Poet's Showcase at Poets House

Every year Poets House has its marvelous Showcase of newly published books, and its series of readings that coincide with the display.  This past Tuesday featured two writers I know and deeply admire, and two whose work I was not at all familiar with, but now have some appreciation for. What I loved about the reading is that although Poets House has one of the largest libraries of poetry, of all kinds, in New York or anywhere else, it also invites writers in other genres to present their work, and the final two writers, Thomas Glave and Rachel Levitsky, though they are published poets, read from new prose works.

Thomas, whom I've known for two decades, read an essay on beauty, violence, homophobia, and courage set in and drawn from his experiences in his ancestral Jamaica and in particular with the human rights organization J-FLAG (Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays), which appears in his newly published and acclaimed book of essays and imaginative prose pieces, Among the Bloodpeople: Politics & Flesh (Akashic Books, 2013).  One of the many things his reading, which began with his invocation of a vulnerable queer Jamaican person viewing the astonishingly beautiful sea and sky that envelope the island, stirred in me was a reminder yet again not only of how precious and precarious life remains for some of us, but how important art can be in focusing our attention on addressing pressing problems, and on what is most important and crucial not only in our own lives, but in the lives of others, especially those we cannot otherwise see or understand, which art can help to do. I look forward the reading the entire collection and sharing it with my students.

Rachel, whom I've also known for many years, also read from a new prose work, a novel entitled The Story of My Accident Is Ours (Futurepoem Books, 2013), and before beginning she talked about her poetic practice and how she had already been writing in and around prose, thereby paving the way for her transition to her lyrical novel. One theme I took away from her work was the vitality of the novel form, which a certain sector of the literary commentariat continues to pronounce dead, much in the manner that a similar sector regular decries the death of poetry, or its obsolescence, or lack of social relevance or public appeal, especially as more women, writers of color, queer writers, writers using new technologies and creating new genres, emerge. The snippet I heard of Rachel's novel suggests it makes a vital contribution, and I am looking forward to reading the entire work.

Catherine Barnett, the evening's first reader, shared poems from her new collection The Game of Boxes (Graywolf Press, 2012), as well as some very new poems, many short, all attentive to the possibilities of their internal music, cadence, and silence, and her final one, from even more recent poems struck me as very simple in its effects but moving in the way she made a casual, personal observation into something profound and memorable. The fourth reader, Peter Filkins, a noted translator as well as poet, presented poems from his collection The View We’re Granted (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). He opened with a poem about two unusually thick birches that had stood in the front yard of the home in which he grew up and once again lives in, in western Massachusetts, and closed with a poem about maple trees, filling the space between them with poems brimming with his erudition, but handled with a light touch.

All in all a wonderful way to spend a warm mid-summer evening. Photos follow:

Stephen Motika of Poets House, introducing the reading

Part of the audience

Catherine Barnett

Peter Filkins

Thomas Glave

Rachel Levitsky

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Who Edited Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare

As every writer knows, there is nothing like a great editor. Even for the most talented among us. Including William Shakespeare. Debates continue about who exactly Shakespeare was, and whether or not he or someone else wrote his plays and poems. I stand on the side of those who attribute most of the words and work to the Bard of Avon--and the actors who were involved in performing and shaping his plays as a result--and not any of the other people whose names have been bandied about as the actual authors. But a question still remains: when William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, also known as the First Folio, appeared in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death, someone, or several people, had to have edited it, and the given what we know about the two figures whose names are attached to it, John Hemminges and Henry Condell, it's unlikely that they had the knowledge, time or dedication to do so. So who edited Shakespeare?

Here's where an attentive eye and close reading, and the possibilities enabled by the digital humanities come into play. In The Guardian, author Saul Frampton guides us through his argument, eventually to be a book, that a certain John Florio (1553-1625) probably unknown to all but the most assiduous scholars of the English Renaissance and literary world, not only was the likely editor of Shakespeare's First Folio, but in some cases revised and rewrote Shakespeare's plays. Not being a Shakespearean scholar, Frampton's argument sounds like a big deal to me, but perhaps it is old knowledge among people in that field. (I checked, and it turns out that there have been arguments that Florio's father, Michelangelo Florio, wrote Shakespeare's plays, or that Florio may have written them completely by himself; his role as editor has been less discussed.) What Frampton recounts, and how he goes about his argument, I continue to find utterly persuasive and enthralling.

