against future trash?

a questionnaire for publishers, and a reading list in footnotes

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how publishing books can change one’s relationship to texts. You start to see books (both those which might be published, and those which have already been published) in a new way against an aggregate of potential texts.

I’m talking I guess about the motivations that make someone publish something in general, and the values that underlie that sort of decision for me personally.

I’ve crystallized some of my thoughts into the following questions for publishers of poetry (I figure questions are probably the most honest formulation of these thoughts at this point). I’ve added footnotes that make up a kind of reading list of publishing texts that are sitting in the back of my mind rent-free, and that clarify some of these questions for me.

from Aldus Manutius’ Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499, which I learned recently was a commercial flop

What does it mean to publish a book in 2023? Are books still capable of serving as “meditative objects?”¹ What books make sense to publish in a time of semio-inflation: overproduction and under-reading?² How does the publisher’s role change within the general field of non-reading engagement with the book (owning, collecting, skimming, postponing reading, “posting,” non-re-reading, flipping through from time to time)?

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What negotiation is possible between a desire to resist the commodity form of the book and the resistance to producing “future trash?”³ Is the book’s collectability by virtue of its commodity-nature now more important than the “serpentine links” between books by a single publisher?⁴

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At what level of passionate investment in the text does the desire to share or propagate rise above the more self-centered (and timely) desire to curate? And at what level of passionate investment in the text does the text actually become necessary (ie, worth printing)?

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What is “recognized” or “validated” by the book form? What separates the published, essentially, from the self-published?⁵ Is self-publishing a manner of taking back the means of production?⁶ What percentage of publication materializes more symbolic questions, such as social capital?⁷

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Steering away from the aspects of publishing in the sense of “gatekeeping,” however, on what basis do we answer the question of quality or “completion” of a text? What checks are in place in the world of “independent”’ and small press publishing to help people understand when their text may not be finished yet, or may have been a wrong turn for their own writing practice? Does the crisis of literary overproduction emerge from an anxious professionalism that would have texts emerge before they are ready? Or is it simply that everyone has too much to read, and too much non-reading to do, to truly shepherd a text into completion?

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Does the probable non-eternality of the small-press book allow for a new and more contingent reading experience, or is its potential eternality still necessary for the reader to assume?

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Are “fictions of autonomy” the best we can hope for as publishers under capitalism?⁸

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Is this elusive autonomy necessarily tied to labor outside the domain of compensation (ie, volunteer work)?⁹ And how does the relationship to publishing change when you assume from the outset that, if publishing is your career plan, “you’re going to die of hunger?"¹⁰

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If anyone can answer these, please sound off in the comments, lol

from a book printed by Fredy Perlman

1. Episode 4: Peter Dimock, Eugene Lim, & Ian Dreiblatt - “Hope Is a Word I'd Replace with Collaboration” — Cleveland State University Poetry Center (csupoetrycenter.com)

2. Franco “Bifo Berardo,” The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance. Semiotexte, 2012.

3. “What Problems Can Artist Publishers Solve?” Temporary Services, 2018

4. Roberto Calasso, The Art of the Publisher. Macmillan, 2015.

5. Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop, A Poetics of the Press: Interviews with Poets, Printers & Publishers. Ugly Duckling Press, 2021.

6. Lyn Hejinian, A Poetics of the Press: Interviews with Poets, Printers & Publishers. Ugly Duckling Press, 2021.

7. State of the Art #4: John Trefry of Inside the Castle - The Nonconformist Magazine (nonconformist-mag.com)

8. Matvei Yankelevich, “Autonomy’s Compromise and the Professionalization of the Small Press.” Poetry Foundation, 2019.

9. Andrew Blauvelt, “All Printing Is Political: Fredy Perlman and the Detroit Printing Co-op.” Walker Art Museum, 2016.

10. Nicole Cecilia Delgado, A Mano/By Hand. Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020.