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Michael Simms: A Note from the Editor on the Vagaries of Publishing Poetry on the Internet
Once again, a poet has emailed me, peeved that a poem of hers that appeared in Vox Populi is not anything like the version she sent me. The line-endings and stanza-breaks are scrambled. Her careful crafting of white-space has disappeared. Her neologisms have been auto-corrected to gibberish. The indentations are… Well, I’m embarrassed. She’s embarrassed. Readers are shunning the page.
For the umpteenth time, I manually correct the html of a poem and remind the poet that a website is not like a typewriter where you can control exactly the way things appear. A website often sees non-standard formatting as errors to be fixed. And even if the formatting holds on the website, each server and social network may make arbitrary changes. Poems transmitted by email are often a mess. And even if these systems don’t screw up the poem, individual laptops, desktops, and handheld devices make adjustments to layout based on screen size and shape, as well as font preferences of the user.
I say to the poet (and all poets): “I’ve done the best I can. Now pray to the Gods of the Internet that they look favorably upon your poem.”
Since the internet has become the dominant medium for poetry (Vox Populi gets as many as 170,000 hits a day), many poets are evolving a style which is internet-friendly. I tell the poet that she might take a look at the layout of Jose Padua’s poems on Vox Populi. The poems are flush-left with short lines and no stanza breaks — perfect for website publication. Here’s one of my favorites:
American Sadness
Of all the sadness in the world
there is nothing that can compare
with American sadness. When
America is sad the whole world
weeps. Whenever one American
is sad, at least two non-Americans
somewhere else in the world consider
the possibility of ending it all. When
a hundred Americans are sad, wars
are fought in faraway lands for
the great purpose of making these
hundred Americans happy again.
When a million Americans are sad,
every flag in America droops, then
slides an inch and then another inch
down the flag pole and nothing can
stop this descent until bold, confident
smiles return to these Americans’ faces.
American sadness, let’s make it clear,
is exceptional. Unlike what you may
have heard, it doesn’t always talk
softly, but it always carries a big stick
because no one is sad the way an
American is sad. No one drags his feet
through the dullness of a day, or
walks with her eyes looking downward
quite as sadly as an American who
feels sad because America is losing
a battle, coming in second, or washing
ashore with empty pockets and bad breath.
American sadness, of course, is the greatest
sadness in the world—do not look it
in the eye unless your intention is
to make amends. Do not settle for a
knowing grin, or a sliding into place
of the proper order of thought or things.
Work hard, do your best, and fight
whenever a fist is called for, or a bomb
needs to be dropped upon a civilian population
whose greatest misfortune is not being American.
But above all, keep American sadness at bay
like a ship that wrecks off shore through
instability or from fault of navigation.
Let’s remember to keep America happy.
Let’s keep America entertained.
.
Another option for poets in the Age of Information is to forgo the whole apparatus of line-breaks, stanza divides, white space… and instead adopt the appearance of prose, albeit a compact lyrical prose that uses sentence rhythms, quirky attitudes, and quick turns of thought to create poetry. Here, for example, is the opening to a wonderful Vox Populi essay by the poet Adrian Blevins called “An Ode to the Erection.”
.
I sing, for my daughter, of shanks and shafts and the endearing contrast between the mind’s affairs and the body’s undiscriminating inclinations.
This is a midget and perhaps very foolish ode, I kid you not, to the erection. I’m writing it for my baby girl, who’s just now taking an afternoon nap inside her exemplary body on the big bed she was born in. I take on the expedition, too, for her friend Charlotte, who just turned 2 in April, and for the companions the both of them will have in the years to come.
I was myself a doe in the headlights when it came to sex. I was a grasshopper on the windshield of a Dodge Durango. I was a wee strawberry below the steel-toed boots of some mean-assed fisherman. My parents did sit me down for “the talk” when I was about 11, and my father, a painter, even got out his paper and his pencils. But what my parents covered that afternoon was menstruation and ovulation. And while there is nothing wrong with menstruation and ovulation, it was erections that dumbfounded me, erections that were the trump cards in the deck.
Thus I take them out here and lay them — ace of spades, of hearts, of clubs and of diamonds — on the table….
.
For many years, I ran Autumn House Press, a boutique poetry publisher of beautiful books and chapbooks for discerning readers who love the look and feel, and yes, the smell of books. I’m still passionate about the printed page and will never stop reading books, but I’m also a realist who’s aware of the enormous changes brought about by technology. Just as ancient poets had to deal with the evolution from oral to written language (boy, that must have pissed off a lot of old poets who’d spent their lives perfecting their memories!), and late twentieth century poets had to adjust to changes in the technology of printing and the rise of mega-publishers and big-box bookstores, so the current generation has to learn to use the internet. Everything changes, folks, get used to it.