John Florio

The short is that Frampton, like many a scholar and reader before him, compared the First Folio with some of the extant quartos of Shakespeare's plays, and noticed differences between them, chiefly in terms of form standardization in the later compendium, but especially in terms of linguistic differences. I recall enough from my study of Shakespeare to remember this particular argument, which I also recall leading to discussions of whether Shakespeare, the players, some other very learned figure or some combo of all of the preceding wrote the plays or not. Digitization of the quartos, however, makes such comparisons much easier. What digitization has also made easier is comparison to other works during the same period, and the occurrence and frequency of certain words in Shakespeare's oeuvre as well as in the work of his contemporaries. What Frampton has found--if I am reading the article right, and this is his finding, or his synthesis of others' findings--is that a number of words that appear in the Folio do not appear elsewhere in Shakespeare's work, but they do appear, with great frequency in the writings of John Florio, who very well may have been figured, in various ways, in several of Shakespeare's works.

Who was Florio? Born in England eleven years before Shakespeare, and the son of an Italian Protestant immigrant (of Jewish religious ancestry) who fled back to Italy during the brief Catholic Restoration under Queen Mary I, Florio returned to his native country in the 1570s and made his mark, Frampton says, as a scholar, lexicographer and translator. His books included several landmark language treatises, First Fruits of 1578 and Second Fruits of 1591, a 1590 edited version of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, and his career-making translations, the Essays of Montaigne in 1603 and Bocaccio's Decameron in 1620, as well as two major English-Italian dictionaries. His prodigiousness extends to the level of language itself: third only to Chaucer and Shakespeare, Florio, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the source of 1,224 first usages in written English, including such still-used words as "judicious," "management," "transcription," "masturbation" and "fucker." Yes, "management"!

Moreover, he had links to Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, the First Folio's printers, who each had printed several of his works. The First Folio's dedicatees, William and Philip Herbert, also had links to Florio all the way back to his father's era. Frampton points out that Florio, given his learned and literary background, deep knowledge of publishing, and links to both men, was an obvious choice as editor. He also knew William Shakespeare as well, and what's unclear to Frampton is whether the two men had beef, and whether Shakespeare was not mocking Florio in several of his characters, including not just Osric in Hamlet, but in Malvolio and Shylock (because, as I noted, Florio's father had Jewish ancestors). Frampton adds that scholar Jonathan Bate argues that the infamous "Dark Lady" of one-third of Shakespeare's sonnets may have been Florio's wife. By the time Shakespeare died, Florio was sailing through economically constrained straits, having not received a promised pension, and editing Shakespeare and further strengthening ties to the wealthy Herberts would have been to his advantage in more ways than one.

But this sounds like so much fascinating but circumstantial speculation. Where Frampton really begins to prove his supposition is when he goes to the texts themselves, and begins pointing out how the linguistically inventive Florio's diction and terms, found in his own texts, start to pop in the Folio versions of texts where it had not existed in the older quarto versions or anywhere else in Shakespeare's or even his major peers' works. Let me quote him directly:

If we look at Hamlet, for instance, we notice that the editor of the Folio introduces a number of unusual words to the text. Thus in Act 1 scene 5, Hamlet instructs his sinews to bear him "swiftly up" to revenge. The Folio changes the quarto's "swiftly" to "stiffely", a word never used elsewhere by Shakespeare but familiar to Florio, who uses it four times. In Act 5 scene 2, "breed" is changed to "beauy" (bevy), again a word never used elsewhere by Shakespeare but which Florio uses three times. And the same can be said of a number of unusual additions to the play – words such as "pratlings", "checking", "detecting", "quicknesse", "diddest", "daintier", "hurling" and "roaming". In Act 2 scene 2, Polonius tells how Hamlet was "repell'd" (rejected) by Ophelia. The Folio changes "repell'd" to "repulsed", the latter a familiar word now, but one never used elsewhere by Shakespeare, or Marlowe or Jonson. But such a substitution would occur naturally to Florio, who uses "repulsed" four times, defining the Italian Ripulso as "repulsed, repelled".

