The Thirteenth-Century Attention Economy
Michael’s right that I find the scandale de Silliman completely pointless, but one small comet to achieve escape velocity from the orbit of inanity is something Robert Archambeau posted today. Seems to me Bob is concerned not so much about Silliman’s comment policy as he is with why people care. He suggests that unknowns want these forums as a place to make themselves known and says “we might lay the blame for the current state of affairs…on the attention-economy of poetry, in which people want to be noticed any way they can”:
I think this attention-seeking condition is endemic to the whole American poetry culture now, and at root the issue is the surplus of supply (of poems, of opinions) compared to the demand. It is with poets as it is with aspiring Hollywood starlets: there are a multitude of them on the scene, hoping to be noticed, and few stunts are too low for someone to stoop down to them. I haven’t seen any poets doing the “exposing underwear while getting out of a limo” trick, but I’m sure it can’t be too far off — I just pray it isn’t Silliman who goes there.
Which is a more-than-plausible, if not particularly novel, explanation for much of what gets oxygen in poetryland. Bob pins the change on the internet:
When the dissemination of poems and commentary was limited by the technology of print, relatively few people were able to disseminate their work, and they could imagine that the audience for what they had to say was larger than the number of other publishing writers. Now everyone with a laptop can get their work out there, but getting it noticed amid the crowd is an issue…. Everyone is famous, now, to fifteen people.
Here I’m less convinced. Remember that in 1991, which has to count as pre-internet by any meaningful measure, Dana Gioia could write:
What makes the situation of contemporary poets particularly surprising is that it comes at a moment of unprecedented expansion for the art. There have never before been so many new books of poetry published, so many anthologies or literary magazines. Never has it been so easy to earn a living as a poet…. A ‘famous’ poet now means someone famous only to other poets. But there are enough poets to make that local fame relatively meaningful.
Even this latter isn’t a debate that I have the time or inclination to get into now, but I couldn’t help but think—because these days I’m only allowed to think—about Dante, and his own story of making a name for himself among the young aesthetes of 13th-century Florence.

