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Recent online authorial meltdowns over less-than-stellar reviews have brought me back to the question of what the appropriate way for an author to respond to a review is. I still remember my high school journalism teacher telling us that when someone wrote a letter criticizing our work we should print it without comment and trust readers to be intelligent enough to decide for themselves if the critique was fair. There is something appealing in applying that idea to book reviews—an appeal to our better selves and to what we as authors hope for in an audience.

That said, book reviews occur in a different context from letters to the editor: whereas the latter are read by someone who has already chosen to pick up the paper, the former may influence the choice to pick up the book (though a book that receives negative reviews will probably sell more copies than a book that isn’t reviewed at all: name familiarity does play a role). Thus, it may be a bit more reasonable for an author to respond to a review that they feel is unfair or untrue.

But what are the bounds of an acceptable response?

1. Debate the points made by the critic, not the critic’s status or authority. Alice Hoffman asked who Roberta Silman was. I’ve had someone respond to a negative review of one of his poems by saying that I’d never written a memorable line of poetry in my life, which if true wouldn’t have had any impact on whether my critique of his work was fair. These sort of maneuvers don’t advance the discussion and are a sort of silencing: don’t go after me, or I’ll use my higher status to hurt you.
2. Don’t encourage other people to join in attacking the critic. This is a variant of the status argument: I will hurt you by bringing other people (my fans, since I’m more popular than you are) to say nasty things. No matter how thick your skin, it takes time to go through a deluge of emails, phone calls, or even blog comments.
3. If you feel the need to rant, do so but it in private. Have a friend you can complain to, preferably over a glass of whiskey. If this friend can double as someone to check your public response for constructiveness, that’s even better. Ranting can help get it out of your system, but screaming at people doesn’t help advance the conversation about literature.

What other guidelines should an author who responds to a review follow? Or do you think writers should never reply?

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Lately I’ve been writing a lot of negative statements about poems and their publishers. That isn’t something I enjoy, and it isn’t really what I’m about. Yes, my critiques come from a place of love (of poetry), but that isn’t always apparent and, frankly, this sort of criticism isn’t fun.

To help me get out of this rut, I’d like to ask all of you to leave a comment with a link to a poem you enjoy. I’ll even sweeten the deal by choosing one person who comments on this post by Friday to receive a copy of my book, Magdalene & the Mermaids. (If you’re interested in this, be sure to leave a valid email so that I can contact you.)

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I was reading along in Whit Griffin’s new Beard of Bees chapbook, Solomon’s Seal, enjoying the ambiguities, mundane mysticism, and blended mythological motifs when I came upon these lines:

Resident celibates, and those of the feminine
gland, fear not the frotteur, waiting for the parade.
It’s not a feel to worry on.

Isn’t it nice when male poets casually drop references to street harassment and  sexual assault into their work? By addressing “[r]esident celibates” along with “those of the feminine / gland” (so much more clever than just saying women!), he even manages to reference the idea that women who don’t enjoy being hit on and objectified are asexual. Now, I suppose it could be argued that the deliberately odd language is intended to show the statement as absurd, but within the context of the poems, the language isn’t so unusual.

Maybe, then, it could also be argued that the lines are part of building the character of the speaker, showing the rest of the statements to be absurd and problematic. This ignores the reality that the ideas which underly the lines I quoted are unfortunately commonly held: namely, that street harassment isn’t a big deal and that women who don’t feel complimented by it are defective. If such opinions were widely considered repulsive, if the poem were written for consumption by an explicitly feminist audience, these lines could function to impugn the narrator’s other statements. Even still, it would be a problematically unconcerned use of a real issue women face; my pain is not your literary device.

Frankly, it wouldn’t be difficult to read these lines as connected to suggestions of religious and mystical fertility and thus as a celebration of frottage in which consent is irrelevant. In all fairness, however, I think that would be a reading that ignored the general ambiguities of the work.

Perhaps Whit Griffin had some very good intent here that I’m just not seeing. Overall, it seems to me that the uncertainties that make the rest of the work so delightful (and playful) are precisely what make these lines offensive. Too bad they’re offensive to people already oppressed rather than the powerful.

No less sincere a fellow than Joseph Massey told me a few months back that I need to be more ruthless when it comes to how my poetry is published. I’ve decided, at last, to take his advice.

A while back, I had a poem accepted by Eden Waters Press for the Journey anthology. Just a few days ago I received a pair of emails informing me that, unfortunately, they could no longer afford to give contributors complimentary copies. I’m pretty understanding about the difficulties of indie publishing (I pay CRIT Journal’s hosting out-of-pocket) and have contributed to print journals that don’t give free contributor copies before. In this case, however, the editor, Ann Brudevold, failed to notify contributors about this change before going to print, thus depriving writers of a choice in the matter. (In fairness, I should note that one of her emails claims that “[i]f you have checked our website in an ongoing manner, you know we’ve tried to keep contributors and others apprised of the situation”, though I fail to understand why email notification wasn’t used or why the press expected writers to check the submissions page of a press that had already accepted their work.)

