CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A Recruit for Publishers’ Row

In those innocent early days when I blandly assumed the ownership, editorship, and management of a poetry magazine, I did not foresee that my new duties were to lead toward the great world of book publication, even in its more limited phases. But he who winds along unknown roads may expect to arrive at strange destinations.

Had it not been for my long poem, _The Pageant of Man_, I might never have made the beginnings. This extensive work, finished in the early fall of 1935, duly made its visits to several editorial offices--how many, my records do not tell me; but the number, within a mere few months, could not have been great. I do recall that one or two publishers professed interest; but when the reports came in, I listened to the old, old story: the editorial department approved, but the sales department was less sanguine; it could see no sufficient market, hence the manuscript was coming back to me with regrets, etc. Now I would not for a moment imply that the sales departments, from their own point of view, were not quite right; certainly, there were more promising investments than a poem of Gargantuan length (one which eventually would cover 319 well-filled octavo pages). Nevertheless, the verdict was not gratifying to the author.

It may be that I was growing impatient; it may be that some publisher, had I persisted, would have uttered the fervently desired “Yes!” But it is a curious thing that a writer, having toiled at a book with painstaking patience over a period of years, may all at once squirm with impatience after the results of his labor have been confided to paper. I had produced what was certainly (and not in bulk only, I thought) my most considerable effort; and I wanted doors to open upon it, I wanted it to breathe the fresh air and see the light. Therefore it was exasperating to have the sales departments keep it in darkness.

My exasperation, however, was to be short-lived. In the winter of 1936, an unexpected windfall came to me from a never-to-be-repeated source--a mountainous sum, slightly more than a thousand dollars. And with money comes temptation. Almost instantly, an insidious thought thrust itself into my mind. Perhaps this would enable me to publish _The Pageant of Man_ on my own account. I knew that authors far more celebrated than myself had published their own work, occasionally with notable success; the names of Upton Sinclair and others were in my mind. Even if the saddest of sad luck were to pursue me, and I were to lose my thousand dollars--at least, the book would be in print, and I would be no worse off than before receiving the money. True, the craft of writing should, ideally, remain distinct from the business of publishing; authors should devote their time to writing, and publishers should be specialists in book production and distribution. So I should have said, even a short while before--but now, on the contrary, my attitude was: why hold back?--never venture, never succeed!

At least, I would explore the possibilities. The first problem, therefore, was to find a printer. Mr. Grossman, the printer of _Wings_, with his small establishment, had not the facilities for a book such as _The Pageant of Man_, and I knew no other reliable person. But there are times when fate, with all the appearance of intelligent intention, puts one into touch with just the needed person at precisely the desired time. While I was wondering as to printers, a letter reached me from a man I had never heard of before, Joseph A. Wennrich, who represented an establishment known as The Guild Bookcrafters; he had seen _Wings_, and wished to bid on printing it. As it happened, I was quite pleased with The Artype Press, and needed no bid on printing _Wings_; but Wennrich’s letter put a thought into my mind: the Guild

## Bookcrafters, to judge from their name, might be able to print _The

Pageant of Man_. In any case, I would find out.

A telephone call brought immediate action. Mr. Wennrich, assuring me that book printing was his specialty, arranged to visit me that evening. I looked forward to the interview; but strangely, the appointed hour came and went, and no visitor rang my bell. “Well, that ends that,” I thought. “So this Wennrich is just another of those unreliables, whom I’d better not get entangled with.”

But I had done him an injustice. Next morning he telephoned; explained that, at the last minute, something unavoidable had prevented his coming, and even made it impossible to notify me; and asked to be excused, and permitted to visit me the coming evening. And he did visit me as requested--and all through the years of our ensuing relationship he proved to be not only highly capable, but dependable almost to the point of punctiliousness.

He turned out to be a tall, nervous-mannered, explosively enthusiastic man in his late thirties. His chief interest was less in printing for its own sake than in book designing, and he soon convinced me that he had taste, inventiveness, and originality, as well as abounding energy and a thorough knowledge of his craft. From him I was to receive what was in effect a private course in the making of books.

But for the present, the one question was _The Pageant_. That Wennrich could print it, and print it well, was evident from the expert samples of his work which he displayed--but what about the price? He would have to take the manuscript with him, he said, and try to reach a figure. Several days went by, during which I was half resigned to the belief that he would quote an amount far beyond my reach. And then, on one never-to-be-forgotten evening, he paid me another visit. And as I bent above the paper scrawled with his jottings, my heart gave a leap. The quotation, for an edition of a thousand copies, was less than I had feared; it would indeed be possible to bring out the book, even leaving a little over for advertising!

I will not go into the problems that confronted a novice like myself, except to say that since the new publishing medium would need a name and would inevitably be connected with _Wings_, I hit at once upon the obvious designation, The Wings Press. By June of 1936, _The Pageant of Man_ was in print, though publication had not been set until September; in the interval, copies were to be sent to various persons of note in the poetic world, in order to get their comments for possible use on the jacket. And comments were forthcoming, more pleasingly than anticipated; and the reviewers also, after the book’s appearance, were more generous, far more so, than I had felt any reason to hope; and even the sales were not bad--that is, not for a book of poetry, and one issued without the means of distribution available to a large publisher. I felt fortunate that a hundred copies had been sold before publication day, and that copies continued to sell year after year, though of course at a slower rate. And while this experience would not lead me to recommend self-publication as a means of getting rich, never for a moment did I regret my plunge.

