The Egatz Epitaph

Michael Zinkowski of the University of North Carolina Greensboro was kind enough to introduce me when I read there on 23 April 2010. Knowing my work for only two weeks before the reading, he poured over galley pages of Beneath Stars Long Extinct as the book was being printed and bound. He’s allowed me to reprint his remarks here.

The last line of Red Hen Press’s summary of Ron Egatz’s Beneath Stars Long Extinct describes the collection as “a rally cry for poetry unafraid of being understood, yet not sacrificing lyric quality, music, or emotional depth.” I begin my introduction with this particular passage because I find it an impassioned, accurate, and yet peculiar description of Ron’s work.

If this is indeed a rally cry, as Red Hen Press states, then consider me marching alongside, Molotov cocktails in hand. While I admit I’d never read any of Ron’s poems before two weeks ago, I am grateful for having been introduced. As a testament to Ron’s craftwork as a lucid, tangible and all-the-while richly imaginative poet, I picked up, for the second time, the 107-page stack of office-copied poems immediately after reading it for the first time. I experienced no post-reading panic – the one when you realize you’ve scanned and gained nothing from an hour and a half of your life. Instead, I wanted more.

In his interview with Poetry Out Loud, Ron states, “Lucid but deep poetry is my crusade.” Beneath Stars is a worthy holy grail, Ron’s eighth book in 25 years, and the first to be published.

Responding to the question: What will change now that you have a book published, Ron states “The most I can hope for is a wider audience, which is certain to happen, as my audience now is largely my curious following of supporters who show up at New York-area readings. I’m lucky to have them. A friend of mine calls them FoEs. Friends of Egatz.”

I’m quite certain that after his reading, we’ll all want, much like I did upon my first reading, to hear it all over again, to relive tangible pieces like “First Motor Vehicle Fatality in America,” “The One” or my favorite “Heartworm and the Space Behind” in which a hunting dog, too loyal, loving and excited, doesn’t know she’s about to be put down. In fact, after reading that poem I wrote in the margin, “God damn….” in one of those breathtaking moments where you feel immensely sad and crushed by exactly what the poet leaves out, by the dog’s tragic unknowing, by the inevitability of death, loss and how we let go of those missing pieces of our selves we still love. I’m also quite certain that we’ll all want to join the FoEs community, even if we can’t promise to relocate to New York.

Finally, let me return to why I believe that original statement (for those who forgot “a rally cry for poetry unafraid of being understood, yet not sacrificing lyric quality, music, or emotional depth”) is so peculiar. To assume that one would ever have to sacrifice lyric quality, music or emotional depth in lucid poetry is misguided at best. That IS the assumption. You can’t have tangible poems that sing, or so the myth goes. However, Ron’s poetry understands that this doesn’t have to be true. His poems do rally and renew the readers’ enthusiasm for poetry that is lucid necessarily because of its lyric quality, music and emotional depth, poetry where there can be a positive 1.0 correlation between these qualities and the poet’s ability to grab hold of a reader and show them something that expands their humanity.

Here’s what poet Dick Allen had to say about Beneath Stars Long Extinct.

“I’m really taken with Beneath Stars Long Extinct. I’ve never read poems quite like these: poems at once sardonic and sad and celebratory as they detail a late 20th Century-early 21st Century unmarried male searching for and finding, yes, true love. But along with this passionate search come Ron Egatz’s beautifully rendered stories of others: a hitch-hiking father who meets George Raft, women who die young, lonely near-failure rockers. Egatz’s vibrant and extremely tactile poems conduct us into the urban world of choices and relationships in such an expert way that his fascinations become ours. How he illumines our age is not unlike how F. Scott Fitzgerald illuminated and defined his. Egatz’s long overdue first collection, then, is a unique portrait of our urbanized times. I should add that each poem is able to stand alone even while each provides another facet to the book’s central searching motifs. Consequently, there are an unusual number of “keeper” poems here, poems you want or even need to read immediately to friends, particularly those in their 30s and 40s (email them, twitter them, text them, but even better gift them with a copy of this book), necessary poems in this most compelling and necessary collection.”

—Dick Allen,
author of Present Vanishing: Poems, Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected, among others.

©2010 Apple Inc.

Apple has released sales figures for the first month of the iPad, and publishers are taking note. Publishers Marketplace (no, I don’t understand where the apostrophe went) has reported significant sales of e-books during the initial 28 days of iPad.

More significantly, Apple reported 1.5 million e-books were sold in the initial period. This isn’t too shabby, especially considering the app you need to read books on the iPad perversely doesn’t ship with the hardware itself, and must be downloaded. Well, the Great and Powerful Jobs works in mysterious ways, and mere mortals are often left to ponder things in this universe, like how to change user-inaccessible batteries.