That is unprofessional in itself, but what really bothered me, and what got me writing this post, was the tone Ms. Brudevold took up in her emails. From the first:

I never like to break a promise, especially a contractual one like this, but let’s examine this tradition. How did it happen that the poet felt entitled to free labor from publishers who loved putting out, a book, who spend hours on it and get no pay? We get the prestige of attracting good writers like yourself, but at the same time, you get the prestige of being published by our magazine. It seems to me (I am in both worlds) it’s as hard to publish a book as it is to write a book. [sic]

I  realize that Ms. Brudevold is grasping around in a desperate effort to justify something she herself understands to be wrong, but the attitude she takes here is highly offensive. Someone who has just reneged on a promise is in no position to lecture others on expecting “free labor”. Such statements also invite a questioning of the financial situation: is Eden Waters selling books at cost? If not, then what is happening to whatever small amount of money they are making? Finally, it is clear that she does not respect the amount of work that goes into creating worthwhile poetry; based on her last sentence, I suspect this is because she doesn’t put sufficient effort into her own writing.

Any doubt I had about her lack of respect for writing was banished when I received the second email, which included this passage:

Who gets something for nothing these days? Eden’s only rewaard is a good reputation. We want it to be an honor to say “We published Elizabeth Switaj, you know, the mermaid poet, ha ha, Your poems are so original, yet ordinary, I could write a whole review, but not now.” Our reward is getting kudos for the overall quality of the book. For the hours of work involved, complementary copie are inherently unfair. Publishing is an art too, takes a LOT of time and money, and can take as much artistry as a poem. I know. I do both. [sic]

I’m not really sure Ms. Brudevold has read any of my work beyond what I submitted to Eden Waters Press but her modus operandi here seems to be denigrating the work put in by poets while elevating that done by publishers in order to justify her press’s going back on a promise. Add to that an incredibly patronizing tone, and you get a total lack of respect that makes me regret ever having submitted to Eden Waters.

While I’ve written before about identifying as a minor poet, my ambitions for my poems remain obscenely high. This is not to say that I have grandiose notions for what my work might cover or produce; I am content to remain a poet of cracks, niches, shards, and little white flowers that occasionally reveal teeth yet refuse to devour people any way but whole. What I mean is that I of course want my poems to be read by as many people as possible.

I say of course because if you believe in the value of your work, it only makes sense that you should actively put it out there. This is true even if the value you perceive is small: full daylight requires many wavicles. Why would you hide even the smallest fragment of sunlight?

The difference between ambition for oneself and ambition for one’s poems may seem slim. To me it is the difference between being driven to compromise for the sake of publicity, publication, or what have you and being unable to do so.

Still, I sign my work. Why? I don’t feel the need to prove the nature of my ambitions to anyone (why write about them then? because I think they are a decent set of ambitions and would like to see [if] other poets share them). More importantly, I want to take responsibility for my words, though I realize that other people have reasons for keeping their identities hidden and am sure that given the right set of circumstances I would do so as well.

Then again, maybe I’m just a madly ambitious egotist who isn’t very good at playing networking games and has created a theoretical position to give herself some sort of moral high ground.

But would I give it away if I were?

Then again, wouldn’t that be the perfect cover?

Visiting or looking at pictures of other gardens and reading other poems isn’t just about getting ideas for what to plant or how to arrange the seed-words. It’s about learning to identify weeds sooner (by elimination or by name) so that they can be transplanted somewhere where they aren’t weeds (worked on in another poem) or disposed of before they strangle other idea-plants.

This may seem more essential for gardens since growing seasons are bound by frost. In fact, poems have growing seasons too. A writer can lose touch with material for emotional or practical reasons. The initial impulse may be forgotten or superseded by other ideas.

Nonetheless, the end of the season does not mean that the failed garden plot or poem is doomed to remain barren forever. Spring always returns and, with enough patience, the poem’s growing season may as well.

Nothing created or (what is ultimately the same) arranged by a human is as certain as the seasons.

Tomorrow I’ll be re-seeding parts of my garden.

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Young writers are often encouraged to eschew words that express that uncertainty, to abandon “seems” for “is”. Having taught composition, I understand the reasoning behind such advice, but Kathleen Hellen’s If My Father Had Died shows why it needs to be tempered with “usually” or “unless you have a good reason”, for this poem relies upon the modal “might”.

Had she written “I would have braked” and “I would have railed”, I as a reader would have rebelled against the speaker’s tendency to blame all of her current relationship problems upon her childhood and her father’s survival. “Might”, however, I must allow; complex systems theory, after all, tells me to accept that if a butterfly died an hour earlier than it did a hurricane could have been avoided.

Having passed that initial hurdle of belief, I then find myself reviewing the lines to evaluate the likelihood of this particular “might”. It is in this process that I start to wonder if the “[i]nvisible cargo” and “wreckage on the table” imply something more sinister than emotional absence, especially given the mention of a baby. Had “would” given me a strong statement to oppose in the beginning, I would have rejected the poem’s sentiment out of hand and missed this subtle possibility.

Moreover, “might” indicates the speaker’s own uncertainty about her life. Especially when combined with a the use of  a train metaphor that at times seems vague, stretched, and disorganized, it gives the reader an impression of a character who doesn’t totally understand her life but knows that one shift in the circumstances of a train accident would (or might?) have changed it dramatically. In this context, it becomes possible to read the final line as addressed not to an external figure (or pair of figures fused in her mind) but to herself; father-lover can mean one who loves her father. A speaker uncertain of herself may thus interrogate herself.

even the worst of us have been you
even the worst of us have said
what we think is right
have stood
with the people we believe in

not even the best of us has been you
whatever risks we’ve taken
shot or beaten
we’re still living

we have no right to speak your name
but must

not let you be forgotten
not let you bleed for nothing

whether you know the difference
now or not