Oscar has called my attention to the Poets and Writers interview of Howard Junker, which you can find here. I especially appreciate Junker’s thoughts on the internet and digital age:
Were those values tested when, as an editor, you had to follow the technological advances of the past decade or so?
At first, tech was my friend. Desktop publishing was a godsend. E-mail was great. The Web started out great, but digital has been totally disruptive. The low-end workhorses of words on paper, like newspapers, are already destroyed. The luxury items, like lit mags, can survive as toys for the rich—Glimmer Train, Tin House, Zoetrope—or as enticements, like stadiums and museums, in universities. But the Twitter sensibility has no room for literate articulation. To read and write you have to enjoy being alone, quiet, and static. That’s not what tech fosters. I like blogging as a daily yoga. I post every day, as a personal exercise, not as a marketing tool. I like to spout off.
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I like this idea of blogging as daily yoga. While I am not a yoga practitioner, I see what he means about daily exercise, and also take this statement to mean something of a daily meditation, or an author’s practice of dailiness and discipline, to keep the mind focused and disruption free. I also believe that as an author, it’s very important to be publicly accountable. And as an author with a public life, it’s important to keep it all professional, and to let the private and personal remain private and personal.
I also very much appreciate this sentence: “But the Twitter sensibility has no room for literate articulation.” Some of you may have noticed I’ve caved in and added a Twitter feed on the sidebar of this here blog. I’m undecided as to whether it’s actually helpful to me in my daily writing practice. I may abandon it altogether if it proves to be a disruption. I need my mind to pay close and generally uninterrupted attention to my reading, and to the ideas I am trying to communicate about my poetics, about the politics I introduce into my poetry, and what work I do or try to do in the industry. I need the space to work it out, articulate it, tease out its complexities. Again, if readers find my articulation here useful, then I am glad for it.
OK. I am going offline and making my way to the Foothill Writers’ Conference today. I’ll be teaching poetry writing and manuscript workshops this afternoon, and reading with Justin Chin and Scott Inguito this evening. It’s not too late for you to register.
Tags: Howard Junker
9 July 2009 at 2:17 pm |
I’ve long admired Howard Junker’s inclusivity at ZYZZYVA, which published my first Alarcón translations back in the late 80s! And he was instrumental in my translation of Bodies in Flames getting a serious look at Chronicle Books, which eventually came out, I believe, in 1990. Anyone who can keep a print literary journal afloat this amount of time is doing something right. And I like how he’s stuck to his guns with ZYZZYVA being a space for West Coast and Pacific Rim artists only.
10 July 2009 at 9:40 am |
I agree that “digital has been totally disruptive”, but I think Junker’s giving Twitter way too much weight. It’s a minor blip right now, and unlike desktop publishing, email and blogs, hasn’t proven to be a disruptive force at all. It’s an evolution of instant messaging, selective synchronous connectivity, and one can engage with it at their desired level, or avoid it altogether without missing out on anything critical.
I love the blogging as yoga concept, though; that’s how I approach my own blog.
16 July 2009 at 8:39 am |
Off topic– though I enjoy Junker’s perspective on blogging as “daily yoga”
Q: How many makapili does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Silly makapili! The light bulb is not out– you’re just too afraid to take the bayong off your head!
(ba-dum bum)