I hope this will excite publishers, as opposed to fears they may have had. I hope people will read more books now that the hardware monopoly on the delivery mechanism of dead trees / printing / warehousing / trucking / retail shelf space have been made effectively no longer necessary. I hope my students don’t ask for e-books because I don’t have them finished. Yet. With the numbers Apple’s reporting, there’s not much hope left for the excuse-makers.

Just in case the publishing industry needed another Internet-era corporation to take the smoking gun from Apple’s hand, load a few more rounds into it, and fire a couple of more times into the lifeless body of the “The Book of Dead Trees,” Google has stepped up to the plate today.

Unlike Apple and it’s information appliance-slash-induction stovetop iPad, Google happily announced it will be offering book titles not on just one kludgey Android-based model, but a plethora of kludgey Android-based models, otherwise known as a “broad array of devices.”

The service will be called Google Editions. Chris Palma of Google diplomatically avoided any previous problems Google may have started with authors and publishers, but will the industry remember these during e-book negotiations, or will they swallow hard?

The pricing model is yet to be announced while Google representatives no doubt continue to beat New York publishers with old rolled-up DOS manuals in small, sweaty rooms, newspapers hastily taped to the windows. Also in the works is a Google Android tablet e-reader. Even the blind can see now.

Meanwhile, top brass at major publishers continue to seek golden parachutes, vacancies at the Hazelden Clinic, and positions with NGO’s in developing nations. Change isn’t pretty, but we’re running out of trees and oxygen. Somewhere, Darwin continues his long smile.

For the record, this not-without-mirth reporter-as-writer sees the further democratization of publishing not as a bad thing. In fact, it means more readers for most authors. This reporter-as-publisher is in agreement with this not-without-mirth reporter-as-writer.

It’s been a long time since I heard Mr. McFeely say, “Speedy delivery! Speedy delivery!” Even as a child I hated that show, although my father, a school principal, saw great value in it.

Looks like there’s not much for the USPS to be happy about these days. Mr. McFeely might be out of a job soon. Postmaster General John Potter went to Congress, hat in hand, to explain why this once noble institution is on the way out. Talk of pulling Saturday deliveries is on the table, but that move is like sticking your fingers in a dyke’s crack as water continues to pour out. Technology is largely to blame, of course. The implosion of the economy is largely to blame, but that’s helped fuel the continued run on Internet-based circumvention of the USPS.

I used to earn a living designing beautiful catalogs. It was a good living. I created big, glossy remnants of dead trees for Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Harrod’s, Sports Illustrated, Fidelity Investments, and countless others. I’d produce photoshoots, get flown to locations, hire photographers, and make works of art people would leaf through and then throw out after maybe ordering something. When I moved to the loft I live in now, which has little closet space, I threw out—quite literally—a large dumpster full of catalogs, brochures, press kits, sell sheets, corporate identities, direct mail and promotional items. It was a creative enema. I feel lighter. Amen.

One agency I subcontracted for had been around since the 1950’s. They created gorgeous, full-color catalogs for top businesses in many different industries. They’re gone today. Poof. No more. The Internet has flattened the world, making the nimble agency the winner. Talent in Famish Hills, Montana can compete with any bloated agency on Madison Avenue. The more astute corporate clients are taking chances with talent not located in traditional agency locations, like big cities. It’s Darwinian laws of survival as applied to a dinosaur of an industry, and it’s been happening for at least fifteen years.

Over a year ago I met my mail carrier in the lobby of my old building. She said, “My job is so different, I can’t believe what’s happened in the last year.” I thought she was referring to some new technology which had increased USPS efficiency. I was wrong. She told me her catalogs and circulars were down 80%. She no longer had to carry as many heavy catalogs, and it had literally changed her job, not to mention the health of her spine.

The cost of four-color printing (hence catalogs) never came down in price the way most technological advances make things cheaper as they trickle down across a period of years. It’s still more expensive to print a color booklet to be inserted in a CD jewelcase than it is to manufacture a CD, yet industry pundits swore the iTunes Music Store would never catch on.

Corporations have moved accordingly to bypass the costs of printing and postage. All their information is now on the Web in a dynamic form which can be changed on the fly. The only answer to a price change in the old days was created, print, and ship a new catalog.

The future is written. With an 80% drop in catalogs and other mail-based advertising, it’s time the USPS and/or the Feds figure something out. Online bill-paying, private shipping alternatives, and inevitably rising postal rates have made the US Postal Service an idea which needs major rethinking by progressive and inventive minds. I’m missing letters even more.

I had the pleasure of reading at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore yesterday. Definitely a moving experience to be among all the artifacts in the Edgar A. Poe Room, while poems from Beneath Stars Long Extinct were being read just under the watchful eyes of the master.

Left to right: John Murillo, Egatz, Poe, January O'Neil, and Paul Nelson. Photo courtesy of January O'Neil.

