Entry Fee Enclosed

Alan Cordle has become "cynical about the whole enterprise" of contemporary poetry as a result of his efforts at "exposing fraudulent contests" and "tracking the sycophants" at his website Foetry. He thought poetry was about beauty, but the publishing of poetry has turned out to be about "cozy cronyism."

It's hard to believe that Cordle was really as naive as he claims he was when he discovered that judges of poetry contests sometimes select the manuscripts of "students, friends, and even their lovers." Poets are as fallibly human as anyone else, and surely Cordle did not assume that writing poetry afforded some kind of exemption from this truth. But perhaps Cordle should give himself a break--he thinks he's discovered that poets are unscrupulous and poetry contests financially corrupt, but he's really discovered that poets (and editors) prefer what they prefer and that getting published (in fiction as well as poetry) is not simply a matter of producing good work and having it recognized as a matter of course. In some ways it is only to be expected that poets would choose to extol the work of their own former students, since presumably those students exemplify in their work the qualities valued by the teacher to begin with, in some cases writing poetry directly influenced by the teacher's work.

To the extent that poetry/fiction prizes are explicitly "fixed"--the winner is known in advance, the other contestants deliberately bilked of their entry fees--Cordle's efforts to uncover the practice would be both welcome and justified. But I can't see that any of the examples described at the Foetry website reach this level. Few of them go beyond the "this poet knows that poet/this poet previously expressed admiration for that poet" variety of accusation. In my opinion, the fact of the matter is this: All poetry and fiction prizes, either those rewarding entire manuscripts or those that identify individual poems or stories as "winners" in literary journals, are inherently suspect, what might be called systemic scams. Print journals continue to proliferate, as does the cost of printing them, and since the readership of these journals is too small to support them through subscription, and the support provided by universities (where most of the journals reside) only weakens (as does support for university press poetry publication), these meaningless prizes and the entry fees they generate have arisen as a way of maintaining the supply of ink and paper.

I believe Ted Genoways, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, when he says that most contests simply allow small presses to scrape by. Surely no one thinks large sums of money are at stake in the publishing of poetry and short fiction. Nevertheless, without the sums that are produced, such publishing would likely collapse from its own puffed-up weight. Contest money serves the system as a whole, at least for the moment, to forestall the day when small-scale print publishing as it has been conducted for the past forty years (a period that also coincides with the growth of creative writing programs) can no longer be sustained. In the meantime, aspiring and lesser-known writers will undoutedly continue to pay for the opportunity to be rejected by the literary journals or presses of their choice.

Why anyone would willingly participate in his/her own exploitation and disillusionment in this way is beyond me, but I guess the allure of being published in a literary magazine, even if most copies will sit unread on library shelves, or by a poetry press, whose books probably won't even make it to most libraries, is still strong for some writers. Moreover, such writers ought at least take to heart what Foetry has managed to make clear: Editors do indeed prefer what they prefer, and mostly what they prefer is the familiar and the compatible. And this is true both of those publishing conventional work and those who tend to publish more experimental fiction or poetry. (We are told in the L.A. Times Article that NEA chairman Dana Gioia has contacted Alan Cordle "to offer support for Foetry's goals." One suspects that Gioia, a poet in what Ron Silliman calls the "School of Quietude," would like to combat the influence of "post-avant" poetry--more highly esteemed in some quarters of the poetry world--and the venues that favor it.) The chances your work will meet the expectations of these editors is slight, even when you're seeking ordinary, non-contest-related publication.

Perhaps the greatest harm these literary contests do is to collectively perpetuate the idea there are commonly recognized standards by which all literary work is judged suitable for publication, that work submitted for publication to the most desirable venues will be assessed dispassionately and will get into print only if it is objectively the most meritorious. Where would these standards come from? Literary criticism of the kind that might help to establish such standards hardly exists any more, having been replaced by a species of academic criticism that finds value in literature only in its utility for advancing outside agendas and by newspaper-based book reviewing that rarely does more than provide crude consumer advice. At best, it seems to me, literary journals and many small presses proceed according to a kind of literary conventional wisdom whereby everybody publishes what everybody else is publishing. It isn't cynicism to think that literary publishing in the United States is far from a meritocracy (even if you don't think those involved are necessarily morally corrupt). It's common sense.

Comments

[David Milofsky]

It's not an either/or situation. Most magazines don't link submissions to entry fees, though some do. We used to get something on the order of 6,000 submissions a year, which indicates that people are certainly writing poetry. Kind of pathetic to consider though that only a handful of mags have a circulation of more than 1K. The problem for poetry publishers is trying to make those two numbers a closer match. If your point is that people are reading and writing poetry, we have no disagreement. And small presses and magazines do come and go, though I wouldn't use Poetry Market as a very reliable source. But the number of poetry contests (book contests, I mean) is really more an indication of the difficulty of staying in business, as the Virginia guy seemed to be saying.

[Jonathan]

Magazines have gone under; small presses too. Unfortunate, perhaps. Yet there are still numerous magazines (look at Poet's Market to see how many) and numerous books of poetry published every year, more than anyone could buy or read. I think what Dan may have been suggesting is that reducing the number of contests would bring supply down closer to the level of realistic demand.

I've seen poetry contests in magazine where the winning poems seem worse, or at best indistinguishable from than the regular old poems that might be published in the same magazine. I see the point of the contest as a fund-raiser, but it doesn't seem to add any aesthetic value to the magazine. I'd rather just submit to the magazine for free than pay for the right to win a fairly meaningless prize.

