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Fee Fie Foe Fum
March 28, 2005    File under: Poetry & Poetics

I've been typing away the last week or so unaware that my recent win of the Fifth Elixir Press Award has been called into question at Foetry. To wit:

Let's see. Please tell me if I got anything wrong.

David Baratier's letters and poems have appeared in the Denver Quarterly, editor Bin Ramke, professor, University of Denver.

Baratier is editor of Pavement Saw Press, in Ohio, which gets money from Ohio taxpayers in order to establish, according to Pavement Saw Press's mission statement, a "non-university affiliated press" which helps Ohio's economy by attracting outside attention and publishing "works of national signifiance."

Dana Curtis, Ph.D. University of Denver, wins Pavement Saw Press Prize, picked by Ramke. Curtis is founder & editor-in-chief of Elixir Press, based in Denver.

Jake Adam York, director of creative writing, University of Colorado at Denver, and Colorado Council on the Arts fellow, wins Elixir Press Prize.

Sounds to me like university-affiliated Denver is the cat and the Ohio taxpayers are the cream.

It looks like, so far at least, there's a nice little Denver system in place here. Very nice.

Probably I will regret posting the following at Foetry, but it deserves to be said:

Not that it will make any difference...

... but I, the person in question, have never met Dana Curtis, director of Elixir and, though we do live in the same town, I have still never met her since the announcement. In fact, when Ms Curtis called me to inform me and I mentioned to her that we lived in the same town, she was surprised, not having noticed my one address (or apparently registered the proximity of the area code) in the pile of hundreds.

I have also never met Jane Satterfield, the poet who chose my collection.

And though my university --- the University of Colorado at Denver --- is beginning to work with the University of Denver --- an altogether separate institution --- we have historically had no connection whatsoever. In fact, this 2005 Poetry Festival will be the first time we have worked together, and my contact with DU is with the Hebraic Studies Program --- which is hosting Paul Muldoon --- not Ramke or Brian Kiteley, the director of the Creative Writing Program at DU. Denver is in many ways a small town, but it's also a city of nearly 2 million so, though poets often run into or near one another, we're not very well-connected or very cooperative (in part because we share almost none of the same aesthetic or artistic concerns).

So I'm also hard pressed to understand why I should not have submitted.

The chain of connections put forward here is interesting, even if it assumes both an unlikely amount of malice, a much higher level of intent and organization than I have ever found in a university, and a number of connections (the geographical one most importantly) that seem meaningless. I hear Dana Gioia speak last year at AWP, and I've quoted him in an article and a scholarly monograph: does that mean I shouldn't apply for an NEA on his watch?

Add these to the mix: I have entered the Georgia contest twice and have received absolutely no notice whatsoever, so my familiarity (such as it is) with Bin Ramke (shallow as it is) has not helped me out.

And, when I entered a contest in which Rodney Jones was the judge, though his father had dated my great aunt back when they were in high school, neither Rodney nor I knew that at the time and he did not pick my book.

I have entered in the last three years approximately 50 contests, putting out more than $1200 in fees, have been a finalist or semi-finalist in 21 of these. In none of these cases have I known anyone who was working on the contest.

Outside of the contest circuit, I have approached several publishers I have actually known about publishing the book, each of whom declined for various reasons. So my connections, whatever they may be, have not helped me very much at all. (And, though holding a PhD from Cornell, I have three times been turned down for a job at my alma mater, Auburn University, where their familiarity has not worked in my favor the least bit.)

I think if you read some of my work, readily available on the web, you'll see an aesthetic kinship with that of Satterfield, who chose my work, but nothing more. And I think you'll see there's very little conceivable poetic connection between me and Ramke or between me and Curtis, and the fact of the matter is that, by and large, poets do not so much choose the work of poets they know but poets whose style and work suggests aesthetic relationship.

I've been as appalled as anyone at certain results --- the appearance of Joshua Clover's MADONNA ANNO DOMINI under the aegis of a contest judged by Jorie Graham, his former teacher. There are some legitimately suspicious results, and I'm glad people are talking about them.

Fora like this one have pushed presses to be increasingly more assiduous about protecting the identity of judges from contestants and contestants from judges. Of the 50 contests I've entered, I knew the identity of the judge less than a dozen times. (And, yes, I admit that some presses may be concealing judges' identities so you will submit, not knowing to avoid those whose aesthetics do not welcome your own.) But we will never again see a connection like Auden calling Ashbery for SOME TREES because he didn't see it in the finalist pile.

There are some legitimate complaints. I just don't see how this one is one of those.

Posted by Jake Adam York at March 28, 2005 6:36 PM