[p. 3 of 4]

[Luis continues]... "on the cutting edge" by the art critics, museums, galleries and auction houses, confuses the works' real value (by transforming them into merchandise) and thus their very nature as works of art.

White: I guess I experience editorial work as a need for content, for creative sensory information. If the literary or arts spaces fulfilled me with compelling information of the type I was looking for, then perhaps I wouldn't feel the need to write or publish. But when I look around, especially in the wake of the journal 3rd Bed's demise, there is an urgent need to fill these niches and niches that have not even been conceived, to keep pushing things forward. If I find it in someone else, I'll publish it, otherwise I will try to create it myself, or collaborate. As an editor, you know when you find something good because it makes you bow down and abandon everything you are doing—because you know it's been done better than you could ever do it. That leads to the compulsion to publish it so others can experience that same sense of discovery. If you have an idea or vision in your head of what you are looking for and can't find it, then there is the compulsion to create it, to get it down on paper. My problem as a publisher and an editor (and one with a fulltime job in a unrelated field) is that I am finding less and less time to create my own art (let alone read all the books I want to read, travel to all the places I want to go, etc.). As for the different media types, for me that is related to the limits of expression. Sometimes words can show it all, other times—as the saying goes—a picture tells a thousand words. Other times it feels like neither is doing quite enough on its own and so needs some help, a different angle. And this is only touching on the visual and textual. You could go on and on about music, sculpture, food, film, and other media and multimedia.

Okay, so a question back to you, as one of the critical voices behind The Constant Critic website and writer of insightful and creative book reviews: how does the review process fit in to all of this? Can reviewers in a sense act as collaboration partners with writers in furthering their causes, in promoting their ideas? Or, in the case of a negative review, collaborate by exposing a piece of writing's true worth? Can a review add substance to the body of that work being reviewed, and can a review be considered a work of art in itself? And one last question about reviews (coming from someone with a background in the sciences)—can a literary review ever be purely objective?

McSweeney: To answer your question, Derek, while we are all workers in and for the arts, it would probably be stretching it to say that a reviewer collaborates with an author. But I have begun to think it's okay to think of a review as an opportunity to advocate for an author, a press, a group, or a school of poetry that I want people to know (more) about. I've occasionally also used a negative review to spotlight an aesthetic or ethical move in someone's work I disagree with. I don't expect that person's work to change in response (I'm not sure I'd want that kind of power, either!), but I do want to start a conversation among writers about whether my claims are valid, whether I'm asking the right questions, whether the aesthetic or ethical problem I point out is something we poets and artists should be thinking about. I do think a review can enrich a reading experience for a subsequent reader of the text in question, because I think some people do need frames to help them into certain texts. Once inside they can disregard my reading and make of the text whatever they want. It could also be the case that a review would enrich a reading of a text by placing it in communication with other texts that even the author might not have thought of. Finally, there is SURELY no such thing as an objective review in the arts—is there any such thing as an objective review in science? I worked at the Annals of Otolaryngology for a year, sending out papers for peer review. Our reviewers were brilliant and conscientious, but presumably there's a reason we seek out at least three of them.

More and more I am thinking that the New Critical rhetoric of objectivity has been a real blow to poetry writing, reception, and pedagogy. This attitude is reflected everywhere, from the structure of poetry workshops to the call for "objective" reviews to the requirement that poetry be apolitical lest it lose its timelessness and attach to a particular temporality. Poetry just gets more and more exciting when it's read in historical or political or aesthetic context, and there are always infinite contexts in which it can be placed. A contextless review would not be objective, but it would be myopic. Objectivity in the arts is a red herring, or worse, a disingenuous dodge that keeps us from trying to grasp art's real implications in and impact on the world.

Your comment about art and the market, Carlos, reminds me of Derek's earlier statement about the 'ideal situation' for art as deriving from a non-authorial, workshop, or group-oriented model. What is the ideal social/political/economical situation for art? What is the ideal social/political/economical situation for artists? Is the ideal situation for art the same as the ideal situation for artists? Is the ideal situation for artists the same as for the rest of mankind? Think big—or is it bad to think this big?

Luis: Your question requires a critique in depth of the social/economical conditions we are living in. I am not an expert in these matters, and even less of an expert in predicting what should be the ideal conditions for the art and the artists in the future. As an old socialist, I guess that I lean towards a more radical change of conditions where the artists could express themselves without the burden of being controlled by the market. But how can we change all that? Everything points to an increasing control from the art merchants and a more conscious complicity of the

[continues...]


Tomatillos, Derek White