. We internalize, are filled with despair at not being good enough, smart enough. If that pain is survived, its survivors remain upset and curious for more information. New structures begin to form tentatively, beyond the given.”

McSweeney echoes Fraser in her response, in reminding us of reader agency. What an anthology, or other venue is, is what it is. How we, as audience, interact with it, and what we do, later, based on that interaction, is an entirely other proposition.

To be blunt: I don’t own most of the anthologies Spahr and Young mention. And, of those I do own, I crack them open less often than I visit the How2 site. I don’t mean to suggest that how we read is more important than what is there. But that, how we read informs what we then “put out there,” presently and in the future. It’s all connected.

And social change, again, happens over time. Over time, I’ve gone from someone who edited a chapbook press in the 1980s that published 100% men, to someone who co-edited a non-profit press in the 1990s that published 33% women, to someone who edited a Web zine in the late 1990s that published a few more men than women to someone who co-edited an anthology-in-a-magazine in the 2000s that published as many women as men.

Silliman’s intro to “Realism” was not just lip service, despite how the numbers might strike a casual reader today. Not just because the numbers were better than when compared to earlier anthologies of experimental poetry, but because he was talking about something a bit further reaching than numbers. Among other things, he was talking about self-determination. In other words, he was writing about a group of people with similar concerns, among whom there were a number of women who had or who would edit or co-edit presses and magazines of their own: Tuumba, Qu, O Books, the Poetics Journal, and How(ever), which were at least of equal importance as The Figures, Potes & Poets, Roof, Tottle’s and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.

And their self-determination, their refusal to accept things as they were, has had measurable impact, most obviously on the primary sites of power with respect to experimental poetry today: Small Press Distribution, Small Press Traffic, The Segue Foundation and Reading Series, and The Poetry Project at St. Marks.

Surprisingly, none of those institutions above make an appearance in the original “Numbers Trouble” essay. Why not? It certainly is not because Spahr and Young don’t personally value them. Looking at SPD’s Web site, 18 of the 20-odd books listed in their “Staff Picks” are by women (90% women). Half of the “SPD Recommends” titles are by women. Half of the titles featured on their Home Page are by women.

Of double-author readings, SPT will be hosting 7 women and 2 men (78% women) in the January-April season. Segue will host a line-up featuring 46% women in Winter/Spring 08. In the month of February, The Poetry Project has 43% women in its line-up.

These numbers do not tell the whole story, either. But they are more reflective of the poetry subculture that I know and work in. I'm not an academic, and I have never applied for a grant for myself, so I can't speak to awards or academic positions, which are certainly telling with respect to how institutions value female poets versus male poets. Spahr and Young are no doubt right that women make less money than men, generaly, and more specifically, as poets.

But again, what does academia or granting agencies have to do with experimental poetry, or more importantly, with the experimental poetry subculture? They do inform it to some extent, especially as we look to either for our rewards. But not to the extent that a portal like SPD or venues like the Poetry Project inform it.

Reading Spahr and Young, and especially after reading McSweeney's response, I had the gnawing feeling that the authors of "Numbers Trouble" spend more time looking elsewhere for validation than most poets I hang out with. All poets look to external validation to some, even great, extent. But where are they looking? And why? In largely ignoring the work and example of their peers, in focusing largely on male-dominated institutions and established presses, they ultimately ignore their own work, the literal power of their presence and experience. It's understandable in a semi-polemic argument like "Numbers Trouble," so I certainly don't blame them for that. And they both have a personal interest in academia; their livelihoods depend upon it.

But, but, but. How much of their argument has to do with the experimental poetry culture as it actually exists outside of academia? As it exists, I would argue, for most of us?

As Fraser concludes her essay: "The shift is apparent, the esthetic mandate infinitely more complex--composed, now, of an increasingly politicized consciousness and a hunger to find personal authority and artistic challenge in women writers and critics, as well as in the always/everywhere powerful male dictates."