Is ocasopress.com Legit?

I’m sometimes asked why Ocaso Press doesn't issue traditional books, or
make use of the reputable publishing houses, academic and commercial.
The short answer is independence, the freedom to write as I want — and,
more importantly, not write what I don't want to write —  but let
me start with an anecdote.

Many years ago, when the New Formalists were becoming known, I
submitted work to their main publishing outlet. In fact I sent many
batches of poems over several years, but received the usual the editor regrets .
. . . . In the end I had only apprenticeship work left, those sweat-stained
products authors come to detest in later
life. Up to this point in submissions, moreover, I’d hoped the work
would speak
for
itself, but this time, to the four rather bad poems sent, I added a
note on my publishing history. Unfortunately, I also added a truly
awful piece, one I’d cobbled together to make the customary batch of
five. Older poets will know what happened. The worst poem was
accepted for publication. At first I was intensely annoyed, at my own
stupidity, and at the magazine for its obvious malice. But over the
months that followed, when I’d read much more widely, I realized that
the magazine had not been malicious at all, but only haplessly
incompetent. Most editors — and I speak now with some experience of
the matter
— are greatly overworked, have limited reading skills and must respect
the
current fads. Representation in the leading small presses, which all
new
poets are advised to go for, was perhaps not worth too much.

That is the melancholy truth I have come to accept, not only with
respect to the small presses, but the poetry world in general. What Guy
Routh said in 1977 of economics, 'This neglect of the real world in
favour of creations of the mind is a leading feature of orthodox
economics. That it is generally accepted gives it academic
respectability and removes the danger that economics might be used as
an instrument in reshaping the world' applies also to the literary
world. Critical theory, and the academic industry generally, has
replaced craft aspects of writing with other and more
subsidiary matters — biography, literary influences, political
orientations, illustrations of  contemporary ideas.

The
young man who was never without his poetry volumes, even on the
toughest assignments —  who else in Iran, I wonder, had two copies
of Pound's Cantos,
one for
field use and one for comfortable reading in Tehran, or read his
Chinese authors in the rain-drenched depths of the Indonesian jungles?
— has come to see a theory-laden competence displace what
was honest, exciting and accomplished. Applied theory has replaced
literary criticism in academia, and literary criticism in the small
presses has been replaced by unabashed marketing. Within those limits,
of course, the work is very accomplished, but these are only the rules
by which the game is played: the aim is theme and career advancement.
Publications, workshops and newspaper
articles tell the same story: a wealth of
attention is being lavished on what often amounts to very little, where
passages of incompetence by leading
names
attract such a wealth of adroit justification that academia is in
danger of forgetting its larger role and becoming an end in itself.

Standards have fallen even further now, and, for reasons outlined on
this site, the literary standards of my youth seem strangely
utopian. Eloquence, memorability, exacting potency of phrase, and
a
dozen other characteristics of literary excellence have disappeared, as
readers may see for themselves by comparing the translations on
this site with the unlovely productions issuing from the large
publishing houses. The better work has not simply disappeared, but gone
unacknowledged, with no real
apprehension of the loss, as though Ezra Pound (for all his faults) had
not remarked a
century ago that a community that does not celebrate writing at its
highest pitch is not one worth belonging to.

No doubt the academic world believes otherwise, but its papers,
fascinating and well written as they generally are, have little to say
on literary
quality, if indeed such a term is still recognized. The small
presses are consistently self-laudatory, but are as faction-bound and
limited as anything else. And if a lot of money in grants and
donations is being used to promote contemporary poetry, it is to little
effect. The public cannot be bullied into admiring what it sees nothing
in, and readership is falling away.

So, to return to the opening question: Academic publishers are not open
to Ocaso Press because I’m not an academic, have never been an
academic, and,
given the parlous state of academia today, am heartily glad I didn’t
become one. Educational credentials come first in academic
publishing, moreover, which means that, if you’re a recognized French authority,
an academic publisher may well bring out your French poetry
translations, provided there exists a real gap in the market, but
probably
not the poetry you've translated from Sanskrit or Russian. Academic
prudence insists you stay within your area of specialization. You will
also have to
submit to peer review, which brings safety but also a certain sameness
of approach, with the usual squabbles over who is to write the Introduction.