The internet offers a cheap and efficient way for poets to reach millions of readers and listeners. So far there are no censors and very few laws stopping us. Seventy years ago, we (that is, poets) snubbed our collective noses at the opportunity to bring poetry to the people through television. Let’s don’t blow it this time. As the business consultants say, “There are no problems, only opportunities.”
Of course, some poets are more than a little exasperated when I say that they might consider changing their style to be more internet-friendly. After all, the ancient craft of poetry takes years of practice to learn. Turn, counter-turn, leap, and pause are intrinsic to a poem’s aesthetic experience. But, hey, the internet doesn’t care. The Muses are alive and well, but Apollo with his lyre doesn’t rule here. Nor gray-haired bright-eyed Athena with her wise counsel. Rather Hermes, God of Messengers, Travelers, and Thieves, interested only in getting the message delivered quickly, dominates the Age of Information. Let’s make sure the message includes poetry.
—
Copyright 2016 Michael Simms
Hermes, God of Messengers, Travelers, and Thieves (image from Wikia)
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Watch like a hawk at the staging stage, right before publishing. If what you see, the formatting — abuses your sensibilities, consider scanning the page. Of course things will not be consistent, ergo the design aesthetics and dynamics; but also no lamentation. You rock Sire!
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After 8 years as a print magazine, I took Pemmican to the internet in 2001. At that time, internet lit mags were radically new and, yes, you did your own coding. Many, many poets told me at the time they would rather chew tinfoil than publish in an internet magazine. It wasn’t a “real” magazine, I was told. Now, of course, no one thinks twice about internet publishing. But for those first years of being online, it was an act of survival punctuated by insults and contempt. I haven’t forgotten that part.
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Thanks, Robert. I remember those days of internet publishing. Early on, a poet I admired whom I had been publishing in print for years, said to me, “Is publishing on the internet like writing your poems in water? You publish them and they disappear?”
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Where can I find more of Adrian Blevins’ work? Blog? Thanks
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So glad you like Adrian Blevins’ writing! Here are several more of her lyrical essays:
https://voxpopulisphere.com/?s=Blevins
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Check out my blog!!! Any advice is appreciated!
https://ournewbeginning.wordpress.com/
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So true, Michael, but what occurs to me is your attitude as I read the comments. I love books. I love poetry. But change is the only constant, so we must embrace it. I enjoyed following the comments and watching how open you were to learning from Josephine. Better things ahead.
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Thanks for your generous response! One of the good things about my posting this essay has been people like Josephine offering suggestions for improving my online editing skills. Her techniques don’t solve all the problems with formatting poetry, but they solve many of them. Onwards!
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Reading this made me realize how much I didn’t know about the writers of the Internet. I am curious to know more and be a part of this writing world.
Although I am not a brilliant writer I absolutely love poetry.
I have just started a blog recently and I am still debating if I should post some of my poems or not. Any advice?
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Post them, and let readers decide whether they like them.
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Maybe I am missing the point, but have you ever thought of using PDFs to post the poems, so in which the manner the poet has written them stays true?
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A good point, Dean, and we have used pdf’s in the past, but they come with their own set of issues.
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I’ve seen Poetry Magazine often publish poems (typically older or long ago published pieces) as .jpgs / photo files. Could you grab a screenshot of more complex or intricate pieces and share as photos? Just an idea.
I definitely agree with Josephine that the html editor is the best way to go. The two most helpful html tools to me are the ones to “insert line break” and to “insert single space.”
This article has been a godsend to me; I’ve bookmarked it and find myself going back to it whenever I need to remember how to insert white space:
http://m.wikihow.com/Insert-Spaces-in-HTML
Thanks for an interesting article,
Christy
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Thanks, Christy.
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I liked the post, but didn’t like a poem… back to Shakespeare… Ahhhh
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Nice post, also liked the American sadness poem.
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Very good perspective. Notes taken.
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I like that poem about American Sadness. It smells like teen spirit.
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Smells like minimalism
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Thanks, Walt! I enjoyed reading your essay about Michelangelo published today in Discover. Nice work!
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Very well put! I write prose more than poetry but often find myself annoyed by how much I have to chop and edit my work to appeal to hasty internet users (I know I can be one of them too!). This definitely gives me a lot to think about and puts it a bit more in perspective.
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Reblogged this on bookworm and commented:
excellent write up about the challenges faces by a website / blog
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Nice post. And yes — I’m one of those readers who loves the “look, feel, and smell of books.” I hate Kindles. I hate reading online. But I do my best! And this post sort of hit home, since I’ve been excavating and posting some of my old poetry lately.