This pattern continues throughout the Folio, in Henry V, where the word "demonstrated" in the quarto version becomes "demonstrative" in the Folio, a word that not only Shakespeare, but neither Marlowe or Jonson used either, but which Florio used 20 times in his own work; or in Henry IV, Part One, the quarto's "intemperance" becomes the Folio's "intemperature," again a word Shakespeare (or Marlowe or Jonson) never used anywhere else, but which Florio uses in his work. Another strange coincidence involves the statement in Henry IV, Part Two, that the King entered "on the Tarras," which Frampton notes Shakespeare have never used before nor ever again anywhere in his work, but which appears 13 times in Florio's translation of The Decameron. The pattern continues in other Folio plays, both in terms of changes that favor Florio's lexicon, as well as rare words--"longly," "mothy," "queasines"--that appear not infrequently in Florio's writings, as well as some that appear only there, such as "enfoldings" and "swaruer" ("swarver"?).

There are also instances where the editor expands and supplements Shakespeare's language, plumping it out rhetorically, making inferences more obvious, as in King Lear, where Frampton shows someone at work drawing out Shakespeare's thought(s), creating not just amplitude but a richer and more emphatic statement (the words in italics are the Folio additions), as in this statement by Gloucester, in Act 1, Sc. 2:

In Cities, mutinies, Countries, discord; in Pallaces, Treason; and the Bond crack'd, 'twixt Sonne and Father. This villaine of mine comes vnder the prediction; there's Son against Father, the King fals from byas of Nature, there's Father against Childe. We haue seene the best of our time. Machinations, hollownesse, treacherie, and all ruinous disorders follow vs disquietly to our Graues. Find out this Villain, Edmond, it shall lose thee nothing …

The original version relies on blank verse, as well as several rhetorical devices, including rhyme, parallelism and hysteron proteron, and the extreme concision of asyndeton and ellipsis to convey Gloucester's quick insight. The Folio editor, however, creates prose, adds, repeats and clarifies what must be worked at in the quarto original, giving himself away, Frampton notes, by some of the words that, as I have said before, appear nowhere else in Shakespeare but do pop up in Florio's own work. Frampton's insight may also explain the fact that Gonzalo's vision in The Tempest has long been known to have been lifted straight out of Florio's own translation of Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals", but the borrowing was thought to have been Shakespeare's. It very well now might be viewed as Florio having added his own work, which is to say, his and Montaigne's, to that of the master dramatist.

Then there is Frampton's query, which also is explosive assertion: that Florio may have removed or edited a reference to himself in Hamlet, but also might have done so with other Shakespearean plays as well. This leads Frampton to note that given how little we know--and lacking the kinds of powerful search tools now available many generations of Shakespearean scholars, though they have discussed Florio in various ways, appear to have overlooked the profound role he played--it may remain unclear just how extensive a role he played not just in editing, but writing and rewriting Shakespeare's "ragged written copy." Alongside this, there might have been particular motivations for Florio's effort: in addition to having the lines of a character, the clown Feste, correct the grammar and spelling in a letter he quotes that was written about Malvolio, the putative stand-in for Florio, a letter he neither heard read aloud nor repeated. In the play, however, Malvolio gets the last word(s), and, Frampton implies, they very well may have been Florio's guiding point: "Ile be reueng'd on the whole packe of you."

I often say I plan to read works I blog about, and I do try to do so whenever I can, but I can assure any reader here that as soon as I can get my hands on Frampton's study, I will. Until then, here's to Shakespeare, Florio, Frampton, dramaturgy, scholarship, literary study, reading, the digital humanities, and linguistic invention!

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BookExpo America 2013

Looking at the main floor of the BEA

Every year, around this time, I have heard tales told of Book Expo America (BEA) the giant annual book trade fair held at the Jacob Javits Center, on the far edge of Midtown Manhattan, but I until this year I had never been able to attend. A four-day and costly event, the fair convenes most of the major and numerous mid-sized and small US publishers, many from overseas, agents, distributors, authors, artists, librarians, and book lovers, who were present in droves despite the mid-summer temperatures that turned the sidewalks into a griddle and the glass walls of the air-conditioned Javits Center into magnifying glasses. I believe there were academics present too, though far fewer operating solely in that role than you might find at the Associated Writing Programs or Modern Language Association conferences, neither of which has the commercial or global feel of BEA.

Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) signing his comic book

Congressman Lewis

In fact, the BEA thrums with the sensation of real-world, real-time significance; the numbers of people huddled at tables hashing out whatever they're hashing out, the sizable section of digital and electronic consulting companies seeking to bring the trade into the 21st century, the half-closed publishing house curtains where big deals and planning were taking place, the numerous people pumping up potential books to the houses ("I'm sorry," one young woman at Taschen told another, "but we don't commonly give out editors' email addresses," in response to a query about a book idea she had), and so forth, made the sometimes grueling, often joyful experience of writing--dreaming, planning, writing, revising, revising again, revising again, etc.--feel both infinitesimally small and indescribably important. To put it another way, writers could, in the scheme of this hurdy-gurdy of excitement and high stakes almost appear forgotten, and yet also, without authors, would any of this be possible? (Of course there are some who might answer yes, but....) Moreover, all authors, of all types, were present here. Some who'd never been seen anywhere near academe, as well as others who are paragons of literature and creative writing classes, were present. There were many long lines for authors I'd never heard of, which means I need to get out and read more widely, but there also were on display books by authors I deeply admire who probably don't get read as much as they ought to. But someone is publishing, and someone is reading their work.

The Javits Center, at left (Columbus Circle in the distance)

Mexican publishing and book section

No surprise in the numerous hierarchies on display, most visibly the size and elaborateness of booths and sections based on the size and financial might of the publishers, and the prioritization of commercial and genre fiction and nonfiction over literary fiction, poetry, drama and other literary forms (which was quite rare in some precincts), nor was the frostiness of some of the publishing types a surprise either. (Others, however, were quite pleasant, and the micro-climates of attitude meant that I could pass from spaces where publishing staff did not even look in my direction to lively conversations with editors and reps from presses like Duke or Yale or Biblioasis or New York Review.) And it additionally was not a surprise, though a bit disappointing, that nearly all the publishing representatives, like the authors whose booksignings I noted, except for a very few cases (one of which I'll mention below), were by white, at a time when the country is growing ever more diverse. But there were glimmers, and I must note that, perhaps heartening to VIDA, the organization that champions women writers and equality in the literary world, the majority of authors I saw greeting customers and signing books were women. (The actual numbers, however, may be different, but I am going off my rough count.) I had heard that people brought suitcases to cart off the free books and swag (bookbags, blow-up toys, maps, pens, corporate-branded bric-a-brac of all kinds, beer, etc.), yet I didn't believe it, then I saw person after person not only lugging around book-heavy bags and backpacks, but yes, wheeled suitcases, and I realized, that was certainly foresight (or learned experience at a prior BEA). I didn't need a suitcase, but I did bring back two full bookbags full of books, some of them so interesting I started paging through them on the subway and PATH, and a number of which I selected in part because I very well may be able to incorporate them in future classes.

Elizabeth Gilbert, signing her new book

Paula Deen, signing an ad for her next book

There were a few star types there (Tony Kushner, actor Jim Carrey, etc.), but the highlight for me was meeting and chatting a little with Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), one of America's true heroes, and a signal figure in the US Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He is the sort of person I always imagine will be so heavily thronged it would be impossible to get near him, but there was a small line and I was able to ask him to sign a comic book he had co-authored and then talk with him, letting him know not only that his name had come up in my recent class, but how much an inspiration he and his generation are for my students and me. I also thanked him for his bravery, courage and vision, in essence thanking his generation and those before him who had blazed the paths I and so many can walk down today, and together we noted that the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington was approaching, and that the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation was only a few months before, an amazing confluence that also pointed toward future goals and gains. I probably could have left after meeting him, but I instead did walk the entire main hall, collect books, take a sip of champagne (it was free), and admit to myself that being in an environment filled with free books and readers was a pretty enjoyable place to be.

The amazing Tony Kushner, signing books

Jim Carrey, signing a flyer (?)

