I recently spoke with Thomas Moody and Keri Smith about the editorial work they do for Hanging Loose Press, an indie publisher with an amazing literary history. Hanging Loose has published such writers as Sherman Alexie, Kimiko Hahn, Cathy Park Hong, Eula Biss, Maggie Nelson, Harvey Shapiro, Elizabeth Swados, Ha Jin, Charles North, Paul Violi, Tony Towle, and Jayne Cortez.
Caroline Hagood: For those out there interested in working for a small press and/or literary magazine, can you outline the daily happenings and what it takes to keep things going?
Keri Smith: It requires the enormous privilege of time. Time to read, time to answer emails, time to seek out bookstores and magazine, time for even meeting each other for coffee. I’m lucky in that sense, because I work nights in a bar and don’t have any children, so my days are free. I’m the ideal match for my editors in that sense. I think when I first got the job I thought it would be this, like, domino effect that took over my life, but in reality it’s much more like a series of small actions that you’re constantly doing over and over again. There’s no floodgates opening or anything, just the work that needs to get done. In that way I think it could seem inglorious to um…err…”aspiring” literary stars. That’s been totally fine for me. I’ve appreciated just the chance to sit down at a real desk and the free coffee.
Thomas Moody: I agree with Keri, time is an essential ingredient, and I would add to that a love of literature, for want of a better expression. There’s not a lot of money in small presses and literary journals, if any, and distribution is limited, so the reward is in the actual work itself: helping to produce something of value, that gives a platform to writing that you feel deserves to be seen and read. It is also an extraordinary community of people who are, in the main, “in it for the right reasons.”
When you think about it, people don’t go into banking for their love of compound interest. If they weren’t getting paid, they wouldn’t show up. So the small press/literary journal world is one that is populated by capable, generous and fascinating people. It is an interesting and rewarding world to operate in. As far as the daily happenings, the bigger picture most often takes a back seat to an attention to details: making sure submissions are read and responded to, accepted manuscripts are proofed, invoices are sent out, payments recorded etc… It is, like Keri said, a series of small actions, but once you get your hands on the final product there is always a feeling of great satisfaction, that you have played your part, however small, in bringing this magazine or book into being.
CH: When working for a press and magazine with such a rich history, how do you honor the profound literary past while simultaneously looking to the future? What kind of visions do you have for Hanging Loose in the coming years?
KS: It helped that the editors and I had similar taste. I think my professor at the New School at the time sent me to them probably because I was this weird anomaly in the MFA program because I knew exactly what kind of poetry I liked and I wrote it. I didn’t know much about Hanging Loose at the time but I was familiar with some of their authors, and I started working with them at a good point in the program. Bob (Robert Hershon) and Donna would talk about poets and I quickly realized I didn’t know half as much as I thought I did, but they never judged me. They just slipped me books and, in graduate school especially, free books kept me going back, despite the sudden realization of being a punk ass kid.
So I think the taste was there, but reading slowly through thirty some odd years of publishing history helped me develop a sense of what work is right for Hanging Loose, and what work appeals to me but isn’t right for Hanging Loose. I think I’ve gone to bat for a few things and gotten the editors, who are all much older than me and come from different backgrounds, to look at the poems in a different light and it’s worked out for everyone and the press especially. And also because of all of that, I’ve come across work where I’ve put my foot down and said absolutely not, this won’t translate well to new audiences. I think, personal style and preferences aside, it all comes down to me in their kitchen, surrounded by manuscripts for the magazine, after liking a line or two and Donna Brook yelling at me, “but is it saying anything?”
TM: You honor the past by making sure you are as familiar with it as you possibly can be. I have tried to read as much of Hanging Loose’s back catalogue as I can. Even poets who I would at first not be so drawn to, I think, “if its good enough for HL, then its good enough for me, there must be something here worthy of its publication.” And there always is—and then some. I think its easy to look to the future with a publisher like HL, who has always put a priority on publishing new poets and valued writing in the colloquial voice. As new poets emerge and the vernacular changes throughout the years, the magazine naturally changes with them. I think a desire to keep things new in the sense of being somehow revolutionary or intentionally unconventional is somewhat of an exhausted idea. The future of HL will always be a secure and successful one if the values it was founded on over a half-century ago are maintained.
CH: Tell me about a book HL has published recently and why you love it.
KS: So Robert Hershon’s birthday is today, as I’m finally sitting down to answer these questions, and he made a funny joke about imagining his devoted following thinking about him today on his birthday. But the thing is I really am one of those people. I just read a poem of his at my wedding, in lieu of vows to my husband. I read “Superbly Situated” from How To Ride on the Woodlawn Express (1985), which is full of all manner of good poems.Anyway I was tearing my house apart looking at all the usual suspects–Lorca, Neruda, Borges…all the poets that always write about love in a relatable way. Then I picked up Bob’s book for a break and realized “Superbly Situated” was the perfect poem, and I know it’s been used in many weddings before.