[David Milofsky]

You're probably right about that, but only partially so. If you check, you'll see that many fine small presses have simply gone out of business because of poor sales and others have severely limited the number of books they publish. Having been a small press publisher, I agree that they generally (not always) do a better job of connecting with and serving readers and writers. But there are enormous problems with distribution and publicity that small presses are simply not staffed to handle, thus lack of sales and lack of profit that could be used to publish more poetry and short fiction. There is a certain bottom line that must be met no matter the size of a press (in our case it was around 750 copies) in order to meet the costs of publication. Most of our books never got there and not, as Dan might say, because they weren't good books and shouldn't have been published. I was very proud of the poetry and fiction we published but the ineluctable fact was that it never paid its own way. Without fund-raising, grants and contests we couldn't have done it and I believe this is true of most small presses. You're right that not all journals have contests but if you looked at the number of journals that have died for lack of support in the last ten years I think you'd find it sobering. For me, the most disappointing thing about my experience as a publisher was discovering that despite publishing beautifully designed books by wonderful writers, we couldn't make our costs because of a failing market.

[Jonathan]

Sorry, I took the sentence "The fact is that if there weren't any contests poetry would simply not be published in this country." to mean no contests = no publication. Not all journals run contests. Poetry would continue to be publshed without contests--a good deal less of it, which would not be a bad thing necessarily. Small presses do a much better job than "mass market publishers," because they are more connected to their readers and don't need to sell as many copies.

[David Milofsky]

Jonathan, you're not reading what I said. I didn't say poetry wouldn't be published without contests but without literary magazines, many of which are supported by contests. And it's nice that you buy poetry books and know others who do the same, but your comment's just not supported by facts. Ask any poetry publisher how many copies he/she sells and if it's more than 1,000 it's a rare book indeed. Mass market publishers publish very few books of poems for this reason, leaving it to university presses and small presses, who come and go. An oversimplification? My many years in this business tell me it's not. Rather it's the sad truth. More power to you if you actually buy a book of poems every so often. Not too damned many other people do.

[Jonathan]

Without contests poetry would not be pubished, period? That seems rigorously false, since not *every* book published is the result of a contest. I buy plenty of books that are not contest winners.

Poets do not buy books? Another oversimplification. I buy dozens of poetry books a year and know many others like myself who do the same.

[David Milofsky]

You're right and then again, you're not. It's true that very few small presses could go on without some kind of support, either from an institution or fund-raising of some kind. Having been an editor of two well-known literary journals (Denver Quarterly and Colorado Review) for more than fifteen years, I believe I know this field more intimately than most, including Cordle. At CR we ran two series: the Colorado Prize in Poetry and The Series in Short Fiction. The poetry prize was a contest, the other was not but was supported primarily by fund-raising I did for the series. In our naivete we assumed that while poetry doesn't sell, fiction does, and over time the fiction series would support itself. It turned out that neither series sold well and though I'm no longer editor of the Review, the decision was made last year to discontinue the fiction series. I regret that but it underscores what you're saying about the ability of quality fiction or poetry to support itself. The poetry prize continues and is one of the ones that's been featured on the foetry website, much to my dismay. Although Jorie Graham (the anti-christ of foetry) was our poetry editor, she didn't run the poetry contest and I can't see how you can support the idea that all such contests are "inherently suspect." The fact is that if there weren't any contests poetry would simply not be published in this country. There's no market for it and, sadly, poets don't buy books, though they complain loudly about the lack of money, reviews, etc. No one works as an editor of a literary press for anything other than love of the form. It is a thankless job, complete with ill-considered criticism, complaints, and even the odd death threat. At the same time, literary journals have a time-honored place in contemporary literature. Writers like Flannery O'Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Coover, Stanley Elkin, Michael Chabon, Jorie Graham, Richard Ford and on and on, got their start in literary journals. Among our subscribers were literary agents and editors who regularly wrote to me about people whom we'd published. Of course some of them are worthless and I suppose some editors are corrupt. But the wild charges thrown around by foetry and repeated by others supposedly more responsible and unfair and damaging, both personally and to our shared enterprise. I've said things like this before in print and have probably gone on too long but even though I'm out of the game now, it just pisses me off to see these lies and half-truths repeated. Thanks for letting me sound off.

[Robert Nagle]

First, I am of the more-prizes-the-merrier approach to things (and actually am working on a project along those lines).

Online forums have come up with good algorithms for moderating and ranking; perhaps group moderating and voting can identify quality in a way that doesn't allow too much gaming of the system. The main challenge is whether group assessment tools favor the bland and uncontroversial instead of the truly original and striking.

Foetry notwithstanding, I think that the big publishers (in all genres) wield enormous clout in creating buzz for an audience. I worry more about that. That's why it's good to see that groups of bloggers are taking it upon themselves to award prizes to overlooked novels.

Why do people enter stuff into these contests? Because these people know of no other or no better way to promote their stuff. Look at poetry for example. It's hard to hear about good poetry, even in the blogging world. How to announce your genius to the world? Ah, the eternal question.

[Cog]

It's not the fault of the people, so much as the institutions. Any profession organized like the current poetry world would be prone to the same nepotism and other flaws. The current system of poetic publishing doesn't have any checks and balances built into the peer review mechanism of its major publications.* And institutional corruption, though distinct from personal corruption, is still a form of corruption. I'm amazed more poets don't get mad about it.

* My name links to a modest proposal to remedy this. I would have linked it above but your comment software appears to block links in the comment body.