Blogorrhea Junior

Blogging, Aggregators & Copyright

Copyright issues: they just never go away. Remember that new blog I started, the one called Dowsing? Boy, what a headache that turned into. Don't get me wrong: I love writing the blog. It's fun to have a personal journal again, a place where I can write merely for the purpose of expressing my thoughts—with the usual writer's eye to mining those posts for use elsewhere, which is why I went to the trouble of putting a clear copyright statement on it. This blog only has a Collective Commons copyright, stating that people are free to use the content, unaltered, for non-commercial purposes. I'm happy to have people subscribe to the feed, link, quote, or use the content for educational purposes. What I almost always protest is people just posting my content to draw traffic to their site, which may or may not have anything to do with book arts. Write your own damn content then. Don't steal from others.

So Dowsing, simply by virtue of its name, has ended up in the aggregate feed for a site called "Life Technology™. They sell pseudo-scientific, New Agey crap like Tesla oscillation fields, alchemical compounds, and Atlantean crystals (!! No, seriously!). So it's rather ironic that they're using my content on their site, since what Dowsing is all about is freedom from bad science and superstition. I've got hardly any hits on Dowsing, which I really don't care about in that sense. People will find it and read it if they're interested. It's as much for me as it is a public endeavor. So when I found Life Technology™'s URL in my stats, I was curious, and then I was pissed off.  But I'll let you read the exchange; here's what I wrote to them yesterday:

I notice that the content on your site is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright act. Guess what? So is mine. Please stop lifting content from my blog, Dowsing (http://leekottner.typepad.com/dowsing/), to use on your website as its purpose is antithetical to everything on your site. You have no less than a dozen posts from my blog on your dowsing page (http://www.lifetechnology.org/dowsing.php). Please remove them now or I will be filing a complaint with your ISP and website host.

Sincerely,

Lee Kottner

And here's the nice little note I got in return this morning:

dear lee,
our news headlines at www.lifetechnology.org/dowsing.php are used according to fair use provisions and are intended to direct people to relevant sites.

you can read more about the fair use policy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

we have not published your articles, only headings with links to your articles at your own blog.

if we were breaking copyright provisions as you claim then most sites on the web would also be breaking the rules but that is not the case.

this law has been tested in court many times and rulings have universally been in the favour of the blogger.

thank you
kirsty

Are you laughing yet? I was. Wikipedia, huh? Here's my reply:

First of all, Kirsty, this is a very flimsy and erroneous argument, and you have picked the wrong person to use it on. I've written a series of posts on copyright for artists on another blog, so I'm fairly well educated about it. Find yourself a better source than Wikipedia. Try the U.S. Government copyright office instead.

As one of the intellectual property lawyers I spoke to said, "fair use only earns you the right to go to court." Fair use is in the eye of the copyright holder, who is much more likely to be favored in a court case than the person in violation; there is no hard and fast rule about proportion or magic number of words that the user may interpret for their own purposes. You are not using just the "headlines" from my posts; you are using much of the introductory paragraph. The feed from yesterday's post (7/02 "It's Just That Simple") uses almost the entire post, since it was a short written introductory paragraph with a video attached. The fact that you have selections from more than half of my posts would probably count against you too. I've become a major source for that particular feed, simply because my blog is called "Dowsing." As of this date, there are only 30 posts on my blog. 13 of those posts appear in some form on your page. That's a high proportion of content.

 

Fair use usually holds up best in court when it is used for educational purposes, in a classroom, or by artists. Your site is clearly primarily a commercial endeavor, not a news and information aggregator, and you are using my content to draw commercial traffic to your commercial site. Either you offer me a fee for the use of my content in this way, since you are clearly using it in a commercial manner, or you are in violation of my copyright, which states that my content cannot be used for commercial purposes unless I agree to it. I have not agreed, so you're in violation.

 

If you'd like a clear run-down on "fair use" you can find it here, at the U.S. Government copyright office site: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html. It clearly states that commercial use has less protection than non-profit or educational uses. It also clearly states that the safest course is always to get permission, which you have not done. Here are some of the uses which have generally been considered "Fair use" in the past.

 

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use:

quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.