The panel I sat and read with included Shelly Puhak, John Murillo, Slaughter, Washington’s own Paul Nelson, and January O’Neil, who provided the above photo. The gig was definitely a wide-range of work, yet complimentary, because each poet’s work was accessible and emotionally-engaging. Some great new folks to be associated with. Special thanks to Gregg Wilhelm for working so hard to bring great literature to Baltimore.

The Library of Congress has announced it’s following in the footsteps of the National Security Agency. All posts written by the public on the privately-owned Twitter.com will be archived by the Federal government. If you’ve tweeted since March of 2006, it’s now forever.

I like a lot about the Feds. Not everything, but a lot. I always have. I like the EPA when an administration doesn’t hamstring it because I like less carcinogens in my drinking water. I like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration following Ralph Nader’s lead and keeping my vehicle more safe than it would be if auto manufacturers were left alone. I like the National Guard protecting me from from looters and rising rivers. I love NASA.

I also like the Library of Congress making sure future generations can read about us complaining about burned toast or some seriously drunken rant in less than 140 characters. What needs to be remembered is every mouse click and every character you publish on the Internet is recorded. Forever.

Have a great day, and sleep well tonight.

Advanced copies of Beneath Stars Long Extinct have arrived today. Red Hen Press came through in time for the Baltimore readings. Film was rolling for the documentary, and Ab caught me unboxing the first copies. Looks awesome. Cover photo by Julie Jones Ivey. Author photo by Baldomero Fernandez.

Unboxing Beneath Stars Long Extinct.

I was talking a lot. Wonder what I said. Captured forever. Christ.

Talking and talking.

This is another new book of contemporary American poetry. A best-seller moves about 3000 copies, according to some well-published poets I know.

Start hawking, sucker.

I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to becoming a poet. The price has been jobs, relationships, money, health, and friendships. I wouldn’t have done it any other way. I’ve done hundreds of readings to rooms packed with listeners who would always ask, “Where’s your book? How can I buy your book?” Now I have one. Twenty-five years. This is book number eight, the first one to get published. Let’s see how many we can sell for the good folks at Red Hen Press. Excelsior.

Randy Cohen and his alter ego, the Ethicist, recently weighed in on a the ethics of pirating format number two if you already purchased format number one. In this case, surprise, surprise, we’re talking about e-books.

As a consumer who has bought music, for instance, on an original album release, a cassette release, a CD release, and—get this—the remastered, better-sounding CD release (that is, the way it was supposed to be remastered in the first place), I have some feelings about this. As a writer and publisher, I’d like to get paid for what I put out in the world. As someone who has been screwed for decades across a variety of formats, I’d like to say basta!

As a guy who created electronic media that was given away during the 1990’s, it hurts to see creators getting ripped off. Although I was paid by my clients, they often gave my work away as a loss leader. In actuality, I wasn’t ripped off. The Egatz Epitaph is a more accurate example of me giving away my work for free. I do it because it was fun to resurrect the old blog, and write in this style, which I haven’t for years.

It’s nice to think you’ll get compensated for the work you do. As an artist, I know this isn’t the case. Not by a long shot. I’d be happy if anyone was willing to pay me e-book rates for the eight books of unpublished poetry I’ve finished. This is where small publishers and their authors need to come together and do what they do best: get creative. The number of new poetry books, for instance, published each year can expand by an order of magnitude. With the stranglehold over traditional, conventional books now broken, as long as editors and book designers can do their work and do it well, a flood of good titles can now come forward. Whether they will promote those titles is another matter.

With Apple’s announcement of allowing self-publishing authors access to the iBookstore, a flood of bad poetry and fiction is on the way. We’ll see if publishers are going to be savvy enough to double or triple their new titles now that an alternative distribution method is available.

I like Mr. Cohen. I used to ride in The New York Times elevator with him, now and then. He seemed like a pleasant-enough fellow. I hope he continues to get paid for his work.

Although I hung up my comics collecting before junior high, there’s been some very interesting buzz about the future of the business. BusinessWeek ran this story about an early iPad adopting publishing subgenre: comic book publishers.

Disney-owned Marvel let loose their comic book application at the launch of the iPad. It enables sales of 500 and growing Marvel titles. Use of fingers to page through is standard fare. At just under two bucks a title, more trees continue to live, and you don’t have be embarrassed browsing titles along side nine year olds in brick and mortar locations.

Disney paid $4.3 billion for Marvel, so it’s fair to assume they’re not going to buy and shelf the brand. That is, they’re actually spending money on new vehicles and technologies to get their product before new readers. This time, for instance, they’ve paid Iconology/ComiXology to do some fancy Cocoa programming for the iPad.

Even with Apple taking 30% off the top for distribution, that still beats physical distribution, plus mortar stores’ cut of the retail price, plus costs of physical printing, etc. With ICv2 claiming $715 million in 2008 Canadian and American sales, that’s reason enough to get on the iPad e-comic ship. With great power comes great responsibility. With great technology comes great innovation. With great sales comes great motivation.