The CIA Bought Me This Nifty Headband: Ugly Ducking Presse Stands Accused
In some dizzying crinkle of web logic, I’d like to share not only a post on another blog but the comment stream of that post, which features an interesting discussion of small press successes, funding, avant-garde tendencies, dissonance/dissent, and the CIA.
The post in question is Shonni Enelow’s spotlight of Brooklyn-based Ugly Duckling Presse, which publishes strange and exciting poetry, including lots of work-in-translation, and all in editions of carefully made book objects that preserve bookmaking as an art unto itself. They’ve published great books by Eugene Ostashevsky, Tomas Salamun, and Laura Solomon. They published Dodie Bellamy’s Barf Manfesto, which is terrific, and Aram Saryon’s Complete Minimal Poems, which won the William Carlos William Award in 2008. That’s not the controversy. Controversy after the jump!
What the comment stream features is a lot of attacking and defending UDP for reasons you can find by reading. Here are two exciting and out-of-context excerpts, the first from poet Bill Knot:
And yet somehow during the Cold War years there always seemed to be plenty of financial support for the translation and publication of “Dissident” poets and writers—as long as, that is, they were writers from socialist countries . . .
The extent of the U.S. Government’s secret clandestine support of cultural apparati during the last 6 decades will probably never be fully known, but they reportedly right from the start favored and fostered
the avantgarde, namely the New York School of Painters
(and its literary arm, the New York School of Poets: something you might think about the next time you’re goofing on the incredulities of K. Koch) . . .Whether such covert funding has continued since 1989 is a question nobody seems to want to ask . . .
But if the CIA were still funneling cash into literary organizations and endeavors,
as it did during the Cold War,
and as everybody knows most government programs and projects once they get going are notoriously hard to abolish,
if Langley never closed its Cultural Affairs Office and the latter is still operating fullbore with the same black-ops budget,
wouldn’t they be supporting their traditional beneficiaries, ie the Avantgarde?
Yikes. And the second from UDP founder Matvei Yankelevich:
Without romanticizing the situation, I would say that most of our authors are not “mainstream” poets; many of the already dead authors we publish never received much recognition in their lifetimes, and probably many of the contemporary poets we publish don’t have connections to anything one might call a “cultural elite” and won’t be read “widely” in a hundred years, or even ten years — but what poets are read widely now? Yet there are experimental readers just as there are experimental writers. What one might call “boutique” another might call “local.” If reading literature is bourgeois, then I guess we stand accused. Some say that the avant-garde is inextricably bound to bourgeois culture, comes out of it, fights it, and is often subsumed by it. So be it. We’ll leave it up to our authors to be good writers and thinkers — meanwhile we’re concerned with getting their work out to a wider audience than they could tackle on their own: That’s what publishing is. And we’d like to do it in a way that isn’t ridden with gimmicks and marketing. We choose our books based on how they speak to us in the present moment, not on “platforms” and “publishability.” If one out of every 100 books we make gets reviewed in the Times, or if none do, that’s fine with us. We aren’t going to conform to anyone’s view of success — but if we don’t do our best with publicity, fundraising, and grant-seeking, then we won’t be able to serve well either the authors we publish or the reading public.
(Incidentally, why is it that everyone thinks you’re “selling out” if you succeed in getting a small NEA grant or some tiny nod on a blog, of all things…? After all, the avant garde didn’t just sit on its ass; it got in the media’s face as much as it could; Duchamp didn’t keep his pissoir to himself. So when did being avant-garde get equated with hiding out? Contemporary poetry is already marginalized enough, and will stay marginalized enough to suit our proclivity for assigning elite status to fields of culture that are the least important or commercially viable. Staying true to one’s poetics is easy enough in a narrow circle where one can commiserate with the chosen few about not being understood by the public; but it gets more interesting if you take the debate out into the world, where most people have no clue that anyone could find something like poetics important enough to build a life around. Furthermore, if we don’t want the media and entertainment biz to treat us as idiot consumers, why keep our content hidden from their profane gaze. In other words, is it so bad that a few more people now know that a small press is trying to publish some non-Barnes&Noble stuff on a shoestring budget? Is it to be condemned if a few of the “uninitiated masses” might purchase and even open a new book of poetry from another country or an oppositional esthetic?)
I’m not posting these together to collapse the discussion or suggest they’re equal in rhetorical value but merely to spark you into checking out the post here. UDP again is here.
Personally, I think Yankelevich’s comment makes an eloquent and logical anti-obscurity stance, and I think it would be really funny if the CIA were spending slices of the defense budget on tiny poetry presses.