 

None of these fit your case. In your reply, you state: "this law has been tested in court many times and rulings have universally been in the favour of the blogger." Guess what? You're not the blogger here. I am. You are the aggregator. The Associated Press has recently sued a news aggregator over just this issue. You can read about it here: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071010-associated-press-sues-news-aggregator-for-licensing-failure.html

Secondly my site is not a "news" site nor is it relevant to your content; it is not about the paranormal, or dowsing, and is in fact, in part about real science, not the fake kind you're selling to gullible seekers. Now, if you'd like to see a totally scientific debunking about every one of your products appear in that "news" feed from my site, I'll be happy to oblige. It happens to fit my subject matter pretty tidily. I also happen to know a couple of well-respected science writers (and physicists) who'd be happy to pitch in, I'm sure.

Section 1204 sets out a hefty penalty for copyright infringement: 

§ 1204. Criminal offenses and penalties

(a) GENERAL  Any person who violates section 1201 or 1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain

(1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and

(2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense.

I went to the trouble of clearly marking this site as copyrighted because I intend to use some of the posts in a non-fiction book. Your publication of them without my consent and without a fee injures me as an author and I think a court would side with me on this. Do you really want to risk a half-million dollar fine on this? And that's not counting the $100,000 for each infringement, i.e, each separate use of one of my posts. That's well over a million dollars in fines should it reach the maximum. Not to mention jail time.

Care to risk it?

Sincerely,

Lee Kottner

Oddly enough, within an hour of receiving this, the feed from the news pages disappeared from their site. I suspect there is some serious editing of the spider going on.

UPDATE: Then the feed came back, and I began plotting with Jen to do the debunking posts, but this morning, I got a little note from their "legal counsel":

Dear Lee,

Thank you for your bringing your DMCA related concerns to our attention.

 

Life Technology acts as a news aggregator to provide news stories for the purpose of disemmination [sic] of news in categories that are relevant to our website. Dowsing is one such area that we are involved in. You will find many bona fide articles about dowsing at our website and blog. Despite what you seem to believe, our news stories are offered for educational purposes.

 

We are not guilty of publishing your work for our commercial gain nor have we acted in bad faith.

 

From a legal perspective, an infringement case would be very weak. There is strong argument for a fair use defense here. The brief exerpts [sic] of your work posted by ourselves are not stifling demand for your work. We are actually creating demand, not decreasing demand by providing links to the original work. Further, posting excerpts of the articles and linking to the original facilitates and invites critical discussion of the content, one of the primary reasons for the fair use defense.

 

You could not use the argument that we are diminishing the value of your work by disseminating copyrighted work prior to the publication of a book if you are publishing these exerpts into the public domain yourself.

 

Links are the currency of the internet. Instead of harassing bloggers etc., you should be praising them for bringing people to your content. It's a very poor business decision to ask people not to facilitate access to your product.

 

We are aware of the recent filing where Associated Press is suing a news aggregator on the same grounds. We feel that this even marks an unfortunate event in the history of the internet and free speech.

 

We have temporarily removed the offending page dowsing.php pending the outcome of The Associated Press versus Moreover technologies lawsuit and further clarification of DMCA law.

 

Thank you.

Joshua Silverberg, Legal Counsel Life Technology

Here's my reply:

Dear Joshua,

You've got an interesting interpretation of "public domain" if you think that anything on the internet is in it and thus fair game. Despite how "educational" a service you think your links provide, there is no escaping the fact that LifeTechnology is a commercial site selling goods. Your "news" feeds are merely a service; they are part of your advertising strategy, one I've employed myself in designing websites. Calling yourselves "bloggers" is disingenous and untrue. When my site provides a large proportion of your content for one of those feeds, you should be paying to use my material. I don't work for free. The harm is not in the linking, it's in the amount of material used, and the fact that my content is thus associated with a non-scientific site which lessens the value of my work. But I'll keep in mind the "increasing critical discussion" part if you start posting my material again. You won't mind me debunking the products because that will be educational. Some of my real scientific blogging friends were very excited about the prospect.

