"the journal also seems to be on a quest to brute-force a spontaneous recreation of Esperanto by including not only English and French pieces, but also poetry in Portuguese."
Couldn't agree more with your general diagnosis here, especially around manifestos. Everyone's too nice about shitty work and, candidly, you anglos are incapable of engaging with tradition.
I would add, though, and this is a hard pill to swallow for everyone in "literature": what the fuck is any of this, including your prescriptions, doing towards having non-writers read litmags? There is, you know, a general public of literate people who would love to have a literature that speaks to them and are currently reading YA books instead. Any anti-MFA crusade that excludes a reevaluation of genre fiction, for instance, is going to fail. Read William Marx, l'adieu a la literature: this is a problem with deep roots.
But ultimately a lot of genre fic has no overlap with what we’re interested in doing, because it isn’t even in the same species of thing. There is nothing I can or am willing to create that is going to appeal to what readers of Romantasy get out of Romantasy, but that is because most Romantasy has plainly different goals than capital-L literature. A lot of genre fiction is “functional,” most (though not all) of its readers would explain plainly that they read what they read for escapism, or wish-fulfillment, or sexual arousal, or etc. Compare: why does one read Joyce? Harder question to answer.
Both genre fiction and literature are written forms, but they are substantively different enough things that I do not think there is a way to “reconcile” them as some seem to think. And even if I could… would I want to? I think it gets to a point where we get too close to literary poptimism here. People who would like literature to speak to them but read YA instead aren't actually looking for what literature provides imo and if literature did provide what they were looking for it would cease to be literature. Just look at the comments on a YA-centric site like StoryGraph.
Yeah, this is exactly the attitude that keeps literature secluded in a special corner for special experts with a special subtlety of thinking. It's also, frankly, revealing of a rather dour attitude to literature. I don't know about you, but I do read literature for pleasure. I read To The Lighthouse over the course of one long walk home--I could not put it down; I was crying like, well, a cheap romantasy reader. One of the great joys in reading, for instance, Robert Duncan, is feeling the words arrange themselves into an order in my mind, the sense that I'm slowly deciphering a coded message. Reading a Robert Duncan poem aloud the first time is totally different than reading that same poem for the hundredth time. I find that learning, that process of meaning-accumulation, intensely pleasurable. You've never felt this? What does it feel like to read your favourite poems? You don't find it kinetic?
If anything, the reason I stopped reading genre fiction at like 19 is that it stopped entertaining me. It stopped having anything new to say to me and, crucially, wasn't able to compete with the intellectual stimulation I was starting to find in literature. I genuinely think that a lot of the genre-reading public are waiting to experience a similar transformation, if only literature would meet them where they're at. Granted, you won't take all of them. Some ladies truly do not get bored of reading spy novel after spy novel. That's revealing of the poverty of those ladies' inner lives but shouldn't be diagnostic of a culture, unless you go outside and think that 90% of the people you're sharing the streets with are without inner lives.
> And even if I could… would I want to? I think it gets to a point where we get too close to literary poptimism here. People who would like literature to speak to them but read YA instead aren't actually looking for what literature provides imo and if literature did provide what they were looking for it would cease to be literature.
What kind of circular reasoning is this? What is literature for, then? Be for real. The people who are reading YA don't understand that they're looking for what literature provides, they just feel a void. They pick up a Sally Rooney book and get so intensely bored that they think there's no way literature is what fills the void. The task is to supply them with some honey so the medicine goes down smoothly. Gently: you would be dissatisfied with a popular literature simply because it's popular. I can't do anything for that; that's the attitude of one who fundamentally prefers literature to be in the shadows. At that point you're not reading because of anything that inheres in literature, you're reading because of the social position it occupies. Fair enough, but then don't lament that social position lest you lose the very thing you value. It's also a profoundly ahistorical attitude: Sterne, Rousseau, Cervantes, Tolstoi, were all best sellers.
Speaking of jw curry, kids these days need to learn about the giant towers he built out of found materials around Ottawa. Creating a chapbook press may seem less daunting when you see a poet in his 70s playing human-scale jenga with wooden pallets. A true Flickr icon https://flic.kr/ps/JWyNu
He's actually been doing that going back to his Toronto days (first one was in his backyard when he lived in, I think, the Annex). Doing a post on jwcurry in general is on my list for this year; my friends are all probly sick of me bringing him up all the time, but he really is a skeleton key that opens up a lot of art (and a way of living artistically) that I think would blow some people's minds.
I realize this is only tangentially connected to your post, but how about inviting john curry to come do one of his sound poetry extravaganzas in Montreal?
Yeah, I don't think john sees a lot of direct affinity with the type of work we've published to date, so I don't know if he'd be interested in doing one of our shows particularly. But I'd love for him to come up for a trio or quartet show in some capacity; I should sound him out again to see what he'd need to make it worthwhile for him. Thanks for the reminder Hugh!
this is just my personal bone to pick but mai/son is run by the child of Zionist billionaires - to be clear like they made money doing real estate development in occupied Palestine. So maybe we can just not submit to that particular zine with all the genocide happening.
Someone just tipped me to the Azrieli Foundation connection yesterday, seems to be fairly common knowledge in the scene but I was apparently living under a rock. It also explains why I'd been hearing some rumblings of discomfort from people about booking shows etc. there.
"the journal also seems to be on a quest to brute-force a spontaneous recreation of Esperanto by including not only English and French pieces, but also poetry in Portuguese."
*FUNNIEST SENTENCE AWARD MARCH 2026*
Couldn't agree more with your general diagnosis here, especially around manifestos. Everyone's too nice about shitty work and, candidly, you anglos are incapable of engaging with tradition.
