Editor's Notes
Hi. My name is Kyle, I do a zine and a press. I write too. And sometimes read.
el pobre Mouse
The zine I co-edit with Sara Larsen, el pobre Mouse, is gearing up for our third issue, and we're open for submissions. Our backbone is poetry and poetics and the more daring and/or subtle shades of prose (sorry plotsters) - and our aesthetic leanings are well-documented on this blog (at least mine are). Defining aesthetics is a tricky if necessary part of publishing. Even if that definition is "work I like." el pobre Mouse is interested in work which takes poetry seriously, skeptically, and with a definite charge. Work with libratory aims, work that acknowledges and celebrates human desires, including those of the mind. Contemporary work conscious of form, tradition, and the possibilities of play and experiment. One particular (personal) interest: work which moves into the visual: in all the variants spelled out on g huff's blog please apply.
In addition - interviews, correspondance, essays, book reviews. el pobre appreciates a textured, varied text. a document of our lives as writers - more a fluxus box than a PBS documentary-by-numbers.
Every time I write this, it changes. We have an e-flyer which will be posted here shortly and making the email rounds, and we'll be launching our own blog too as a virtual HQ/sand castle.
Our deadline is October 15th.
-
subday press
I co-edit subday with Summer Rodman. We publish contemporary poetry and hybrid works.
Over the last few days I have been reviewing a Matt Langley manuscript, which we are editing for a forthcoming book on subday. I have a few thoughts on editing from this:
At his or her best, an editor offers a thorough exam of the text-child - but the parent/writer is still in the room, or right outside the door. And the editor is less a doctor in the Western sense of "fix the flaw" as a holistic one - checking flows and currents throughout the text - noting blocks and limits. The editor listens first - to this other body, to their relationship, and trusts his response to this listening. Learns to trust it. An editor offers up these insights, and, together with the writer, sorts out which illumine and further the work at hand. While the writer, at any time, can say "get your hands off my child", likewise, at any junction, the editor can say "i no longer feel comfortable treating this patient."
While this clarity of roles may be nothing special - editing has been a swamp for me - I love it, but I get all muddy, and lost. And sometimes end up trespassing, or getting kicked off my own land for no good reason. A map and compass comes in handy. And there is always the question of how to handle one's own desires for (another's) text - if one cultivates the blending of author and editor as shared makers of the book - which is always distinct, if only be degree, from the manuscript. My feeling is, I owe my the project my full attention, and all my skills. That means reading, commenting on, suggesting, and defending/advancing my reading of this work, a process of sorting, sifting and returnign to the page, until both of us can let go of it, and it -wobble, wobble - walks free.
A few years ago I thought, as writers, the main work was in making a manuscript. Now I see there's a second process of making that manu a book. It varies, just like a doctor's reading - different bodies call for different attentions. But I am less afraid to wield the editors sword, and more able to acknowledge when I slip up and cut the book or author, than I was in my terrified, wide-eyed twenties. Learning the ancient way - through repeated doing. And, in an age where the apprenticeship has broken down, learning DIY, stealing what we can, tweaking and just plain making up the rest. May the logic (and the binding) hold.
-
Subday's website will, hopefully, be up any day now. Stay tuned - to be sure - for links and e-champagne. Many thanks to John Sullivan for his pioneering and impeccable and dedicated work on this project. If we are lucky, Summer and I, together, could operate a slide projector.
el pobre Mouse
The zine I co-edit with Sara Larsen, el pobre Mouse, is gearing up for our third issue, and we're open for submissions. Our backbone is poetry and poetics and the more daring and/or subtle shades of prose (sorry plotsters) - and our aesthetic leanings are well-documented on this blog (at least mine are). Defining aesthetics is a tricky if necessary part of publishing. Even if that definition is "work I like." el pobre Mouse is interested in work which takes poetry seriously, skeptically, and with a definite charge. Work with libratory aims, work that acknowledges and celebrates human desires, including those of the mind. Contemporary work conscious of form, tradition, and the possibilities of play and experiment. One particular (personal) interest: work which moves into the visual: in all the variants spelled out on g huff's blog please apply.
In addition - interviews, correspondance, essays, book reviews. el pobre appreciates a textured, varied text. a document of our lives as writers - more a fluxus box than a PBS documentary-by-numbers.
Every time I write this, it changes. We have an e-flyer which will be posted here shortly and making the email rounds, and we'll be launching our own blog too as a virtual HQ/sand castle.
Our deadline is October 15th.
-
subday press
I co-edit subday with Summer Rodman. We publish contemporary poetry and hybrid works.
Over the last few days I have been reviewing a Matt Langley manuscript, which we are editing for a forthcoming book on subday. I have a few thoughts on editing from this:
At his or her best, an editor offers a thorough exam of the text-child - but the parent/writer is still in the room, or right outside the door. And the editor is less a doctor in the Western sense of "fix the flaw" as a holistic one - checking flows and currents throughout the text - noting blocks and limits. The editor listens first - to this other body, to their relationship, and trusts his response to this listening. Learns to trust it. An editor offers up these insights, and, together with the writer, sorts out which illumine and further the work at hand. While the writer, at any time, can say "get your hands off my child", likewise, at any junction, the editor can say "i no longer feel comfortable treating this patient."
While this clarity of roles may be nothing special - editing has been a swamp for me - I love it, but I get all muddy, and lost. And sometimes end up trespassing, or getting kicked off my own land for no good reason. A map and compass comes in handy. And there is always the question of how to handle one's own desires for (another's) text - if one cultivates the blending of author and editor as shared makers of the book - which is always distinct, if only be degree, from the manuscript. My feeling is, I owe my the project my full attention, and all my skills. That means reading, commenting on, suggesting, and defending/advancing my reading of this work, a process of sorting, sifting and returnign to the page, until both of us can let go of it, and it -wobble, wobble - walks free.
A few years ago I thought, as writers, the main work was in making a manuscript. Now I see there's a second process of making that manu a book. It varies, just like a doctor's reading - different bodies call for different attentions. But I am less afraid to wield the editors sword, and more able to acknowledge when I slip up and cut the book or author, than I was in my terrified, wide-eyed twenties. Learning the ancient way - through repeated doing. And, in an age where the apprenticeship has broken down, learning DIY, stealing what we can, tweaking and just plain making up the rest. May the logic (and the binding) hold.
-
Subday's website will, hopefully, be up any day now. Stay tuned - to be sure - for links and e-champagne. Many thanks to John Sullivan for his pioneering and impeccable and dedicated work on this project. If we are lucky, Summer and I, together, could operate a slide projector.
posted by Kyle at 4:44 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home