The upshot is is that you've removed the feed, and I'm happy with that.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Lee Kottner

I'm not normally in favor of bullying people with the DMCA. Big corporations have made a bad habit of using it to intimidate perfectly legal uses of their content, so they can control all the money. I was happy to see The Naked Cowboy win the right to sue M&M Mars for misuse of his image for that reason. As a teacher, I'm all for fair use. But as a writer, I'm also all for being paid for your work and for having it appear only where you want it to. There's a thin and badly defined line between fair use and exploitation.

In this case, there's also the issue of guilt by association. As a writer, I do not want to be associated with any entity that sells the kind of pseudo-scientific crap this site sells. This is a list of their other "news" feeds, most of which I have a lot of objections to:

Kabbalah Radionics Magick Radiesthesia Homeopathy Alternative Health Mercola Jeff Sutherland PRWEB NLP Hypnosis Orgone Orgonite Rife Psychotronics Psionics Illuminati Alchemy Ormus Free Energy Alternative Science Spirituality Huna Metaphysics Occult Witchcraft Health Spirit Conspiracy Herbal Medicine Dowsing Healing Seduction Rosicrucian Paranormal Philosophy Technology Science Paganism Wicca Time Travel Feng Shui Atlantis UFO Scientology Zappers Cloudbusters Nikola Tesla Grimoires Chemtrails Manifesting Yoga Astrology Psychic Powers Xtrememind Forum

I hate to see yoga, spirituality, metaphysics, health, philosophy, technology, science, and Nikola Tesla lumped in with Atlantis, UFOs, Scientology, Orgone, Alchemy, and the Illuminati. Some of these things are not like the others.  I  suspect it was at least as much the threat of debunking as it was the legal talk that led to the sudden demise of the news feed. People have a right to believe whatever they like, but they also have a right not to be forced to associate or have their work associated with causes or ideas they don't condone. And control of your own intellectual work trumps, every time, the notion that information wants to be free.

[Cross posted at Dowsing]

Conspiracy Theory: The NYT Book Review Version

I don't know why I keep reading the NYTimes Book Review with its crappy record of ignoring women's writing (when it's not outright belittling it). I guess I keep hoping that, magically, one day that will change. Then I remind myself that one of the definitions of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about the male literary world though. One of my favorite book blogs, Fade Theory, has a link to an interview with Spanish author Lucia Etxebarria in cafebabel. (I haven't read any of her books as they're currently only available in her native Spanish and in French translations), Etxebarria has been a "journalist, translator, script-writer and has worked in advertising" in addition to writing novels and non-fiction books about pop culture. About male writers, she says,

‘Male artists are artists, female artists are women. That’s the way things work, and they have always been this way. Literature is an even more macho art than others. There’s a border between sentimental literature and virile literature, which should be kept in mind. Male writers are very embedded into their virility, and it’s a threat if we women sell more books than them.’ The former professor at the University of Aberdeen is jokingly blunt. ‘My books sell well and the best part is that I’m blunt, so people categorise me as a lesbian, or in the best case, as an emasculator.’

If it's a given that women writers ≠ artists, and I think it's safe to say that's true, then in that light, you can see the Times's exclusion of women as part of a conspiracy to erase our words. This is especially true with their high toned and highbrow attitude, though they've now condescended to review (gasp!) mass market fiction (and funny how much of that is written by women!), because in trade fiction, women dominate and on the non-fiction best seller list, the proportion of women to men is almost even, too. And yet, this week's perfidy reviews in the Book Review (Sunday, May 25, 2008): books by men: 11/13. 12/13 if you count the one that's co-authored with a woman, even though her name comes first.

Some things never change. But it's good to have somebody say it out loud.

"45 Lessons" Copyright Update

Well, that turned out to be ridiculously easy, and a great example of why it's not so hard to find authors or copyright holders as you think it might be. Five days after I posted about looking for the author of the 45 Lessons of Life, my old (in every sense of the word *wink*) pal Leslie from my undergrad days sent me the name of Regina Brett, a columnist with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Brett turned 50 last year and updated the original list of 45 to reflect that, then posted it on her blog at the paper, where it was no doubt found by some enterprising soul, copied into an email and sent around to friends with the tag, "Hey, isn't this great?" Somewhere along the way, as so often happens in the ether of perpetual forwarding, the chain email lost the name of the author, and it arrived in my in-box, via MG, anonymously. To be fair, I'm sure MG got it without the author's name, too, since, as an artist herself, she's scrupulous about giving credit where credit is due.

