THE FOLLY OF WISDOM by Michael R. Burch
The New Stylus: Issue I
A poem of mine was recently declined after initially being accepted by the editor of a small journal because it had (gasp!) been published 20 years ago by another small journal. Let me quickly do the math. I will assume, perhaps over-optimistically, that 100 people read my poem, on a planet with a human population of approximately 7.89 billion. ... If I have done the math correctly my poem has been read by, ta-da!, .0000012% of potential readers!
Now imagine that every record label limited its songs to being heard by 100 individuals. After a handful of people have heard a song, apply a Mafia-like kiss of death and make damn sure no other label picks up the song and releases it.
If record labels operated like literary journals, no one would know who the Beatles or Stones are. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger would be neither rich, nor famous. Think of all the disappointed groupies! And think of the millions of potential listeners who would have missed out on great songs like "A Day in the Life" and "Sympathy for the Devil." Then there are potentially life-changing, world-changing songs like Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" and Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come." The world might be a darker place to live, without the influence of such songs.
Record labels try to get as many people as possible to listen to their songs. The editors of most literary journals, in my experience, keep poems from being read by larger audiences. Perhaps not intentionally, but does it make any difference if you maim me intentionally or by accident?
It also bears noting that record labels pay their artists while most small journals don't. When I discussed this issue with my colleague, the Irish poet Martin Mc Carthy, he observed: "I like sharing my work. I'd share my work anytime with anybody who's interested in it, and the sad truth is that so few readers ever get to see it — no matter how good it is — and the rewards are so meagre in any case. So why crush the poorly paid? Why make nonsensical rules to harm them?"
Why, indeed?
Is there a compelling reason for small journals to demand first publication rights, or is it mostly "monkey see, monkey do?" I suspect the latter. Why do royals wear purple? Because in ancient times purple dye was very expensive and thus a sign of wealth and prestige. Today purple dye is, I suspect, no more expensive than any other color. Times change, but human thinking doesn't always change with the times.
Ironically, the title of the rejected poem was “The Folly of Wisdom.”
The common wisdom often turns out to be folly. The earth is not flat. Tomatoes are not poisonous. White genes are not superior to other genes. Following lemmings over a cliff is likely to have drawbacks. And it is folly, in my opinion, for small journals to demand first publication rights.
Why?
First, in the entire history of literature, no reader was ever harmed by reading a good poem twice.
Second, what is the purpose of publishing poems? As a longtime editor and publisher it has always been my goal to help readers connect with the better poets. Do I care if a poem has been published and read elsewhere? Yes, I care, but I see that as a plus, not a reason for rejection. I want the poets I serve as an editor and publisher to succeed, and the last thing I want to do is inhibit their success. John Masella, who critiqued this essay, noted that "The rising tide truly lifts all boats here." The more publications successes poets have, the more they are able to build on those successes.
“The more, the merrier” is my motto when it comes to readers reading good poems. "Help, don't hinder" is another.
When I founded The HyperTexts over 30 years ago, I accepted previously published poems from day one. In many cases I even agreed to allow “non-sharers” to publish poems first, then waited patiently for my turn, to the benefit of the poets and their readers.
Sharing poems has always been a win-win situation, in my experience.
What happens when the vast majority of small journals all demand first publication rights? Once a poem has been published, it becomes an orphan. Nay, a pariah. A pariah poem that is read by a handful of people, then damned to the literary version of Limbo.
I consider this very unfortunate and am glad never to have been part of it, other than as an occasional victim of the irrational system. From this day forward, I will think of the nonsensical system as “The Folly of Wisdom.”
This is the poem in question. You can be the judge. How would anyone be harmed by reading it more than once?
The Folly of Wisdom
by Michael R. Burch
She is wise in the way that children are wise,
looking at me with such knowing, grave eyes
I must bend down to her to understand.
But she only smiles, and takes my hand.
We are walking somewhere that her feet know to go,
so I smile, and I follow ...
And the years are dark creatures concealed in bright leaves
that flutter above us, and what she believes—
I can almost remember—goes something like this:
the prince is a horned toad, awaiting her kiss.
She wiggles and giggles, and all will be well
if only we find him! The woodpecker’s knell
as he hammers the coffin of some dying tree
that once was a fortress to someone like me
rings wildly above us. Some things that we know
we are meant to forget. Life is a bloodletting, maple-syrup-slow.
Published by Romantics Quarterly in 2004.
Michael R. Burch's poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into 19 languages, incorporated into three plays and four operas, and set to music, from swamp blues to classical, by 32 composers.
Poetry in Cihcago continues to remind everyone it was the first to publish Eliot. Its prestige is largely based on that fact. Eliot therefore played a large part in establishing the journal's reputation. But I agree the ongoing demand of previously unpublished is automatic, as opposed to being based on any hope of being the first to publish some new literary phenom. Poetry today occupies a much tinier niche in the public mind than it did a hundred years ago, and thus republishing poems is entirely unikely to produce a deja vu reaction. Journals should feel glad if a good writer lets them reprint him/her. It might even boost their standing with readers.
Habits die hard.
When I was young and subject to the tender mercies of religious educators, I learned a maxim popularized by Jesuits: repetitio mater studiorum, repetition is the mother of learning. Later on in my career as pupil and victim, I learned thatrepetitio is a term with some depth. It is dot simply a term denoting a commonplace or rote repetition. Rather it has the arcane sense of a calling back, a renewal. It is, in the words of the alchemist, Cornelius Agrippa, the gold of philosophers, which is not the gold of the common folk. In The Attic Nights Aulus Gellius tells us:
repetitio instauratioque ejusdem rei sub alio nomine, recall and renewal are the same thing under a different name. Perhaps Gellius, according to the idiosyncratic understanding of an old man, is shedding some light on not just a point of grammar, but on why we seek and find refreshment in returning to old works.