OF: The 2012 VIDA Publishing Count

Every year VIDA publishes a count of the number of male and female writers featured (via book review, interview, etc) in several major literary magazines. The totals for 2012 can be found here.

The numbers are bad. The Paris Review, for instance, interviewed ONE female writer last year. ONE. About 50% of the fiction selections for the year were written by women, while roughly 22% of the featured poets were women. Paltry. Pitiful. Not surprising, though.

There have been many thoughtful responses to this and previous VIDA counts--including one by Roxane Gay which goes yet a step further by looking at the racial statistics present in publishing. Those numbers--also, not surprisingly--are bleak. They can be found, here.

As a writer, as a woman of color, I can't help but feel incredibly discouraged by these numbers, even if they are nothing new to me. 2012 seemed to be there year of the misogynist. Things large and small seemed to proclaim that the Good Ole Boys Club was still in full effect with it's members elect ranging from the obvious comb-over'd ranks of Congress, to the bespeckled literary elite who seemingly equate quality in publishing with middle-finger-in-the-air Lack Of Female Presence. 2012 gave us "legitimate rape," the Sandra Fluke slut-shaming-smear campaign, the Bret Easton Ellis rant over Kathryn Bigelow's success as directly correlative to her "hotness", and the downright-bonkers rhetorical rejection of the Violence Against Women Act from the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Florida) et al.

2012 gave us a zeitgeist captivated by television shows which either glamorized sexist, misogynistic culture (vis-a-vis Downton Abbey and Mad Men), or gave us particularly nauseating female characters to loathe (SEE: Lori in The Walking Dead and pretty much any season of The Bachelor). Every once and awhile we were thrown a particularly savory bone in the vein of Girls or Claire Danes' character in Homeland. 2012 gave us literary magazines devoid of women, and television shows muttling the conversation about women, and women who were ashamed to use to use the word "feminist" to describe themselves.

Even at a time when women are outpacing men in terms of college matriculation and beginning to close the gap in male-dominated fields like medicine and law, the Hallowed Halls of Art have not kept up with the times. Probably a large cross-section of writers do not really give a shit about the VIDA count--or they do, but only intellectually. And I concede that publication numbers do not rank as high, societally, as fair access to birth control--but nonetheless, these issues are interrelated, they are systemic of a larger spirit of contempt against a woman's right to the pursuit of happiness socially, reproductively, politically, aesthetically.

As such, the writing community must come together to fight against this form of silencing. We must clean and prepare our own house as one does before the arrival of a beloved guest; otherwise let us remind elite literary journals (Harper's, The Atlantic, The Nation to name a few) of their inherent hypocrisy in continuing to pretend they are above the misogyny or racism of those bodies (governmental, corporate, educational) whose actions often inform their own articles and commentary. Let us demand change.

OF: Songs I'm Writing To These Days

THIS.

And this.

And this, for sure.

AND THISSS!

And I've put some serious mileage on this:

And this, even if 98% of the American intelligentsia claims to hate this woman. 

Beirut, Nina, Philip, Arcade Fire, Jack White, Lana...you've been the soundtrack to one of the hardest years of my life. Amen and amen. 

OF: Poetry

Here are some poems I've enjoyed lately, and maybe you will too.

1) Two selections from Memory of the Prose Machine, by Sandra Doller in Coconut Magazine: http://www.coconutpoetry.org/dollers1.html

"Where are my things? The

fossil of my watching?"

2) "N & K" by Gina Myers via Poetry.org: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/23248

"this is one
of them, one
of the best days."


3) "My Job" by Dolly Lemke in B O D Y: http://bodyliterature.com/2012/12/18/dolly-lemke/

"I definitely get the passion, Boss says
It’s like golf
Poetry = golf

Vomit"

4) These three poems by BJ Love in ILK Journal: http://ilkjournal.com/journal/issue-six/bj-love/

"but love is a tough fucking shell
to crack and yet, here I am, my arms
in that shape that lets you know I
want you, my heart, a million little
scurries scuttling right towards you."


5) "In Love with You," by Kenneth Koch via the Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/15850

"What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight!

Is love what we are,

Or has happiness come to me in a private car

That’s so very small I’m amazed to see it there?"

6) "The People Across the Street," by Ted Gilley in Rattle #38: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/print/30s/i38/


7) "They're There," by Frederick Seidel (one of my fave poets) in Boston Review: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/frederick_seidel_poem.php

"Everyone is wearing summer light.
They can't tell wrong from right."


8) "Suicide Is Painless," by Michael Robbins, also in Boston Review: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.2/michael_robbins_poem

"The child’s toy poses a choking hazard.
The child, too. Life’s a natural disaster."


9) "Toast" by Leonard Nathan via The Writer's Almanac: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/02/10

"Love, whoever you are,
your courage was my companion
for many cold towns"


10) "Waiting for This Story to End Before I Begin Another," by Jan Heller Levi via the Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245058

"All my stories are about being left,

all yours about leaving. So we should have known.

Should have known to leave well enough alone;"

And I probably violated some form of copyright there. But if I did, and you are one of the

poets/publications above, just know that I did it all for love. And I'll remove it if, you know,

(SIGH) it's a problem.