[New-Poetry] Re: Lifshin Syndrome

[David Baratier]

Lyn was one of the people who started me out in poetry when I was about 14 years old or so. Back then in the mid-eighties she would spend 3 or 4 hours jaunts (not sure how many days a week) in the Niskayuna Co-op plugging nickles into the photocopying machine to reproduce poems. Lyn never paid much attention to guides, in fact she would often take a piece that appeared in a national journal, photocopy it out of the journal, not even hide the page number, and send it to another few dozen places. She used the Dustbook directory addressed an envelope to every potential poetry publisher, and did this multiple (3-5) times every year plus sent to all of the listings in the new pubs section of Small Magazine Review and Small Press Review before they were combined into one publication.
   
  I suppose the poems haven't "sold" like Buk because they are not friendly to the audience, or to the publisher for that matter in terms of the amount of paper they require. The stilted, often single word lines, rely on enjambment rather than a fluid voice which seems to be the barometer for popularity. Also nearly all of her publishers were small press places with poor distribution that went out of business. 


Be well

David Baratier, Editor

Pavement Saw Press
321 Empire Street
Montpelier OH 43543
http://pavementsaw.org

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