Change the Game: Thomas Sayers Ellis tellin' it (new rules for poets, publishing, living)




The Vedic Trimurti

 So I got permission for this posting, this cut 'n paste of truth, of all that and the shining light of we don't have to buy into their rules. (My words, so far, my italics. If you know anything of Thomas Sayers Ellis, you understand I am staring in the face of stark relentless loving hipiocity, coooooooolnez, unplugged boppin' and I'm not up to the task but am taskin' anyway.) 

TSE posted these rules in the other order, you know, the countdown order. Hey, stand on your head and read and it'll all work out. Thing is, things gotta change.

Thing is, being angry is static. Change comes from movement.  The change here is in the publishing, poetry, fictionizing scene which need to be dragged on the dance floor and showed new moves. As Thomas Sayers Ellis says, believe all of it and nothing.

Change the Games Rules
as dictated by merciful angels of the great beyond which is here and now 

to
Thomas Sayers Ellis

Change the Game Rule #1. Poetry is unique. A book of poetry is not a novel, so please resist the current trend of making books of poetry about one subject, Series writing. A book-length poem is different but most (not all) Series depend heavily on fiction with line breaks, as well as the enemy of the line, the sentence, so get thee beneath the wreckage, Story, and be thee drowned.



Change the Game Rule #2. No former student of a judge of a literary contest will be eligible for the prize. Judges must either remove themselves or the manuscript. Young poets should practice integrity when acquiring blurbs, requesting them from writers who are new to their work. Say, "I cannot accept this prize because the judge was my teacher." Interrupt the lit-inbreeding, the first step toward verse diversity!


Change the Game Rule #3. I am not telling writers what to write but I am telling them to write Now, about Today, to engage Society, all of the designs of Nature. We take too long, crafting our cries for permanence when nothing is meant to last. We've allowed the immediacy of ignorance to out advertise us and advertiser...s to out cinema us. Cinema owes poetry. Our lines don't have enough current mouths in them.


Change the Game Rule #4. Susan Sontag told me, "There are Only Two Places to Publish Poetry, the New Yorker and the Paris Review." O, the Traceable Hierarchy of Literary Publishing and the Predictable Schema of Most Rewarded Work: Witness, Experience, Simile, Fade-out with a Metaphor. How to Land at FSG, Get Noticed by... Knopf? Don't Start, Be Already Started, Pre-Page, in the Hand, in the Approach, in the Worry.


Change the Game Rule #5. Choose to Continue Language and Culture not to Leave it as You Have Inherited it. Every Time Writing Tries to Write You, Re-write It or Revise You. This Also Applies to Lines and Stanzas which are Governed by Breathing More so than Music or Meaning. I Take that Back. Music plus Meaning are Flowers in the pot of Dirt Known as Breathing!


Change the Game Rule #6. The Workshop Model Must Become Mobile. Time for the Literary Socratic Table to Spin. The (Living) Creative Process not the (Dead) Poem Must be Present. Time to Back to the Future to Iowa 1936 and add some moonwalking. The Workshop Model is Broke and Does Not Serve Wholeness.


Change the Game Rule #7. Share Your Resources. Journals and Anthologies Need Writers More than Writers Need Them. For Black Writers this Means Share Your White Folks. For White Folks this Means Syllabi More Black Writers. An Editor is not A Tastemaker––the Writing Is!


Change the Game Rule #8. Younger Writers With One, Two, Three Books (Flavors of the Month), Write Notes to the Editors Who Love You Suggesting That They Also Publish the Writers Who Have Made A Path for You. Too Often (As a Short-sighted Control Move), Older Editors Will Replace the Cultural Foundation with Young Writers Who are Simply Reinventing the 'Fro-Wheel. Beware, Inkslingers, of Such Advancement-Standstill.


Change the Game Rule #9: Don't Publish for Publication's Sake. Only Send to Journals You Really Like. A Table of Contents is a Community, A Conversation. If You Can't Find A Decent Place for Exchange or to Change the Exchange, Start Your Own. Don't Over Publish Or You Will End Up Like...


Change the Game Rule #10: Let the work Network.

"Make it New" is tough enough; being open to the new is a whole other challenge

The publishing industry has changed since I moved to New York. I managed, with near-tragic timing, to hit the city coincident with a great downslide, when mid-list authors were dumped without fanfare. It made for hard times and grim prospects. One writer I knew back in Seattle, who had several novels out, quit altogether and devoted himself to reviewing. This was around 1995, 1996, 1997.

A teacher at my grad. school was offered a chance to publish her second book, direct-to-paper. No high-priced hardback, just a nice, soft cover. She asked me, in a manner that was more telling than asking, "I'm too good for this, aren't I?"

I wanted to shout, "No! Take the deal" but didn't say a word. She passed on the deal. Her second book has yet to be published, and this is over ten years later.

I have to remind myself to be flexible. When online literary journals started appearing, I was sceptical and resisted submitting to them. Print was queen. Every writer wanted to be in print. I was not atypical of my generation, which is, ahem, older.

But I changed my mind as I realized that a poem or story got a sort of, if not infinite exposure, then infinite possibility of exposure online. Every time I think something isn't for me, I remind myself to start questioning my reservation and explore the possibilities that a fair wind is a blowin'.

Oh, by the way. Ezra Pound suggested we Make it new. His suggestion continues to haunt writers and artists. That kind of haunting, old time though it may be, is good.