2013 Rhyslings: Awesome/Not So Awesome News
Peeking my head up from the practice of law with some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that my Memphis Lovecraftian poem, "Memphis Street Railway Co. v. Stratton: 1915", originally published at New Myths, was nominated for a 2013 Rhysling Award by some wonderful soul. (It also got some lovely praise from very talented poet and editor ( Read more... )
The good news is that my Memphis Lovecraftian poem, "Memphis Street Railway Co. v. Stratton: 1915", originally published at New Myths, was nominated for a 2013 Rhysling Award by some wonderful soul. (It also got some lovely praise from very talented poet and editor ( Read more... )
Fortunately, only five poems this year contained any errors in the print version, and all have been corrected in the .pdf that is currently available. While these are still regrettable, and can certainly affect the reading of a poem, the errors in the print version consist only of a few indent, stanza-break, and italicization errors, and a missing middle initial. This may be the best Rhysling Anthology yet!
There were significant delays to the publication schedule because of John Mannone's illness. Major lollygagging in contributor response to requests for proofing of other SFPA publications persuaded us to ask for a 24-hour turnaround to encourage promptness--which was very effective. John Mannone, as far as I know, did no editing other than correcting typos and punctuation; this is appropriate in his position, but should have been in all instances approved by the poet. Certainly no material edits of content should have been undertaken: the Rhysling Chair position is administrative, not editorial, except in the sense of producing a professional-quality publication.
I took over making the final corrections in this year's Rhysling Anthology InDesign file when Robert Frazier, who normally does the layout, had to meet other obligations. I had previously spent hours listing errors in the first draft, and I carefully compared many poems to the available sources, until (as I thought) the proof was sent to the contributors, whom I expected would catch anything I or others had missed.
David Kopaska-Merkel e-mailed the proof .pdf to all contributors--as he thought. What he didn't realize is that the long-poem addresses were on a separate worksheet within the contributor spreadsheet, and they were inadvertently skipped. Furthermore, several contributors replied directly to his e-mail, instead of to the requested reply address that would have copied to me as well; as a result, he did not realize that I had not received those corrections until it was too late to include them in the print versions.
As soon as the omission was discovered, David immediately contacted all the poets who had been skipped and asked them to send their edits so that the .pdf could be corrected. Then I sent an announcement about the revised .pdf to the entire SFPA member e-mail list, naming the poems that had been corrected. There are only a dozen members who do not receive e-mail. SFPA does take these errors seriously, and they are far less frequent than in past years.
The change in process that would avoid even more of these errors, I believe, is to do away with the requirement that the nominators submit the text of the poem, rather than the poets themselves. Obviously, transcription from print is fraught with the potential for catastrophe, and even copying and pasting from electronic media can introduce formatting changes (remember that some of these errors were introduced by the person who liked your poem enough to nominate it!).
SFPA is always looking for input and volunteers. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to take part in improving the Rhysling process--or to step up to the plate and offer to edit next year's Rhysling Anthology instead of boycotting this one.
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Explaining the mistakes that led to the situation being deplored is nice, but explaining doesn't excuse. The words "I'm" and "sorry" should be somewhere in this post and I'm not seeing them.
The errors are regrettable, you say? How marvelously passive! Who regrets them? Not you specifically, it doesn't seem. But they are regrettable, so we should fee free to regret them quietly at our leisure?
Also, "as [I/he] thought" suggests that things actually happened in accordance with thought. That's why people say "Just as I thought!" when something they thought turns out to be true. It seems to me like what you're trying to say is that you thought the proof was sent out to contributors when it wasn't, and David Kopaska-Merkel thought he'd gotten all the contributors, when these things weren't actually true.
Adding the "as" in there makes it seem like you're insisting that yes, everyone got the proof copy... as you thought they did.
But even without the semantic quirk, this comment is hard to make sense of. Are you taking responsibility for what happened? Or just saying that it did? I can't tell. I honestly can't tell.
"Anthologies happen" seems to be the moral of this story. Nobody does them. Sometimes they just happen. Be glad that it wasn't worse.
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(The comment has been removed)
Everyone involved with the Rhysling Anthology, including myself, is sorry that errors occurred. These errors were primarily due to unforeseeable events (John Mannone's illness and handing over the layout to a second person [me] in mid-production) rather than incompetence. Revising the process used for nominating will prevent or mitigate the impact of such events on future Rhysling Anthologies.
Again, SFPA would love to have more volunteers who think the status quo can be improved upon and more participating members.