From this particular column of hers, you might get the idea that Brett's a fluffy, "women's page" columnist, but she's is anything but. She was a finalist this year for the Pulitzer because of her columns on teen violence and she's written on teenage pregnancy, racism, the death penalty, Sudan, and reforming the justice system. Which makes her 50 Lessons of Life,even more valuable, since they come from experience.

And, BTW, she has a great column on how not to be a writer, the title of which says it all: "Words are Free. Write. No Excuses." My favorite lines from it are: "Get your doctorate in creative writing first. Start therapy. Find the right writers group." More on this in another post.

Now, the next step is to decide what kind of book I'd like to make with this text, and to contact Ms. Brett about using her text.  Keep you posted.

Book Arts & Copyright, Part 5: Orphans

The other day, MG sent me this really wonderful list of lessons we should remember about life. Apparently it's making the rounds of the Intertubez and I'm wondering where it came from. Anybody have any clues? Because I'd dearly love to use this text in a book, but yanno, that copyright thing again (see the sidebar, under "Copyright Posts). So if anybody wants to claim responsibility . . . speak now or this may be considered an orphan work.

What's that mean? Orphan works are pieces like this, unattributed to anybody, floating around the Internet anonymously, unclaimed and but not necessarily unwanted, the author unknown or unreachable. As attorney Joe Keeley, who has consulted on recent proposed orphan works legislation, points out on his site, Orphanworks.net, an "orphan work" is not:

• A public domain work
• A copyrighted work whose owner(s) or exclusive licensor(s) decline to license or sell their works for any price
• A copyrighted work whose owner(s) or exclusive licensor(s) offer to license or sell their work to you for a price you are unwilling to pay
• A copyrighted work whose owner(s) you are unwilling to look for
• A copyrighted work with little or no ownership information attached to it (such as a photographic negative or textile)
• A copyrighted work for which a statutory license is available (such as Section 115 of the Copyright Act, usually referred to as a compulsory mechanical license)

There's a fair amount of controversy (and a very good blog following it) right now about orphan works and the proposed legislation, especially among graphic artists, who often can't or don't sign their work and thus are hard to track down, and a lot of crazy freaking out by people who think this means they'll be unprotected (countered very nicely here). Again, though, this all boils down to placing the burden on the user of the artwork. If this orphan works legislation is enacted, it will mean that potential users of orphan works will be required to make (and document) a good faith search for the copyright holder, and only if that fails will the work be considered an orphan.

The scary bit is that it still doesn't protect the user from being sued for infringement should the copyright holder surface. The term "good faith search" is undefined and, like beauty, probably in the eye of the beholder. Hence the suggestion to document your search: Library of Congress? Check. New York Public Library? Check. Copyright Office? Check. Google? Check. And that's just scratching the surface. There are any number of sources to consult and your librarians (who rule the world) can point you in the right direction for the media you're researching. Take notes about where you've looked and whom you've consulted and the results, and keep them handy, just in case. Because if the copyright holder shows in court that he or she is actually pretty easy to find, you're in the deep weeds, my friend.

In the meanwhile, here's the first step of my search for the author of these 45 rules. By itself, it does not constitute a "good faith" search. I have a lot more work ahead of me if I really want to use this. So if anybody knows where this came from, can you leave a comment or drop me an e-mail? I don't want to poach someone else's work without attribution or compensation. Makes for bad karma and an empty bank account.