We got married in Mexico and I knew Bob and Donna would never want to come down there with me and all my insane friends, so reading the poem felt right in its own way, but it’s also one of my favorite poems. It starts off so frankly, “I would like to be loved for such simple attainments / as breathing regularly and not falling down to often,” which, of course, goes over well with an audience of people who think they know nothing about poetry. But then everyone at the wedding felt the shift in the poem when all of a sudden it takes off–“but I have decided to become a public beach an opera house / a regularly scheduled flight–something that can’t help being / in the right place at the right time– come take your seat.”
The poem literally lifts off from reality in this quiet moment at the end, “the last sight on the horizon as the earth begins to curve.” To me the poem was perfect for my wedding but also reminds me of the kind of poetry I’m capable of writing. There’s no rules at all. There’s no reason why a simple poem about getting a cup of coffee in the afternoon can’t end on a battlefield in WWII. Robert Hershon reminds me of that. He, as author and editor, recently published The End of the Business Day, which is a collection of his poems. I got to “edit” the book before it came out, which of course is laughable because there was so little to edit–every poem was perfect and already in its correct order, naturally. Bob’s poems to me are so clear and direct but also full of emotion and often very funny. He’s one of the few poets whose work I can read to my friends at parties and it doesn’t make them groan and want to leave. That’s my party trick, by the way. My husband says he knows it’s time for the party to end because when I insist on reading poetry to strangers it’s time to put me to bed.I’ve also, much to my newly New York chagrin, been known to do it on the train to total strangers.
Anyway, The End of the Business Day is a great introduction to Bob’s writing and also has one of my favorite poems of his in it. One of those poems you’ll read and then think back to often, as I did a few days ago getting coffee and watching a famous comedian pace back and forth in front of me on his phone. In “My Life With Celebrities,” Bob writes about passing famous people in the city like Lauren Bacall and Dana Andrews, which everyone in the city can relate to. It’s a part of daily life here, but now we have the added pressure of maybe asking them for a selfie. I know Bob wasn’t thinking of that, and how topical the poem could be now. I don’t think Bob even knows what a selfie is. But the ending lines to the poem come back to me all the time, when I’m content to just move about the city and experience it. Like sitting next to someone famous and just enjoying the sound of their voice, but not bothering them. The poem ends with, “I did not speak to any of these celebrities and they gave no indication / that they knew I had seen them. I could have approached them, / of course, but the mere sight of them had already enriched my life / immeasurably and what more could I have asked? What more?”
TM: This is a tough one. Too many to choose from. Recently I’ve been reading Carole Bernstein’s quite amazing Buried Alive: A To-Do List (2019), along with your own wonderful Ways of Looking at a Woman (2019), but can I choose Charles North’s Cadenza (2007)? It is a book that I keep coming back to, particularly the title poem and his long diary poem “Summer of Living Dangerously.” Reading it is like sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee with one of today’s great minds, watching it go about a routine day. The way North disorders and entwines thought and action is astonishing. He is seemingly always rooted in place and constantly lost in thought. He considers the enigmatic in the vernacular, and is surprisingly funny. Very funny, actually. Take this from August 24. “The postcard version of life gets an unnecessarily bad rap. It’s one among many, not necessarily false or reductive. To say it distorts the tone of life is to describe in a realistic manner an aspect of life that is as real as any other.” Not bad, I think.
CH: What’s your advice to aspiring writers and editors?
KS: Don’t take anything for granted. A small gesture from my professor three years ago has turned into one of my most valuable relationships in the city–and I don’t just mean professionally; I mean true friendships. Reading at a press is also good for you. If you embrace the complete abyss of all the bad poetry you’ll read, you can learn from it. I think I write better cover letters and bios now than I did before. The verdict on whether I write better poetry is still out, but at least it won’t make you hate poetry, I can promise you that.
TM: I second that. Take every opportunity that you can, there is always something to learn, and somebody to meet. Read as much as you can. Write as much as you can. Submit as much as you can. Don’t be coy. Engage yourself with the community. It is a small but embracing one, that is always willing and wanting to help people who have an honest devotion to literature.
CH: What’s the best literary advice you’ve ever received?
KS: Don’t be coy.
TM: Bob Hershon once told me that the struggles of a poet aren’t so bad. We write a poem. We submit it. If it gets accepted, great. If it gets rejected, no big deal. The poem is already written, and we can always write another. Bob had a friend who was a composer, a very talented one, who wrote a symphony that he never heard. He could never muster an orchestra together. All those years of work left unrealized. Since hearing that, every time I sit down to write I think, “What’s the worst that can happen?”
CH: What’s the worst literary advice you’ve ever received?
KS: Be creative.
TM: To preserve your originality, don’t read other writers.