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1.) I second everything alexandraerin said, and I find it curious that you ignore her valid points. Further, although you may not realize it, ignoring alexandraerin is a bad move professionally. Her fandom is enormous and quite likely to appreciate speculative poetry. If SFPA actually wants to broaden its influence, not engaging with creators who have considerable power to benefit your organization if they so choose is simply a bad idea.
2.) It's nice that you are not bothered by the fact that you won the Rhysling based on a version of your poem that was not true to your work. No one else is required to be that blase about the integrity of their work.
3.) I know of one poet who was never contacted even in the second round of proofs. I have not checked their poem against the proofs, so I do not know if their poem had errors. I leave it to the poet as to whether they engage with you about it.
4.) "[O]nly five poems this year contained any errors" is not actually something to brag about. During my tenure on the University of Memphis Law Review, we were expected to perfectly proof 80-130 page articles of dense text with footnotes, as well as making sure that all forms of citation were correct. We, like you, were volunteers. Had five of our articles had errors -- or even one article had five errors -- we would have received a "strike" against our records, and sufficient "strikes" would have disqualified us from continuing to serve on the Law Review. It seems you are accepting of something less than perfection to a greater degree than I and the other professional organizations I am or have been a member of.
5.) I am sorry to hear of Mr. Mannone's illness and have modified my post to make sure that information is readily available without having to review comments even prior to responding to you, in the interests of fairness.
6.) "Lollygagging" is a disrespectful word to apply to people; it is infantilizing and imputes laziness to people whose delayed responses may have been for any number of reasons. Were people provided with clear deadlines for responding to "other SFPA publications"? Irrespective of that, a 24-hour turnaround time is simply unacceptable as it assumes that people have nothing else going on in their lives and are freely available at all times to check e-mail and do proofing work. My corrections to the proof that was eventually provided to me took several days, not because I was "lollygagging" but because accurately proofreading while on narcotics for an infection is almost impossible, and my health is more important than the Rhysling Anthology.
7.) John Mannone's statement in the introduction to the Rhysling Anthology directly contradicts your statements about what kinds of edits were done. I quote from his Introduction:
"Other than copy edits to eliminate typos, very little editing to improve the poem was done. However, I do want to commend those who were willing to improve their piece. I am reminded by the practice Henry Wadsworth Longfellow followed (one I adopted for myself): that a poem, even though it has been published, is not immune from revision until it goes into a collection." (emphasis added).
This simply does not line up with your statements that "John Mannone, as far as I know, did no editing other than correcting typos and punctuation; this is appropriate in his position, but should have been in all instances approved by the poet. Certainly no material edits of content should have been undertaken..."
(continued)
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9.) David Kopaska-Merkel has actually apologized for his role in these errors. You have not. Again, telling. Further, I agree with cafenowhere that your tone is not at all in line with David's tone in addressing this issue publically and privately, and as a prominent SFPA volunteer, this is something you might wish to consider.
10.) Again, not all poets were contacted; at least one was omitted. It is only at this point that you state that "SFPA does take these errors seriously." This is directly contradicted by your downplaying of the errors as "only five poems" earlier in your comment.
11.) You may be right about some of the errors cropping up because of nominators being required to give the text of the poem. However, I know for a fact that was not the case with my poem, because there was an error in the published version with New Myths that I only noticed when reviewing the poem after hearing about the nomination. I provided Mr. Mannone a corrected version of the poem that, at that time, had its line breaks intact, and the error we were attempting to correct was not found in the final version. Ergo, the errors in my poem had to have been introduced later in the formatting process.
12.) I know that this comment is or has been copy-pasted, as it is identical to the one you posted on Alexa Seidel's post encouraging people not to buy the erroneous 2013 Rhysling Anthology. So I do not take your offer to edit the 2014 Rhysling Anthology as a serious one. However, even if it were, I do not take on responsibilities simply because someone is trying to bully me into shutting up by implying that I don't care enough to do substantive work. I am not required to give SFPA my time and energy in order to expect that their reprints of my poems will be done professionally and correctly, nor should I be. Some of the Rhysling poets are not SFPA members; should they not complain about errors because they are not members? I would encourage people not to buy any collection in which I was featured where my poem or the poems of others are not printed as intended by the poets. That is my right. I do not have to earn it by putting my time into your organization.
Also, you do not seem to realize that just because it is not praise does not mean this post is not input. It is input. Organizations that cannot take criticism do not last. However, if you ever find yourself in need of a Rhysling chair whose editing experience centers around producing error-free text, and can phrase the offer as a request and not a challenge/bullying tactic, SFPA has my e-mail address and I would be willing to at the very least consider it, despite what I have heard about the toxic culture for volunteers in the SFPA and what I have seen from you personally here and elsewhere. Offer is public and open; SFPA may respond to it or not as it pleases.
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