Listening recently to Coltrane's 1961 Village Vanguard sessions, I was struck first of course by the invention and genius of the music but second by the chamber nature of the applause. Listening carefully, one can just about count the pairs of hands - which couldn't have been more than a couple dozen. I wondered how that felt - bitter? ironic? bitterly ironic? - but he blows on, seemingly untouched . . .
Poets, artists of all kinds, from all times, have visited or lived in the room Coltrane played in then. Dana Gioia's essay "Can Poetry Matter?" states the issue bluntly. The question I open this new journal with is "Can the Information Revolution help poetry matter?" Is the proliferation of electronic magazines a revolution of the publishing industry - or just clutter? Web publishers may be the avant garde of a movement that will undo the narrow numbers, and sometimes narrow tastes, of the literary publishing establishment, or they may simply be people enamored of their own reflection.
Beyond the issue of the volume of communication, one must look at the question of the quality of the communication, the nature of the medium. Sven Birkerts finds the notion of a screen and a reader dissonant, disruptive of the passing of "soul data" that occurs in human interaction or the interaction of a reader and a book ("What Are We Doing On-Line?" Harper's August 1995). Already there are electronic "books" that attempt to imitate the experience of holding a text in one's hands, so fundamental to most readers. But can reading on-line, or on such an off-line device, really become reading ?
My current answer to all of these questions is an interested "I don't know." I admire, however, the attempts of poets like Robert Pinsky to involve more people in poetry; I'm as fascinated by what the slam movement has brought to the oral tradition of poetry as I was by PBS's blending of visual image and poetry reading in The United States of Poetry. Joseph Brodsky said this about broadening the audience for poetry:
In my view, books should be brought to the doorstep like electricity, or like milk in England; they should be considered utilities, and their cost should be appropriately minimal. Barring that, poetry could be sold in drugstores . . .. At the very least, an anthology of American poetry should be found in the drawer in every room in every motel in the land, next to the Bible, which will surely not object to this proximity, since it does not object to the proximity of the phone book. ("An Immodest Proposal")
To the extent that the electronic medium can contribute to this movement to bring a greater writership to a greater readership, I'm for using it.
I welcome submissions of poetry, art, photography, essays, and fiction. I envision The Courtship of Winds as an international magazine with unknown writers and artists next to established writers and artists; avant garde and traditional approaches to subject matter together; a wide range of subject matter. Send submissions to William Ray<billray@massed.net>.If you're sending poetry, or prose for which the line breaks are important, indicate (by slash marks) the original line breaks. Art should preferably be in JPEG, GIF, or PICT format. I'd prefer art and photographs to be sized to appear in a standard computer screen without scrolling.