Tags: Bill Knot, Matvei Yankelevich, Ugly Ducking Presse
From the response thread to the Ugly Duckling Article:
>>The Massachusetts Cultural Council refuses to respond to my querires. <>Recently when moving, I found a manuscript of poems I wrote in the 80s and had since thought lost. Can I send them to you for consideration?<<
These two comments basically sum up the tone of responses to the UDP article (except for Knott’s. You can find him at the bottom of ANY article on poetry, knives out, taking the anti- side of fill-in-the-blank).
The sheer volume of narcissism, coupled with the utter lack of understanding of how the world works, makes me feel the same way I feel after watching a couple hours of cable news: worse-informed than I was before, and stupider myself for having stood so close to so much radioactive stupidity.
Indeed, two of the only comments with any value come from Matthew Henriksen, of Cannibal/typo/Narwhal/Burning Chair. In two concise, articulate posts, he explains more or less everything you could need to know about small/micro-press publishing and book arts-focused presses. Don’t bother clicking and scrolling, I’ll just re-post here:
(1)
The stakes are so low for poets, whenever someone reaches a degree of visibility the bitter little birds come out to chirp about how sad they are.
UDP has been at the forefront of revitalizing the tradition of small house publishing. Their books are gorgeous and functional. The range of work they select is as eclectic as any press out there. If you want to bash the term “avant-garde” go ahead, but the term is so loose that we can apply it to anything, even a Bill Knott poem (as Bill Knott is clearly not part of any established order but his own).
Anyone who cherishes the individuality of the author should be thankful that a little money has come to UDP, as the publishers built their press from nothing, on their labor and intelligence, and while their vision may not reflect yours (particularly you who smugly attack at once an imaginary “avant-garde” and an artificial “establishment”), be thankful daring work finds its way out in physical form.
And though many wouldn’t believe it, small presses can sell enough, or nearly enough, to support their costs, because the costs include little more than materials and do not count labor, which is voluntary.
But if you want to be the child knocking down sandcastles, have your fun.
Matthew Henriksen
— Matthew Henriksen
++
(2)
Bill,
You are confusing Ugly Duckling as a small press with conventional small presses. Ugly Duckling’s roots are in the book arts, in hand-crafted books. The labor of such projects, though intensive, eliminates the massive costs of printing out-of-house. While Ugly Duckling is the one example of a press that has risen in stature, it is surrounded by many small presses, like Hot Whiskey Press, Effing Press, and Pilot Books, which sustain themselves w/o any funding. Your concept of the small press doesn’t allow for the even smaller presses publishing in the tradition of kayak, C., etc., where the effort is put forth on behalf of the work without need for or without fear of (as in Ugly Duckling’s case) wide-spread attention. But these are exactly the books that are getting attention from serious readers.
And if you think the CIA funded Daniil Kharms, you should write your next book about it.
— Matthew Henriksen
From the response thread to the Ugly Duckling Article:
>>The Massachusetts Cultural Council refuses to respond to my querires. <>Recently when moving, I found a manuscript of poems I wrote in the 80s and had since thought lost. Can I send them to you for consideration?<<
These two comments basically sum up the tone of responses to the UDP article (except for Knott’s. You can find him at the bottom of ANY article on poetry, knives out, taking the anti- side of fill-in-the-blank).
The sheer volume of narcissism, coupled with the utter lack of understanding of how the world works, makes me feel the same way I feel after watching a couple hours of cable news: worse-informed than I was before, and stupider myself for having stood so close to so much radioactive stupidity.
Indeed, two of the only comments with any value come from Matthew Henriksen, of Cannibal/typo/Narwhal/Burning Chair. In two concise, articulate posts, he explains more or less everything you could need to know about small/micro-press publishing and book arts-focused presses. Don’t bother clicking and scrolling, I’ll just re-post here:
(1)
The stakes are so low for poets, whenever someone reaches a degree of visibility the bitter little birds come out to chirp about how sad they are.
UDP has been at the forefront of revitalizing the tradition of small house publishing. Their books are gorgeous and functional. The range of work they select is as eclectic as any press out there. If you want to bash the term “avant-garde” go ahead, but the term is so loose that we can apply it to anything, even a Bill Knott poem (as Bill Knott is clearly not part of any established order but his own).
Anyone who cherishes the individuality of the author should be thankful that a little money has come to UDP, as the publishers built their press from nothing, on their labor and intelligence, and while their vision may not reflect yours (particularly you who smugly attack at once an imaginary “avant-garde” and an artificial “establishment”), be thankful daring work finds its way out in physical form.
