I just ordered this book and I am so excited. The Ern Malley hoax is one of my favorite stories. I always remember the way my professor described it to me, saying "It set back modernism in Australian literature 30 years." Making fun of the schlock that gets published on Poetry, etc. has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years so I can't wait to see what you've done. This book was made for me.
oddly enough, i learned about the hoax a few weeks after i'd started mine. but as soon as i read up on it, i knew it was a legendary feat. mags like "poetry" and such have been getting away with some pretty lazy editorial practices for quite a while, so someone had to stick it to them. hope i've made mcauley and stewart proud. let me know what you think of the book when you've read it!
"Poetry" didn't, no, but I expressly avoided the top mags like that and "Paris Review" because some of those magazines commission their poems (especially ones like "Paris Review," where it's my understanding that agents vie for the prime spots for their clients, and then they fill the rest of the mag with general submissions. But even if some of the top mags didn't have that procedure in place, the main reason for avoiding them still would have been assessment time. Many of these top mags take upwards of nine months to provide an answer. Case in point: I sent my "Tragicomedy" pieces to "The Antigonish," which is considered one of Canada's better literary journals, and it took them over a year to accept them. By that point, I had already given them to "Plenitude," a decent mag, to speed things up. If I'd reserved some of these pieces for consideration from top mags alone, this experiment might've taken five years instead of two. I had so many pieces to send out that it just made sense to go for mags that were generally speedier with their responses. That said, I might, for fun, try to get a couple junk ones published in the big mags now that there aren't time constraints.
As a fellow writer, a fellow Canadian and a fellow white bastard who's also committed the cardinal sin of living to over 60, I salute you, Jasper -- or whatever you'd like to be called today.
So inspired am I by your defiance of stupidity that I'm changing my whole ID. Henceforth, I'm Pol Fen from Cambodia, where my parents were rendered into hamburger by the Khmer Rouge in the '70s just after I was born and where I had also my legs and much of my head and brain blown off by a series of landmines, kitchen accidents and poorly-aimed headbutts, whence I was forced into misery as a street beggar aboard a one-wheeled plank I could barely keep balanced until, rather mysteriously, I changed my gender -- can't even remember to what. Anyway, I'm in the process of trying all of them and launching some new ones, which will fuel new forms of my poetry -- well, never written any, but I know I will do well. Tips on how to stand out in that regard are most welcome.
And I owe it all to you! So thank you. I am now subscribed to your bravery and brilliance.
But let's not also forget Alan Sokal's brilliant parody of postmodernism, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, " a classic of the genre.
I just ordered this book and I am so excited. The Ern Malley hoax is one of my favorite stories. I always remember the way my professor described it to me, saying "It set back modernism in Australian literature 30 years." Making fun of the schlock that gets published on Poetry, etc. has been a guilty pleasure of mine for years so I can't wait to see what you've done. This book was made for me.
oddly enough, i learned about the hoax a few weeks after i'd started mine. but as soon as i read up on it, i knew it was a legendary feat. mags like "poetry" and such have been getting away with some pretty lazy editorial practices for quite a while, so someone had to stick it to them. hope i've made mcauley and stewart proud. let me know what you think of the book when you've read it!
Did Poetry mag actually publish your fauxslop anti art, or are you using these smaller cut-rate rags as a metonym for "the industry"?
"Poetry" didn't, no, but I expressly avoided the top mags like that and "Paris Review" because some of those magazines commission their poems (especially ones like "Paris Review," where it's my understanding that agents vie for the prime spots for their clients, and then they fill the rest of the mag with general submissions. But even if some of the top mags didn't have that procedure in place, the main reason for avoiding them still would have been assessment time. Many of these top mags take upwards of nine months to provide an answer. Case in point: I sent my "Tragicomedy" pieces to "The Antigonish," which is considered one of Canada's better literary journals, and it took them over a year to accept them. By that point, I had already given them to "Plenitude," a decent mag, to speed things up. If I'd reserved some of these pieces for consideration from top mags alone, this experiment might've taken five years instead of two. I had so many pieces to send out that it just made sense to go for mags that were generally speedier with their responses. That said, I might, for fun, try to get a couple junk ones published in the big mags now that there aren't time constraints.
Will be following this journey. Well done, sir/ma'am.
Really fantastic. Naked, beshingled and casting love bites along the beach. Who could ask for more from poetry.
Excellent podcast episode!
glad you liked it. really appreciate the support.
As a fellow writer, a fellow Canadian and a fellow white bastard who's also committed the cardinal sin of living to over 60, I salute you, Jasper -- or whatever you'd like to be called today.
So inspired am I by your defiance of stupidity that I'm changing my whole ID. Henceforth, I'm Pol Fen from Cambodia, where my parents were rendered into hamburger by the Khmer Rouge in the '70s just after I was born and where I had also my legs and much of my head and brain blown off by a series of landmines, kitchen accidents and poorly-aimed headbutts, whence I was forced into misery as a street beggar aboard a one-wheeled plank I could barely keep balanced until, rather mysteriously, I changed my gender -- can't even remember to what. Anyway, I'm in the process of trying all of them and launching some new ones, which will fuel new forms of my poetry -- well, never written any, but I know I will do well. Tips on how to stand out in that regard are most welcome.
And I owe it all to you! So thank you. I am now subscribed to your bravery and brilliance.
Hilarious and jolly good show.
But let's not also forget Alan Sokal's brilliant parody of postmodernism, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, " a classic of the genre.
I actually referenced that in the "Afterword" portion of the "Echo" manuscript. Couldn't forget about the Sokal Affair!
Mos def!
"voodoo prak tik casta oyal drip drip" = lollll
Why is the post in all-bold?
i was just fiddling with the interface. was new to the platform at the time. lol.
interesting.
How so?