My first three posts have all gone over the 1,000-word target, so I’m going try to keep this one short, and introduce a potentially useful literary concept that I might have just made up.
If you aren't familiar with these terms, there are two ways of looking at grammar, often at odds with one another. Descriptivists are interested in the way a language is actually used by native speakers—what are the forms of speech, what purposes do they serve, how are they evolving, and why. Prescriptivists, instead, are concerned with the way a language should be used—what is the "correct" way to say something?
For an example, consider the "singular they": The English language doesn't have a gender-neutral singular pronoun, no word that means "he or she," and that makes certain sentence constructions feel awkward. To compensate, we often use the word "they" as a substitute. So if I were to say, "Every editor must pick their side in this debate," you would know exactly what I meant. A descriptive grammarian would find that interesting, and explain how it came to be, and which dialects and registers most often use it. A prescriptive grammarian would argue that the proper sentence would be, "Every editor must pick his or her side in this debate."
"Ain't," "y'all," "yous," double negatives, and split infinitives are some other points of disagreement.
Neither side is right or wrong. Linguists are descriptivists, studying and describing they way a language changes over time. English teachers and copyeditors are prescriptivists, prescribing rules to try to keep a language from changing, though change is ultimately inevitable. Many of the rules prescriptivists try to enforce are arbitrary and elitist, and the fight is ultimately futile, so I tend to prefer descriptivism myself—but presciptivism slows our drift away from the language of Shakespeare, and how can you argue with that?
I'd like to propose these two grammars as an analog for literary editing. This would put us into two camps: prescriptive editors, who become proponents of a certain aesthetic or school of writing, and descriptive editors, who try to explore and reflect the literary landscape as it happens to be. As is the case with grammar, neither side is right or wrong, but I think it's useful to be aware of this distinction.
In yesterday's post, I mentioned that one of the purposes of a literary magazine is to provide a chronicle of literary development and cultural ideas—that role is important to me, and so I prefer a descriptive editorialism. When choosing poems for Rattle, I don't want to favor my own personal poetic tastes, I want to publish the strongest representative sample of the submissions that we receive—both in style and content. This is almost a journalist's view of editing: I'm trying to blend into the background, describing the scene as it happens to be, and calling attention to details that seem worthy of highlight.
If you read Rattle, you might think that we—it's myself, Alan Fox, and Megan O'Reilly Green selecting the poems—were in love with narrative free verse, but that isn't the case. My own tastes align much more with new formalism and lyrical poetry—I want close attention to sound and music: poets like Wendy Videlock and Gregory Orr. It's tempting to try to push that view into the magazine, but in the end I find it much more interesting to let the writing take its own shape, mapping it like a cartographer. For some reason that's what's thrilling to me.
That's why I try to tell poets not to read Rattle in hopes of decoding what will please us—send what pleases you, so I can keep it on the map I'm working to build. The most difficult and rewarding thing to do, as an editor selecting poems, I think, is to find those that certain segments of your readership will enjoy more than you do.
I think most poets and poetry readers, and probably most poetry editors, too, are prescriptivists in nature—and likely that's how it should be. This is art, and we should be passionate about our art. But descriptivism shouldn't be ignored.
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AND NOW A TOP 10
When I asked our readers on Facebook what I should write about while guest-blogging here, several suggested that I highlight some of the poets we publish who I think deserve more attention. The laziest way to do that would be a top 10 list, and it's late, so here are the top 10 poets ranked by number of appearances in Rattle:
1. Lynne Knight – 12
2. Erik Campbell – 12
3. Patricia Smith – 10
4. Lyn Lifshin – 10
5. Tony Gloeggler – 9
6. Lynne Thompson – 8
7. Ed Galing – 8
8. Mike White – 7
9. Mather Schneider – 7
10. Courtney Kampa, Gregory Orr – 6
Obviously Patricia Smith, Gregory Orr, and Lyn Lifshin are well-known, but if you haven't read Lynne Knight or Erik Campbell, run to find their books—both have important things to say, and beautiful ways of saying them. Two of my favorite poets writing today, so it's no coincidence they're at the top. My favorite samples: "To the Young Man Who Cried Out…" and "Great Caesar's Ghost." Tony Gloeggler is a down-to-earth and honest NYC poet who's been with us from the start. Read his "1969," which is one of the most popular poems we've ever published. Lynne Thompson is an LA treasure. Ed Galing died a few years ago, a great late-life poet of the Greatest Generation. Mike White writes the tightest and most memorable little lyrics. Mather Schneider is a gritty cab driver in Tucson who knows how to turn a story and never runs out of them. Courtney Kampa is the youngest on our list—she was a finalist for our Rattle Poetry Prize as an undergrad, and won the Readers' Choice Award last year. All of them deserve more attention in this humble editor's opinion. Just missing the list was Francesca Bell, who is also worth a mention. Her poem "How I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor's Penis in My Hand" is sure to delight.
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[Photo by opensource.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link]