And though many wouldn’t believe it, small presses can sell enough, or nearly enough, to support their costs, because the costs include little more than materials and do not count labor, which is voluntary.
But if you want to be the child knocking down sandcastles, have your fun.
Matthew Henriksen
— Matthew Henriksen
++
(2)
Bill,
You are confusing Ugly Duckling as a small press with conventional small presses. Ugly Duckling’s roots are in the book arts, in hand-crafted books. The labor of such projects, though intensive, eliminates the massive costs of printing out-of-house. While Ugly Duckling is the one example of a press that has risen in stature, it is surrounded by many small presses, like Hot Whiskey Press, Effing Press, and Pilot Books, which sustain themselves w/o any funding. Your concept of the small press doesn’t allow for the even smaller presses publishing in the tradition of kayak, C., etc., where the effort is put forth on behalf of the work without need for or without fear of (as in Ugly Duckling’s case) wide-spread attention. But these are exactly the books that are getting attention from serious readers.
And if you think the CIA funded Daniil Kharms, you should write your next book about it.
— Matthew Henriksen
Those are good comments, I agree. I think it’s a little unfair to blast all the comments on the UDP thread as “cable news show” fodder. It’s all actually, despite the hype, pretty sane–as far as these threads go, anyway. Maybe you’re still mad about the dog at the end of The Savages. =)
Those are good comments, I agree. I think it’s a little unfair to blast all the comments on the UDP thread as “cable news show” fodder. It’s all actually, despite the hype, pretty sane–as far as these threads go, anyway. Maybe you’re still mad about the dog at the end of The Savages. =)
Also I typoed Dodie Bellamy’s book originally as Barf ManiFIESTO, which is a kind of revolutionary pinata party*, not Manifesto, which is the second word in the name of the book.
*There is a pinata, oddly enough, in Barf Manfesto, slammed and screamed at by Eileen Myles.
Fuck. Manfesto? Fuck.
Also I typoed Dodie Bellamy’s book originally as Barf ManiFIESTO, which is a kind of revolutionary pinata party*, not Manifesto, which is the second word in the name of the book.
*There is a pinata, oddly enough, in Barf Manfesto, slammed and screamed at by Eileen Myles.
Fuck. Manfesto? Fuck.
Hey, I’m the one who spelled her name wrong because I have dizzlexia.
Hey, I’m the one who spelled her name wrong because I have dizzlexia.
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_02_004302.php
is this the same Bill Knott?
Yep!
Yep!
we will redeem our typos through our passion
we will redeem our typos through our passion
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders
That documented, clandestine operation is NOT to be conflated with a grant from the NEA. Is the writer against any public funding for the arts under capitalism?
The (so-called) New York School of poets was NOT the “literary arm” of the group of painters it was popularly named after. What’s with the paranoid, evidence-free CIA-baiting of the late Kenneth Koch? Everyone knows the agency’s prime asset in the literary avant-garde was Harry Mathews.
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders
That documented, clandestine operation is NOT to be conflated with a grant from the NEA. Is the writer against any public funding for the arts under capitalism?
The (so-called) New York School of poets was NOT the “literary arm” of the group of painters it was popularly named after. What’s with the paranoid, evidence-free CIA-baiting of the late Kenneth Koch? Everyone knows the agency’s prime asset in the literary avant-garde was Harry Mathews.
I thought you were trying to say BORF Manifesto at first. I thought that would be cool. BORF is jiggy with it.
I thought you were trying to say BORF Manifesto at first. I thought that would be cool. BORF is jiggy with it.
the government stole my Germs CD
the government stole my Germs CD
I know Mr. Knott has a proclivity to be “anti” everything, but the CIA & UDP? C’mon, BK (as in Brooklyn not Bill Knott) up & long live the ducklings.
I know Mr. Knott has a proclivity to be “anti” everything, but the CIA & UDP? C’mon, BK (as in Brooklyn not Bill Knott) up & long live the ducklings.
[…] the comments thread on the post, which I’ve now been following for several days. Much like the UDP-NYT thread Mike Young posted about the other day, the few attempts at rational, intelligent discussion in Zapruder’s comment thread are […]
[…] of the comments thread on the post, which I’ve now been following for several days. Much like the UDP-NYT thread Mike Young posted about the other day, the few attempts at rational, intelligent discussion in Zapruder’s comment thread are drowned […]