I would add, though, and this is a hard pill to swallow for everyone in "literature": what the fuck is any of this, including your prescriptions, doing towards having non-writers read litmags? There is, you know, a general public of literate people who would love to have a literature that speaks to them and are currently reading YA books instead. Any anti-MFA crusade that excludes a reevaluation of genre fiction, for instance, is going to fail. Read William Marx, l'adieu a la literature: this is a problem with deep roots.
We’ve covered some genre fic on the blog before, including a piece a ways back on Norman Spinrad (who we love):
https://www.discordiareview.com/p/when-adolf-hitler-wrote-science-fiction
But ultimately a lot of genre fic has no overlap with what we’re interested in doing, because it isn’t even in the same species of thing. There is nothing I can or am willing to create that is going to appeal to what readers of Romantasy get out of Romantasy, but that is because most Romantasy has plainly different goals than capital-L literature. A lot of genre fiction is “functional,” most (though not all) of its readers would explain plainly that they read what they read for escapism, or wish-fulfillment, or sexual arousal, or etc. Compare: why does one read Joyce? Harder question to answer.
Both genre fiction and literature are written forms, but they are substantively different enough things that I do not think there is a way to “reconcile” them as some seem to think. And even if I could… would I want to? I think it gets to a point where we get too close to literary poptimism here. People who would like literature to speak to them but read YA instead aren't actually looking for what literature provides imo and if literature did provide what they were looking for it would cease to be literature. Just look at the comments on a YA-centric site like StoryGraph.
Yeah, this is exactly the attitude that keeps literature secluded in a special corner for special experts with a special subtlety of thinking. It's also, frankly, revealing of a rather dour attitude to literature. I don't know about you, but I do read literature for pleasure. I read To The Lighthouse over the course of one long walk home--I could not put it down; I was crying like, well, a cheap romantasy reader. One of the great joys in reading, for instance, Robert Duncan, is feeling the words arrange themselves into an order in my mind, the sense that I'm slowly deciphering a coded message. Reading a Robert Duncan poem aloud the first time is totally different than reading that same poem for the hundredth time. I find that learning, that process of meaning-accumulation, intensely pleasurable. You've never felt this? What does it feel like to read your favourite poems? You don't find it kinetic?
If anything, the reason I stopped reading genre fiction at like 19 is that it stopped entertaining me. It stopped having anything new to say to me and, crucially, wasn't able to compete with the intellectual stimulation I was starting to find in literature. I genuinely think that a lot of the genre-reading public are waiting to experience a similar transformation, if only literature would meet them where they're at. Granted, you won't take all of them. Some ladies truly do not get bored of reading spy novel after spy novel. That's revealing of the poverty of those ladies' inner lives but shouldn't be diagnostic of a culture, unless you go outside and think that 90% of the people you're sharing the streets with are without inner lives.
> And even if I could… would I want to? I think it gets to a point where we get too close to literary poptimism here. People who would like literature to speak to them but read YA instead aren't actually looking for what literature provides imo and if literature did provide what they were looking for it would cease to be literature.
What kind of circular reasoning is this? What is literature for, then? Be for real. The people who are reading YA don't understand that they're looking for what literature provides, they just feel a void. They pick up a Sally Rooney book and get so intensely bored that they think there's no way literature is what fills the void. The task is to supply them with some honey so the medicine goes down smoothly. Gently: you would be dissatisfied with a popular literature simply because it's popular. I can't do anything for that; that's the attitude of one who fundamentally prefers literature to be in the shadows. At that point you're not reading because of anything that inheres in literature, you're reading because of the social position it occupies. Fair enough, but then don't lament that social position lest you lose the very thing you value. It's also a profoundly ahistorical attitude: Sterne, Rousseau, Cervantes, Tolstoi, were all best sellers.
Speaking of jw curry, kids these days need to learn about the giant towers he built out of found materials around Ottawa. Creating a chapbook press may seem less daunting when you see a poet in his 70s playing human-scale jenga with wooden pallets. A true Flickr icon https://flic.kr/ps/JWyNu
I've been inside of it! Crazy fucking thing. Then he proceeded to fucking eviscerate me at darts
He's actually been doing that going back to his Toronto days (first one was in his backyard when he lived in, I think, the Annex). Doing a post on jwcurry in general is on my list for this year; my friends are all probly sick of me bringing him up all the time, but he really is a skeleton key that opens up a lot of art (and a way of living artistically) that I think would blow some people's minds.
I realize this is only tangentially connected to your post, but how about inviting john curry to come do one of his sound poetry extravaganzas in Montreal?
I've inquired with him before about doing something like that, but nothing manifested at the time. Would be great if he did
Yeah, I don't think john sees a lot of direct affinity with the type of work we've published to date, so I don't know if he'd be interested in doing one of our shows particularly. But I'd love for him to come up for a trio or quartet show in some capacity; I should sound him out again to see what he'd need to make it worthwhile for him. Thanks for the reminder Hugh!
He could stay at my place if he wants. (We go back.)
I'll certainly pass along that offer!
this is just my personal bone to pick but mai/son is run by the child of Zionist billionaires - to be clear like they made money doing real estate development in occupied Palestine. So maybe we can just not submit to that particular zine with all the genocide happening.
Someone just tipped me to the Azrieli Foundation connection yesterday, seems to be fairly common knowledge in the scene but I was apparently living under a rock. It also explains why I'd been hearing some rumblings of discomfort from people about booking shows etc. there.
Hey! One less lit mag, right?
The humor has a certain je ne sais quoi