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry. 
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood but, the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't  save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative of dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up, and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

Shakespeare's Birthday: Publishing in the New Frontier

First, happy birthday to the Bard of Avon (1564-1616), an extremely talented man ripped off by his own publisher. I've mentioned elsewhere that, in his lifetime, Shakespeare didn't own the rights to his own sonnets and the printer who published him put out a collection of his work (that also included poems only attributed to him; talk about diluting the brand!) without paying him a farthing. (Copyright wouldn't be developed for nearly another 100 years.) Printing presses in Europe were only around 100 years old (Gutenberg, the European inventor, died in 1468) and just coming into wide use at this time, so books were still something of a luxury item. The text was laboriously hand set, the signatures hand-cut and hand-sewn and hand-bound, so there was still a lot of labor involved in producing multiples, which made them somewhat pricey. The beauty of poetry is that it's short and needn't be more than a single signature. It can also be pamphlet-bound which makes it far less work than a leather-bound book and a quick money-maker.

I won't go into the whole history of printing and publishing here, but suffice to say, it's going in some interesting directions now. Print On Demand (POD) publishing has become quite popular and distribution over the net has made advertising far cheaper and wider than ever before possible. In true conglomerate fashion, Amazon, which is now the world's largest bookseller, is trying to horn in on the action of PODs and corner the market. It recently bought BookSurge, a POD company, and is now telling other POD publishers that it must use BookSurge's facilities or forgo distribution by Amazon. This is very bad news for places like Lulu and Lightning Source. From the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon.com Inc., flexing its muscles as a major book retailer, notified publishers who print books on demand that they will have to use its on-demand printing facilities if they want their books directly sold on Amazon's Web site.

Amazon "doesn't consider this an ultimatum," according to one of its spokespersons, but when you've cornered 15% of the book distribution market, and most of the online market, what else can you call it? Okay, blackmail, maybe. Extortion? Oh, I know. Monopoly!

In the spirit of independent publishing and World Book Day, Oached Pish has gathered a list of links to independent publishers in honor of the Bard's birthday. You'll see my own Maelstrom House listed there, though I haven't got much stock yet, and everything else from manga to poetry.

And if you're a poet thinking about DIYing, it's worth checking out the DIY Poetry Publishing Cooperative for links and news.

Still Looking for An Answer

We've been here before, but it never hurts to revisit a trend, especially one as long-standing and reprehensible as this one. Like, when is the New York Times Book Review going to get a freaking clue? I mean, that women read more than men (44% vs. 29%), that we write important books that it would be worth their time to actually read, and that feminism is not only here to stay, but that disparaging it with lousy reviews by women is not going to either discredit it or make it go away? Wake up, boyz. There are women in the club now, and if the college graduation numbers mean anything, we'll outnumber you eventually.

One of my favorite women's mags, Bitch, has taken the TBR to task again in a searing indictment called "Hard Times," written by Sarah Seltzer, which unmasks and analyzes their smear tactics.  A small excerpt:

Beyond this, though, books that take women’s issues in hand are rarely taken seriously [emphasis mine]. It’s not just that they are criticized, which they are, but rather that the books, their authors—and heck, the whole feminist movement—are routinely treated with a mixture of giggly naïveté and barbed antifeminist prejudices. In a 2007 op-ed for In These Times, media critic Susan J. Douglas noted that there’s “a robust tradition in the Times Book Review to stereotype feminists as single-minded, humorless ideologues who march daily to some shrine where we all genuflect before images of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”

That's actually putting it kindly. One of the excerpts from Toni Bentley’s TBR review of Katha Pollitt’s essay collection Learning to Drive uses the phrase, "Vagina dentata intellectualis" to describe Pollitt's place in the intellectual pantheon. This is a step beyond damning with faint praise. It's not even praising with faint damns. It's nasty, lightweight criticism that resorts to the personal, and it should be beneath a reviewer. And since when is former ballet dancer Toni Bentley a feminist scholar? That's who should have been reviewing Pollitt's book. Just denying Pollitt the right to be judged by a fellow scholar trivializes her work. This is a common tactic at the times, along with their claim that (and I love this one) that the reason women don’t get as much space in the section was because they don’t write about topics like military history," according to TBR preview editor Barry Gewen at a speech at the Radcliffe Institute (it's a wonder he survived to leave the stage, given the venue).

Gewen's talk, ironically (or maybe not so), was entitled "The New York Times Book Review as Cultural Gatekeeper." Well, yeah. And not in a good way.

