*Please note: if you read further you will be obligated to buy two chapbooks this month. It will cost around ten dollars. Reader beware.
In 2003, Frank Bidart’s Music Like Dirt published by Sarabande’s Quarternote chapbook series was the first chapbook ever to be nominated for the Pulitzer prize. It marked a new level of recognition of the chapbook in the contemporary cannon. But I would guess that most of the folks involved in today’s chapbook culture didn’t give a damn. And that’s a good thing.
By and large, chapbooks have always existed at the fringe of the poetry market (if we agree such a thing exists), either because of the preconception that the quality of poetry appearing in chapbooks was lesser than that of “real” full-length books (i.e. the poet wasn’t good enough to publish a real book so they had to settle for a chapbook) or because the print runs of micro-presses was so small that unless you had a bookstore near you whose poetry buyer was aware of them, the odds of you ever seeing them were small. While the presence of chapbooks in today’s bookstores still seems to be pretty minimal, the internet has made it possible for any poetry reader to be on top of every micro-press’ new release. The current revival of chapbooks has grown along with the proliferation of blogs in poetry. Indeed, all one needs right now to have a viable press is a blog and some means of manufacturing books, even simply photocopying poems at Kinko’s and binding with staples.
But part of the joy of buying current chapbooks is that they are not (mostly) slapdash lo-fi releases, but often gorgeously designed and hand-stitched. The paper is usually a better quality than one finds in trade paperbacks. And, while obviously one cannot vouch for every poet publishing chapbooks right now, in my own subjective sampling of them, the poetry is often incredibly good.
I am very lucky in that I am fortunate enough to live near a marvelous bookstore, Pegasus Books, whose poetry buyer Clay Banes keeps the poetry section full of chapbooks by presses and poets I would never have been aware of otherwise. There are some micro-presses that I have found at Pegasus that I have come to trust so much that I would buy their titles without even cracking open the cover to see if the poetry was appealing to me. You really have to take your hats off to the editors of these presses. Supporting independent presses that publish full-length books is wonderful and worthwhile, but those who run micro-presses often do everything, from selecting the work to designing the cover to physically producing the book themselves, to doing their part to promote the end result. Here is a list, by no means comprehensive because I simply don’t know enough to make it comprehensive, of presses and their editors that I highly recommend you check out for your two imminent chapbook purchases:
CARVE Editions (Aaron Tieger)
Chax Press (Charles Alexander)
Effing Press (Scott Pierce)
Fewer & Further Press (Jess Mynes)
Horse Less Press (Jen Tynes, Erika Howsare)
Hot Whiskey Press (Jennifer Rogers, Michael Koshkin)
Kitchen Press (Justin Marks)
Lame House Press (Gina Myers)
Octopus Books (Zachary Schomburg & Mathias Svalina)
Pilot Poetry (Betsy Wheeler, Dean Gorman)
Ugly Duckling Presse (The UDP Collective)
Here is something worth noting: the poetry coming out on these presses is decidedly on the experimental side of things, which I think is very interesting. It was certainly the case in previous years that there just weren’t as many larger presses that would put out experimental work, so it was necessary to have a mimeo or chapbook scene just so certain work could be read. But, frankly, today there are many presses big and small that publish experimental full-length titles. So, with why does innovative writing tend to gravitate towards chapbooks? Because it has always done so? Is it that many innovative writers are not seeking academic positions, which is a process in which the high-profile full-length book is decidedly the coin of the realm, so they do not feel the pressure to put out whole books? (For the record, I don’t think this is the case.) Or is it a matter of audience? Is the innovative poetry scene simply more close knit (in terms of its smaller communities, not overall [or maybe overall as well?], so an editor of a micro-press can make 200 copies of something and feel relatively confident that they can sell out, because they or the poet or their friends personally know around that many people that might buy it?
I personally don’t know the answers to these questions. But I do think it is worth pondering why, besides the Sarabande series and the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series at Kent State, the more narrative / traditional side of poetry isn’t yet following suit by adopting this form of publication. Maybe it has to do with wanting to have one’s work be visible, therefore building one’s reputation which, if the job they seek hasn’t come along yet, makes them more hireable (I say this as a person who would love to have an academic job one day and whose book is forthcoming on a university press as part of a book contest which I was very happy to win, so if any judgment is latent in these comments, the judgment extends to myself as well). But, with chapbooks becoming more and more legitimate, and with the internet becoming the best avenue to make one’s work more visible, are as many poets going to be concerned with publishing full-length books in the future?
Which brings us to Joseph Massey. He is a great example of a poet who has been able to gain a readership without the help of a full-length book. Through his six chapbooks and his online presence through journals and his blog, as well as word-of-mouth, he has become a relatively “known” poet. He does have his first full-length book forthcoming from The Cultural Society, but this can only enhance his visibility, not make it, as most first books do for poets. This strikes me as a possible avenue that more poets can take. There will always be currency attached to the full-length book, but I do think it will be possible for more and more poets to build a readership by publishing online and through chapbooks, because of the proliferation of presses and how cheaply the books can be made. Although I don’t think we’ll soon see an end to the book contest and the sometimes years-long odysseys of rejection poets have to survive in order to get their full-length books published, it is encouraging to see some alternative ways of operating. So spend ten dollars, buy two chapbooks and hold in your hand what could be a crucial part of the future of poetry.