Originally I had thought of this publication as a single, never-to-be-repeated venture; I did not realize that it would set off a chain reaction, which would involve me more deeply and ever more deeply. After the appearance of the book, which had been advertised in _Wings_ and elsewhere, I began receiving letters from subscribers and contributors: “Dear Editor: I have a book of poems, and hope you will consider publishing it for me. If so, what would your price be?”

Though this was more than I had contemplated, it did give me pause. And then I put the question to myself: Why, indeed, not publish a book every now and then, provided that it was of good quality, and something I could feel gratified to sponsor? True, I could not afford to publish at my own expense--but had the authors themselves not indicated that they did not expect this?

Before I go any further, let me make matters plain as to what has come to be variously known as “subsidy,” “cooperative,” and “vanity” publishing. While some persons, without knowledge of the facts, might accuse me of being in the position of the thief who proclaims, “All those other robbers are bad--I’m the only honest one,” I think that any discriminating judge will admit that there are two kinds of publishing projects which rely upon authors’ subsidies. The first, which has become notorious, is practiced by firms--usually large firms--that advertise extensively in magazines and by brochures. These firms, a number of which the Federal Trade Commission recently found guilty of deliberate misrepresentation, have no standards whatever, and accept virtually everything--at least, everything that is paid for, and can be distributed without danger of interference by the postal authorities. Publishing of this kind cannot be condemned too strongly; and I, who have examined book after book of verse of almost unbelievable ineptitude, have more reason than most for joining in the denunciation.

But there is another sort of subsidy publication of worthwhile titles; and this has been undertaken at times by specialized houses, by university presses, and even, if I have not been misinformed, by general trade publishers. I will admit that, ideally, this should not be; ideally, no writer should be required to do more than write; it is repugnant, and surely not in the best interests of literature, that only the solvent author should be published. Yet what is one to do when the work is something which--like certain scholarly monographs or like long poems or collections of verse--may have high merits but small sales possibilities? What when the prospective publisher is financially unable to shoulder the responsibility? Is such work to remain in oblivion? Or is it better that it be issued, under discriminate and ethical auspices, even at the author’s expense? I think that there can be no two answers to these questions when it is remembered that it was this form of publishing that gave to the world the early work of Shelley, Browning, and many another author now renowned.

When we turn to contemporary poetry, we find some special problems. Paradoxically, while the art no longer enjoys its old-time popularity with the reading public, it has apparently lost little if any of its vogue with writers. It may not be that, as is sometimes asserted, “everybody” is trying to write poetry; nor need we suppose that, as has also been alleged, there are “millions” of poets in America. But it does seem unquestionable, based upon the packs of manuscripts submitted to editors, that thousands of people are seriously setting out to write poetry; and out of this multitude, a fair proportion are producing work worthy of being read and remembered. Even if the number of readers had kept pace with that of writers, the facilities of all the recognized trade publishers would be taxed to bring out the deserving books; but under present conditions, when publishers either shun poetry as if it were a bad debt, or issue it as if it were a bad habit (rarely more than two or three books a year, and these often by writers already on their lists), there is inevitably a large and worthy surplus that could not conceivably find a home with any of the big royalty-paying houses. What, then, shall the authors do with their intensely imagined, their passionately conceived works, which in many cases represent the most delicate and the most fervent and perfect flowering of their lives?

The authors themselves have answered this question; they have answered it by their readiness to seek subsidy publishers. It is at this point that the small publisher, who acts with an eye to poetic quality and to writers’ needs, may perform a real service. In a negative way, he may accomplish something by the very act of saving some of the poets from the pirates. And in a positive way, he may aid by insuring the author the joy and stimulation that can come only from seeing his work in print; he may obtain for him a certain attention, even if not celebrity; he may give him a memorial to hand down in pride to his children and grandchildren. And he may--who knows?--rescue some capable poet, even some outstanding poet from otherwise inevitable oblivion.

It may be worth adding that, apart even from the views of the authors themselves, I am far from alone in this opinion. Consider the following from an article by Aron M. Mathieu (_Writer’s Digest_, July, 1957):

One obvious category of writing that seldom finds a publisher, even though it may be outstanding, is poetry. A poet, therefore, can have much pleasure and gratification from a self-published book, well-bound, often beautifully designed, and through which he will reach at least a limited audience. There is always for him the hope, too, that having reached print, posterity might wake to him.

