Wave Your Thumbs, Sing a Jingle About the Stars

Michael Dirda has an essay over at book forum about the negative impact of bestseller lists. He suggests limiting the number of times an author can appear on the list: once. This, he argues, would allow other authors, whom can't compete with literary franchises like Tom Clancy and John Grisham, to still get exposure and introduce the general reading populace to a wider range of books.

It's a good suggestion, but one that isn't likely to happen. Our entire culture of reviews and marketing is based on numbers. Still, I'd like to see things go even further: remove the grading scales from reviews.

In book culture, this isn't too much of a problem. The NY Times has assigns no grades to their reviews. One of my favorite online magazines for poetry, Coldfront, however, does. We see this more in film and music. I can't think of a single venue that doesn't rate an album or movie with stars, numbers, or letters. Aside from advertising, what good does this do?

Stars, numbers, and letters don't communicate any of the things a well written review do, but how often does someone see a movie because of how many thumbs Ebert pointed at the sky or buy and album because it got a 9.0 on Pitchfork? These numbers reflect, more than anything, the editorial bias these venues operate under.

There's also the problem of expectations. If a trusted critic praises something, it sets your expectations somewhere. This is true regardless of the presence of numbers, but at least, were they to disappear, the expectations would be based on the content of a review and not the number assigned to it.

Of course, like Dirda's suggestion, this will never happen. The larger institutions who produce reviews are integral to marketing campaigns, but how many times have critics been wrong, how often have you found your taste at odds with what the prevailing attitudes of the mainstream are?

I Survived AWP

About a week out from AWP and I have finally recovered. I definitely tried to do too much.

On Thursday, I attended panels from 9:00 a.m. until 5 p.m., went to my favorite bar in the world, and then attended two readings back to back. I didn't get home until somewhere around 3 a.m., didn't fall asleep until four, and then woke up at 7:30 to do it all over again. Friday was an early day. I stayed in panels until about 4:30 and then just hopped a bus back to Boulder to get some rest. I took it easy Saturday. I attended some panels and mostly walked around the book fair talking to people. Anyway, here are the highlights:

• Donald Revell. This man is incredible. He led my favorite panel of the entire event, "Poetry After the 00's." The panel handed some poems out to everyone for discussion (Oppen, Ashbery, and Auden were included). Basically, Donald and the other moderator offered differing points of view on each to show a more traditional and a more forward looking interpretation. Very funny. My favorite quote from Revell was, "If you want to put your suffering down on paper, well anybody can do that. But I know nobody that can write the new poem, and given a choice between anybody and nobody, I would choose neither." Revell also did translations of Rimbaud's Illuminations and A Season in Hell, both of which appear to be superior to the New Directions editions.

• The Bloof Books reading. I had to wander into a somewhat sketchy part of Denver to find this nearly unmarked door in Green Spaces Colorado, but once I got there it was well worth it. Jennifer L. Knox and Peter Davis were the two reasons I was there and they did not disappoint. Bought some copies of Poetry!Poetry!Poetry!, drank free beer from a keg they had so graciously provided.

• The Book Fair. I've kind of ignored the world of contemporary poetry for the simple lack of finding a good place to start. It's only in the last few months I've found contemporary poets that are writing the kind of poetry I want to read. However, the problem seems to be finding good magazines. I've scanned the internet several times for a litmag that I would want to read and contribute to, but never with any real luck. Getting to see hundreds of magazines and their editors definitely gave me a starting point. Also, free books! I got around 30 new books while there, most of which I didn't pay for. Free subscription to Fence? Check. Free issues of Poetry? Check. Free broadsides and books of poetry? Check.

• Getting invited to contribute to Coldfront magazine.

I intend to finish the magazine in the next week, now that I've recovered from the AWP. Before I can get to that though, is the more pressing issue of my thesis.