Brown Univ. prof. Okey Ndibe, signing his book

Author and success champion, George C. Frasier

Aisle 1900, with presses on either side

Chinese publishing booth

Kobo eReader booth

Spain's publishing area

Polish author Marek Krajewski, with
translator (in red) and fan

The art books section (one of several)

Author Landau, and his lovely wife

One of many long lines for a book signing

Publishers' curtained off private areas

Free cupcakes, from Disney

Books and other items, waiting to be shipped home

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2012 Harlem Book Fair

Before I post any photos from the 2012 Harlem Book Fair, let me first express my horror and sorrow at the massacre that occurred early Friday morning in Aurora, Colorado, at the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. The most recent reports I've read say that 12 people have died, and over 50 were injured to varying degrees. I send my condolences to those who have died and wishes for a swift recovery to those who were injured. The police thankfully did immediately capture the murderer, a 24-year-old domestic terrorist named James Eagan Holmes, who had been a graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Denver, and who apparently not only slaughtered people in the movie theater, but booby-trapped his apartment to maim authorities who planned to search it. Holmes, had also apparently dressed himself in SWAT-type gear, and set off a smoke bomb to create confusion before he began shooting. I won't use this brief note to pontificate, but I have long believed and will continue to believe that the easy availability of dangerous arms and protective gear of the sort that Holmes easily acquired, the lack of adequate, comprehensive mental health services across the country, and the socially stressed environment, particularly because of economic conditions and political divisions, that so many Americans live under, all help to foster such horrific incidents. What doesn't help is a normalized attitude toward social oppression, and psychic and physical violence, dating back to the country's origins and celebrated in many aspects of our society, that diminishes the seriousness of harming oneself and others, and of death.  What motivated or sparked Holmes's terrible acts I cannot say. That they have happened before I and every American can affirm. That they may happen again, without any serious measures being taken to lessen their likelihood, I must also sadly affirm.

***

Yesterday I dropped by the 2012 Harlem Book Fair, which took place on several blocks alongside the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research branch of the New York Public Library, located at 135th St. and Lenox Avenue in Harlem. I have attended and even participated in the Book Fair in past years, trying as best I can not to miss it in order to support the fair organizers, the authors and publishers, and Harlemworld itself, and to see what new books and book trends it has on display, since many bookstores are not featuring many of these books in the ways they're being presented at the fair. 

What struck me this year was that the venue and the time-span of the fair both seemed to be truncated compared to previous years, but at least to my unscientific appraisal, the number of fair-goers looked higher and the booksellers appeared more enthusiastic. One reason for the added liveliness of this year compared to last might have been the milder temperatures. After a very Hades-like stretch this past week and two days of rain, this weekend brought the sun out, but in moderation and cooling breezes. One of the things I love about this book fair compared to others is how enthusiastic many of the authors and publishers, many tiny or self-publishing outfits, are; in my experience rarely do they complain about having a conversation, signing books, meeting readers or even people just browsing the materials on their tables, or having their photos taken. Some even specifically ask for you to do so. There's also a level of showpersonship that I don't often see at other book fairs. My favorite display was the simplest; it's the final picture I've posted below.

One thing I did not see this year, and also missed last year was any sign that many of the authors were providing their works in the steadily increasing e-book format. As easy as it is to publish a paperback book these days, it's as easy, at least in Amazon's format, to put out an e-book as well. (The Nook and especially the Apple formats are more complicated.) I also didn't see that much emphasis on social media, even though both establishment media and scholars have written about the higher level of engagement among black people, especially black young people, with these sites and platforms. That led me to think that both in terms of the panels, which I didn't attend this time, and among the booksellers and authors, e-books, and related technologies, will be a greater focus in years to come. I also was surprised at the paucity of LGBTIQ authors this year; last year and in previous years, at least by my reckoning, more have been out and about.

One last point: I continue to be surprised, given the longstanding and increasing diversity of New York City's black population, which the Schomburg's affiliated scholars, librarians and archivists have documented, that there are not even more publishers and authors presenting works in languages other than English. Certainly Anglophone writers from North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa are present, but what about Hispanophone authors and books? Books in Portuguese? In Swahili? In Amharic? In Arabic? I did in fact see some books in Arabic, and in previous years I've seen some books in Spanish, but I'm surprised yet again that there aren't more.

Here are photos I snapped at the event. All are captionless they tell their own stories. Enjoy.




































 

 

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