[via Feministing]

UPDATE: My friend Jen of Cocktail Party Physics and the author of two popular physics-for-the-non-physicist books, sent me the link to this marvelous essay by Rebecca Solnit about the flip side of the problem, wherein a book, if written by a woman, obviously cannot be important. The article is about much more than that (including the infuriating habit of many men to bullshit confidently about subjects they know nothing of to women who do know), but it's really about women's continuing lack of credibility in what is still a man's world. Don't miss it. Here's a quick taste:

Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being. Things have certainly gotten better, but this war won't end in my lifetime.

I'd Rather Be in the Studio!

How many times have you said that when you're doing something else, even stuff to promote yourself, or keep food on the table? Art is way more fun and way more satisfying than promoting art, but unless you're only doing it as a hobby and don't care if anyone but your family ever sees any of it, you've got to promote it. Since that's what I'm interested in doing, I've been reading Alyson Stanfield's Art Biz Blog for about a year now. It's full of great tips and information on promoting your art and making it at the same time. Now she's got a book, and she's on a blog book tour with it. Check her out on Christine DeCamp's Passion for Painting, where Alyson's giving advice on how to get other people's information for networking. On top of that, you can win a free copy of her book by helping get the word out (a clever ploy, Alyson!). See, I'm doing it, but only because after a year of reading Alyson's blog, I'm sure the book is worth it. And if I don't win a copy, I'm buying one. You should too.

Poetry for Book Artists and Everyone Else

You know where to find it in the bookstore, but where can you find it on the web? Just in case you didn't know this (and where have you been? Under a rock somewhere?) there are loads of resources on the web for reading, publishing, even teaching poetry. There are e-zines galore, associations, graduate programs, small presses, and plenty of individual poets. The web has opened up a world of poetry for everyone. It's everywhere, in many guises and styles. And it's free! (Which is why poets mostly have other jobs; not that I think that's a bad thing.)

And take note all you book artists: these are people you'll want to hook up with to find great material to use in your books. It's not like it's a new idea; the Center for Book Arts sponsors an annual poetry chapbook contest (PDF) to give their letterpress and book arts students material to work with. In the class I took a couple of years ago, we made a broadsheet of a gorgeous poem by Gregory Pardlo that was part of a collection that later won awards. They also have a broadsides reading series. Most of the poets you'll find on the web would be very excited to work with you. Don't be shy.

Associations:

These are some of the mainstream poetry associations, but they all have links to others, and you can find just about any kind of poetry you like somewhere, just by starting here.

• The Academy of American Poets
• The Poetry Society of America not to be confused with:
• The Poetry Society of the UK. I guess they thought of it first, so we had to distinguish ourselves.
• United Poets on the West Coast and
• Poets West in the Pacific Northwest
• And if you're in New York, there's Poets House, with its vast collection of poetry books and public reading room.

Important Venues/"Schools"

I use the term "schools" very loosely. These aren't MFA programs; they're more like the School of Hard Knocks Poetics, and some amazing people have come out of them. I know the ones in New York best, because well, that's where I live. Feel free to add others in the comments.

• St. Mark's Poetry Project
• Nuyorican Poet's Cafe
• Bowery Poetry Club
• Cowboy Poetry at the Bar-D Ranch
• Gathering of the Tribes

Individual Poets (some of my personal local favorites):

• Christine Hamm has a blog called this is all your fault. She posts poems and her schedule for readings there. If you're in NYC, go look her up at one of them, especially the Poetry Brothel, and don't miss her poems.
• Cheryl B's The B-List, with news about her regular Poetry vs. Comedy gigs at the Bowery Poetry Club and elsewhere, and a fantastic set of links to other poets, writers, writing sites, zines, etc.
• Bob Holman, proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, poet, and poem pimp extraordinaire.
• Angelo Verga, one of my favorite Bronx poets.
• LivePoets.com has footage from a number of slams and spoken word performances.
• And if you want to know more about other poets, living and dead, and their poems, you can look them up at Poetry.org.

Just for fun (with lots of pop-ups, so be forewarned) the haiku generator. There, that should get you started.