There are, of course, possibilities of abuse in all subsidy publishing; and for this reason, there were certain principles which, from the beginning, The Wings Press felt bound to establish. It picked its books, first of all, on the basis of merit already mentioned, that the

## book must deserve publication for its own sake; rejections have greatly

outnumbered acceptances, as many writers throughout the country will testify. It has never solicited any author for manuscripts; nor has it ever advertised (except in a limited way, for one brief period years ago, when Wennrich and I acted in virtual partnership, and announced in _Wings_ that we would consider book manuscripts of verse). Not less important! I have felt it necessary to dispel all illusions in the poet’s mind; I have always stated frankly that fame is not to be expected, that financial gain is unlikely, and financial loss the normal thing; and I have left it for the writer to decide whether the non-commercial advantages would offset the commercial losses. I have not concealed the fact that bookstores, except sometimes in the author’s home town, will not stock books by unknown versifiers, and that, unless the poet has been widely published, he cannot expect much of an audience outside the circle of his personal connections. But while mentioning all this, I am not unaware that even the large publishers could do little by way of sales, since not even they can create a market where there is no reading interest. I remember cases such as that of a certain skilled poet, whose work had been widely published and who had just won a $5000 prize (the largest offered in the world of poetry); despite the publicity attendant upon the award, and despite the audiences presumably developed by her previous books, her _Collected Poems_ was issued by a leading publisher in an edition of only 750 copies, of which a considerable number were distributed _gratis_ to the press--and this, incidentally, must not be taken to mean that all the remaining copies were sold.

With such comparisons in mind, I do not think that The Wings Press has done very badly by its authors. I know, in fact, that a great majority, after publication, have professed themselves highly and even enthusiastically pleased. And the complaints--for there have been complaints, a very few--have mostly concerned minor matters. One author, quite a few years ago, was understandably irked when a careless binder smeared glue over the covers of many books (we overcame the trouble by having the books rebound). Another author was justifiably annoyed when a printer, disregarding a correction made in the proofs, endowed her name on the book’s front cover with an extra letter. And still another, whose book had in my opinion been beautifully made, voiced two objections, the first of which she excitedly rushed to me by long-distance telephone: the title of the book (which consisted of four short words) had not been gold-stamped in three lines on the face of the cover, as she would have liked, but consisted of one line only! The other complaint, which occurred to her sometime later, was entrusted to a letter: the jacket blurb had said that her poems were “unpretentious.” This, after consultation with some friends, she took as an insult, though the fact was that the poems _were_ simple and unaffected, and had the merit of making no pretensions.

With most of the authors, however, my relations have been pleasant, even cordial; the publications of The Wings Press have earned me many friends-by-correspondence. However, on two occasions they have brought me sharp grief, when the respective authors--Grace Nixon Stecher and Garth Bentley, both of them able poets, and the latter a man of exceptional promise--died suddenly before publication of their books. The case of Bentley shocked me particularly: he fell dead of a heart attack just two days before the first copies of his _Behold the City_ reached his office in Chicago.

After printing one or two Wings Press books, Joseph Wennrich made a proposal: he would cooperate with me in bringing out certain subsequent books, he to provide the printing, I to pay for materials and incidentals, and any returns to be divided on a stated basis. This proposal, as I look back on it, could hardly have been more impractical had he himself been a poet; however, though he and I were to reap nothing financially, we did have the satisfaction of much enthusiastic conferring and planning. The first book to see the light under the new agreement was _Flame Against the Wind_, by Florence Wilson Roper, the Virginia writer whose work had first attracted me several years before in the verse magazine _Kaleidograph_: in this case, the author had to make no payment. Subsequently, Wennrich printed one or two other books under the same arrangement, though neither of us, in view of the limited sales, would have been able to endure the wear and tear indefinitely. And then, in 1941, my association with Wennrich was interrupted as an aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Though in his forties, he was subject to conscription, for he was then unmarried; and being drafted, he gave up his business, disposed of his equipment, and never did return to book printing. After his discharge from the army, he obtained work as the foreman of a printing plant in Middletown, New York; but this plant did not produce books, hence we could not resume our old relationship--a casualty of the war which I, for one, have always regretted.

Today I feel that there is greater need than ever for publication of the kind undertaken by The Wings Press and by the presses of several other poetry magazines, whose editors are actuated less by the desire to grow rich than by the wish to help poets. Though some of the university presses have sponsored books of current verse, and though here and there a prize committee has come to the rescue by providing book publication, and though one or two publishers have been experimenting with paper-backed editions of contemporary work, the position of poets as a whole is darker than ever--particularly those poets who honor the traditions of the ages. I think it not too much to say that if Gray or Keats, Byron or Shelley were to come back under other names, their work would be unceremoniously refused in the present book market, perhaps without even a reading: not because the work was not good (though few can recognize good poetry unless it is neatly tagged and labelled), but because it lacked appeal to the sales department. Under these conditions, Gray or Keats, Byron or Shelley would remain in obscurity unless someone provided the financial wherewithal. True, they might remain in obscurity even after such publication; but the world of print is a miraculous world, and there is always a chance that what has passed through its gateways will be seen and heard, if not today, then possibly tomorrow. And if even one Gray or Keats, Byron or Shelley is preserved (though incidentally a thousand books sail down the waters to oblivion), then surely a service has been performed which has more than justified all the agonies of publication.