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
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A former bookseller, I, too, love printed matter. But I’ve accepted that my preferences are no longer the norm, so I’ve adapted. I have a Kindle, but use it to read “disposable” books, not those I’ll keep and cherish, but those I read simply for entertainment, or when I’m too impatient to wait or find a book on something I’m interested in. But I never try to read poetry on the Kindle. Can’t do it.
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Hey, I hear you on that one! Looking forward to more of your material, Robert. All my best. 🙂
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Editing requires a sobering amount of tact and brilliance. Poetry, for me, is the most difficult medium of expression. So much can be said with one word. Thank you for your ellucidating article.
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You poor thing 🙂 Hats off to editors!
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Thanks, but I really love publishing poetry. This old dog just has to learn the tricks of using the new media…
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All new things passes the headache eventually ~
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One for the reference books. Thanks.
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Thank you for sharing the poem about the sadness of America. Maybe it should have been about the madness of America.
Nowadays a nonsense book like Finnegans Wake would almost write itself. Just leave it to the idiosyncratic spellchecker.
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I now use less “space” on the page than I used to, for this very reason. Most of my publications appear on the web, so I’ve adapted to the medium, even for the pieces I post on my own blog.
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Robert, I love your poems. Obviously, you’ve adapted your style brilliantly to the internet.
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Thank you, Michael. I still enjoy working with space on the page, but when formatting is potentially an issue, I don’t send the piece to online journals.
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Some great advice here! I generally write short poems, no longer than 4/5 lines usually, which I find is easy to digest online.
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“Let’s remember to keep America happy.
Let’s keep America entertained.”
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Haha, that above poem could be a presidential speech, of course followed by a wild applause of tunnel-hearing Americans.
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Ha-ha couldn’t say better!
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Hi Josephine. Have you ever published a projective verse poem that uses a lot of white space with broken lines all over the page? Many poets use this form, as well as many well-known modern poets such as Charles Olson. The Black Mountain School used this technique often. One of my favorite contemporary poets, Laure-Ann Vosselaar, is one of many who have been experimenting with using the middle of the page with the lines. The layout of these poems is not internet-friendly, and the form can get scrambled.
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Hi Michael, Andrew McMillan (winner of this year’s Guardian First Book Prize and the 2015 FentonAldeburgh First Collection Prize for his collection ‘Physical’ published by Cape) uses white space as punctuation and uses jagged lines, etc and sent me work in 2012 https://andotherpoems.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/andrew-mcmillan/ As far as I’m aware nobody has difficulty reading it. There are others on the site who also work this way. Perhaps all my readers and writers are too polite to tell me the formatting has gone awry! Thanks for getting back to me. – Josephine
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Fascinating, Josephine! I love this poem. When I’ve tried to publish poems that use white space in this way, the format doesn’t hold. How do you do it?
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Hi Michael, Glad you like Andrew’s work, his book ‘Physical’ is stunning. I wrote this post about formatting poetry in WordPress https://josephinecorcoran.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/how-to-format-poetry-in-wordpress/ The most useful tip is to use ‘Text’ rather than ‘Visual’ Editor and to use the following HTML code when you need to preserve extra spacing. Hope this helps! Best wishes, – Josephine
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Unfortunately the HTML code hasn’t appeared in the comment box but it’s in the article.
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Thank you so much, Josephine! I’ve saved your helpful post on my desktop and will refer to it often. You’ve taught this old dog a few new tricks…
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Thanks for letting me know!
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This article is an eye opener.
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A cautionary tale.
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As a child trapped indoors during Washington state’s gray, wet winters, I was reborn whenever the next book in that winter’s series arrived in the mail. It was always a thrill to escape my indoor confines with a new kid-thriller. And the feel, the weight, the sound of pages, the smell, all made it such a sensual experience. Publishing is a noble art form, that, it seems, is slowly perishing. Things have changed. But not all for the bad. I can still buy the hardcopy if I want. And online publishing can make each read fresh and often more compelling for it’s immediacy. Vox Populi brings immediate life to the pulse of ideas we share. A bump in the road now and then is to be expected, given all the work that goes into this wonderful and essential endeavor.
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Eloquently put. Thanks for sharing the beautiful examples as well. It’s nice to see artists (yes poets) challenging the way out work is imbibed. Using images instead of text can be a sweet way of maintaining ones unique presentation as many online poets demonstrate with aplomb.
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I mostly submit poetry to online journals for exactly the accessibility. Ditto use of twitter for haiku…so much easier than submitting to haiku journals.
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