Poetry in the Street

Happy Poetry Month! Yeah, I saw that eyeroll, spud. "Poetry, whatever." I don't know why there's such contempt for such a democratic art form in this country, aside from the general art hate that plagues the US in general. (And what up with that? You'd think we were all a nation of sand pounders or something.) Yet for all our contempt, the stuff is everywhere, in varying degrees of quality. It's the first verbal art form we learn in nursery rhymes. It's in our pop songs, in rap and hip-hop. It's in bad greeting cards (and good ones), in advertising jingles. Big chunks of our religious literature consist of poetry. There are literally hundreds of small literary journals that publish it. Our country even has a poet laureate (currently Charles Simic). And yet its practitioners have little respect and its best examples go largely unnoticed. More well-educated women and African Americans read it than anyone else, though it's often given as a gift. It's everywhere, and yet, the people who write it are largely unknown to the general public.

Not so in other countries, where a poet's work may be quoted from memory daily as a source of national pride (like Chile's Pablo Neruda), as anthems of revolution or outcries against political repression (like Palestine's Fadwa Tuqan), as embodiments of the national character (Spain's Cervantes, Italy's Dante, England's Shakespeare, Russia's Pushkin, Iran's Rumi and Hafiz). Then there are some poets whose work is so important that it becomes part of the daily public life, like these verses from León Felipe Camino Galicia embedded in Huertas Street in Madrid, Spain. [via Imatges i paraules].

and I ended up being born in a town of which I remember nothing:
I spent the blue days of my childhood in Salamanca,
And my youth, a somber youth, in the Mountain.

[translation by Carlos Daniel Schröder]

Imagine seeing lines from William Carlos Williams's poem "Paterson" embedded in the street of that town, or Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" on The Magnificent Mile.

Why not?

Small Press Month/Women's History Month

Woohoo!  A whole month devoted to small presses! It seems appropriate to me that this coincides with Women's History Month, since blocking access to books and knowledge has been one of the ways that women have been and still are kept in unequal positions. The adage about keeping a woman "barefoot and pregnant" has a connotation of illiteracy and ignorance, as well as the physical limitations of caring for kids and pregnancy itself. If you're a reader, you know that books of any kind open a whole new world beyond the everyday.  For some of us, they also offer a literal escape hatch, hope that there's a way out and information about how to find the exit, or even to make one for ourselves.

It's also fitting these two celebrations coincide since so many women have had huge roles in publishing, in championing books  that may never have seen the light of day, in making sure that women's lost voices are recovered and new ones heard.

If you'd like to know more about women's literacy issues, check out Kent State's bibliography.

Here's a flyer with some of the literary events taking place this month across the country. (click to enlarge).

And a late-breaking event from the Bowery Poetry Club:

National Small Press Month Reading Marathon
Thursday, March 6, 2008
308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012
212.614.0505
7 pm to Midnight. $6.

Featuring: Eileen Myles (Wave Books), Noella Kocottomblin (Wave Books), Lynne Tillman (Soft Skull), Jen Benka (Soft Skull), Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press), Ted Mathys (Coffee House Press), Alex Rose (Akashic Books), Camelia Entekhabifard (Seven Stories Press), Veronica Liu (Seven Stories Press), Martine Bellen (Belladonna Books), Lila Zemborain (Belladonna Books), Dan Machlin (Ugly Duckling Presse), Rachel Sherman (Open City Books), Leni Zumas (Open City Books), Sharon Mesmer (Hanging Loose Press), Marie Carter (Hanging Loose Press), Melissa Buzzeo (Leon Works), Tisa Bryant (Leon Works), Bob Holeman (Bowery Books), Paul Mills  Bowery Books), Radhiyah Ayobami (Bowery Books), Rachel Levitsky (Futurepoem Books), Erica Kaufman (Big Game Books), Corrine Fitzpatrick (Sona Books), Dedra Johnson (Ig Publishing), Grant Bailie (Ig Publishing), Camilla Trinchieri (Soho Press), Anne Landsman (Soho Press), Jason
Schneiderman (Four Way Books), David Lawrence (Four Way Books).

Small indepdendent presses are doing what the components of the big conglomerates used to do, before they were swallowed up: they're taking a chance on and nurturing new writers and minority voices in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction—something we should all support. Go to a reading. Better yet, buy a small press book or two.