Context
Review of Literary Resources
Megan McDowell
For readers just starting to explore
what’s available in the diverse world of small press publishing, there
are a number of good places to look. The Small Press Distribution
catalog, for one, or their website (www.spdbooks.org); another is the
Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (www.clmp.org). Both of these
organizations’ sites list or connect you to much of the small magazine
and book publishing taking place in the United States. This review will
look at two such publishing ventures worth your attention. Both
Duration Press and 3rd bed give useful insight into the writing being done today both abroad (Duration) and in the United States (3rd bed). The first version of the website was uploaded in early 1999. In
2000, Shiroma decided to put the catalogs of publishers Burning Deck
and Paradigm Press on Duration’s site, a decision that came from his
belief that small presses should have some kind of Internet presence
"beyond the random blurb and selected title list to be found on most
websites." After that, other presses began to be included, and Shiroma
decided to find a way to provide full, virtual hosting services, which
seemed to him to be the best way for presses to establish and maintain
their own Internet identity outside of Duration; today, he provides
hosting services to well over 50 small presses, magazines, and poetry
organizations. Shiroma’s conception of Duration was influenced
by the importance that poetry in translation played on his own
developing reading interests, and he modeled the project on the work of
other poet-editors for whom he has a "profound respect"— Jerome
Rothenberg and Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop among them. In
November of 2002, Duration’s website underwent a reorganization, and it
now has a new design that’s easier to navigate. In addition to the
chapbook series and hosting services, Duration also puts out-of-print
works of poetry into downloadable PDF format, and for the moment at
least, the site is the only place to find works like "Lawn of Excluded
Middle" by Rosmarie Waldrop, "Moon Bok: Petition, invocation and
homage" by Michael Basinski, "Fifth Season" by Pierre Joris, and "To
Speak While Dreaming" by Eleni Sikelianos. Duration’s newest
project, which Shiroma says will be a focus of his in the coming
months, is an E-book series that offers free, downloadable works of
poetry by primarily younger American authors. To date there are works
by Patrick Durgin, Rachel Levitsky, Brian Strang, Elizabeth Treadwell,
and Rick Snyder; soon to be added are works by Heather Akerberg, Taylor
Brady, and Marcella Durand. Ordering and subscription information for
the Duration Series of International Poetry chapbooks can also be found
on the site. Like many young journals, 3rd bed was conceived in reaction to something—in this case, to what the
editors saw as a lack of openness in more established literary
magazines. Standley cites Conjunctions and Grand Street as journals he admired and emulated, but because both publications have
been around for years and developed a stable of writers, he didn’t see
them as approachable. 3rd bed was started "to create a journal we’d like to see our own work in" and that would feature largely unestablished writers. Despite its openness to new work, 3rd bed clearly has developed an aesthetic; the type of work that it publishes
tends to blend the strange and surreal with more traditional narrative
forms. In general, the pieces demonstrate an awareness of the
traditions they are building on, and with echoes of everything from
fairy tales to postmodern art, it’s no wonder the images are often
startling. The work does not stray too far in the direction of either
the absurd or the conventional, and the result is a kind of thoughtful
madness, an informed inventiveness. Take for instance the first
paragraph of a piece in issue #5 called "Widdershins" by Bryson Newhart: Not all of the writers in 3rd bed are newcomers; a few of the more familiar contributers include Michael
Martone, Robert Coover, Stacy Levine, and Brian Evenson. Issue #7,
which has recently been released, includes work by Diane Williams and
Christine Hume. It seems the magazine is in the process of exploring
and defining its artistic mission, and will perhaps someday have its
own stable of writers; but thus far at least it has maintained its
openness to new work, and has published writing that is consistently
good and interesting. As for Standley’s plans for 3rd bed’s future, he says, "I would like to see how eclectic the journal can
become, while still remaining recognizable and relevant." Like a number
of literary magazines these days (all, it seems), 3rd bed has also recently initiated a book publishing project, with the publication of Gary Lutz’s Stories in the Worst Way.
It maintains a website (www.3rdbed.com) that includes ordering
information, content from the print magazine, and a hypermedia gallery
where many of the pieces are visual extensions of works in the journal.
Duration Press is notable both as a publisher of international poetry
and as a website (www.durationpress.com) that provides an on-line
"meeting ground" for a number of small poetry presses working in
international and/or avant-garde traditions. Duration was founded in
late 1997 to publish chapbooks of contemporary poetry in translation;
its founder, Jerrold Shiroma, wanted to "add something different to the
various discussions taking place about ‘what is experimental poetry,’
or ‘what constitutes an avant-garde’ by helping to internationalize the
issue." He cites the conventional way of looking at "avant-garde"
poetry as descending from a culturally specific lineage, and thus
insulated by its original language from international dialogues.
Shiroma planned to disrupt this divisive view by treating translation
as an integral part and extension of a work of poetry. The first
chapbooks of the Duration Series of International Poetry appeared in
1999, and have since included Americans such as Rosmarie Waldrop,
Julianna Spahr, and Gale Nelson, alongside international writers from
countries including Mexico, France, Algeria, Romania, Japan, China, and
Russia. In the meantime, Duration’s website has grown into a hub for
international poetry. By providing hosting services to small publishers
on its site (Shiroma designs the presses’ sites himself for a small
fee), durationpress.com has become the home of a consortium of small
publishers of books, chapbooks, and literary magazines, and one of the
most comprehensive resources for small press poetry in the U.S.
3rd bed is a literary magazine started around the same time as Fence and McSweeney’s, although as editor Vincent Standley says, it "entered more like the lamb than the lion." But the work in 3rd bed has proven consistently varied and interesting, so that the magazine
has built for itself a readership and an identity as a publisher of
new, often first-time writers whose aesthetics fall in the category
Standley calls "writing against realism." While 3rd bed remains
relatively low-profile compared to the two magazines mentioned above,
it’s nonetheless become a destination for younger writers (and some
not-so-young), and readers interested in unconventional writing. 3rd bed’s fiction, in particular, is regularly good, and distinguishes it from comparable magazines.
There was a time when my internal language was muddy.
It was hardening into walls that I needed to attack and break down. To
the accompaniment of flute music, I got busy with tonics and sumac. One
morning I rigged a strappado device that was to be operated by a team
of kittens. It was a contraption designed to break my own arms. It was
surprisingly effective!
The story goes on to tell of the
masochistic narrator losing his job for exposing himself to his
colleagues, and searching for Irene, the world’s tallest dwarf. This
story, like many in 3rd bed, seems to have an explicit intent—to break down the hardened internal walls of language—that it addresses through the absurd.