None of this is news. Scientists, and academics in the humanities even, may well have entered their careers with glowing hopes of
'pushing back the boundaries of knowledge', but most find they accomplish only rather more of the same. Real originality, unless it open new
fields of study and thus employment prospects, is not, in my experience, welcomed with open arms. If they're wise, academics and poets depending
on academia will aim to produce worthy additions to the accepted literature, thus
enhancing those fields of interest, and their own career prospects. Too often, study in the humanities starts by accepting the literary canon and then constructs an ever denser thicket of justification, which college students have to read,
and which can be thinned down for school use.
So each field of study advances. Some fields expand rapidly — molecular biology, for example — but most do not. Indeed I was astonished in picking up textbooks recently
on my own specialty (geology), how much had not changed. That appears the case too in English Literature, though the ensuing fifty years have produced a fresh crop of authors to add
to literary canon and become respectable specialties.
Readers of my age will remember being told that
Modernist poets created their own worlds of inwardness, where some
oddities were part of the exciting new landscapes. Yes, there was the
Yeats world of ancient Ireland,  Byzantium and occult hocus-pocus.
There was Pound with his questionable outlooks interwoven in the
idiomatic chatter of the Cantos. There was Eliot's anguished posing on
literary and religious issues that were hard to grasp exactly. There
was Hill's magnificence of language that didn't quite square the circle
of his thoughts. And so on. But they were all grist for the academic
presses. The remarkable insights and cleverness that had been brought
to bear on Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth and other figures
comfortably part of the English tradition could be extended to later
writers and more challenging movements. So the system continued,
expanding with the audacious theorists of critical theory, and then
shrinking with today's academic cutbacks and poetry collections only
fellow poets buy. The new worlds of inwardness, once so exciting, now
seem rather small, self-serving and questionable. But the problems
were obvious from the first, just as they had been with sub-prime
mortgages and derivatives in the financial world.

Why not use the small presses? Because they bring little status and no
money. Book sales and magazine circulations are a small fraction of the
web traffic here on Ocaso Press. Small press reputations are now rather
suspect, moreover, and the author will still find himself bound by the
styles and traditions associated with that particular outlet, which are
aiming to be a larger part of the current system.

Why not use the mainstream publishing houses who bring out the ‘big
names’?
For two reasons. First, the 'big names' have to continually turn out a
marketable product, a certain style or theme that is demonstrably
theirs — essential for sales but nonetheless restricting. Even
non-fiction writers will find publishers want more of the
same, to develop the market niche created. The second reason
is obvious. I do not have a big name, am most disinclined to follow
current
styles to
achieve a thin semblance of propriety, and would even then be selling
through today’s reviewing
system, which is a good deal less than honest. Serious poetry, to use
the title of a salutary but depressing book on postwar British fiction,
has become a ‘vain conceit’. As always in a varied if overcrowded
field,
there are honourable exceptions, but not, alas, as many as one would
like.

Electronic publication is surely the way to go. Books can be issued
free of charge. The author is wholly in control. Odd typos and errors
get through, but corrections are easily made. Very often,
looking back on work of previous years, the author finds a better way
of putting things, and readers will notice that many Ocaso Press ebooks
carry the date of the last revision.
But how did all this happen? My own wake-up call dates to some
thirty-five years ago, when I was still a
corporate high-flyer but also attending poetry workshops and submitting
the odd poem for publication. The workshop in question was run by a
London-domiciled American poet, well known and respected, and we were
discussing preferred
formats when an elderly gentleman rose to his feet and wanted to know
what this new poetry was about. What was it trying to do? It sure
wasn’t like the stuff he’d learned at school.  Our convener did
his best, but was hardly convincing, to the questioner who left the
group and never reappeared, or to me, mulling these questions over as I
took the train home. We should surely have a reasonably clear idea of
what we were trying to do, I thought, and continued to think, as I
raised the matter with poets in other workshops over the months that
followed. I have to say that no one really seemed to know, or perhaps
even to care very much. Modern poetry was a matter of faith, like
religion or politics, where facts were fitted round preconceptions.
More than that
I didn't have the time to explore. Eventually I left the corporate
world, and
was then
occupied in getting my own businesses off the ground, though I
continued reading
and attending workshops.

But gradually the poetry world came into focus. My role in RTZ
had been one of
asking the hard questions and coming up with sound proposals. Literary
criticism was different. Often there was no take-home
message to be had. Worse still, my readings in aesthetics etc.
began to
show that the Modernists had possessed only the haziest notion of what
they were
about. Reviewing was more pamphleteering than applied sensibility, and
the blind
were demonstrably leading the blind in the usual name-dropping and
significance. Literary articles
still made enjoyable reading, of course, but had I left matters
in the corporate world so ill-defined there would have been an
immediate phone
call. What was my report saying exactly? And what was I proposing we
do?

That business approach seems to have served me well through the years
following when I read and made notes on many hundreds of books and
articles dealing with aesthetics, literary theory, science and
philosophy generally — notes which I eventually made into webpages on
Textetc.com. To my surprise, the site quickly shot to first place on
Google for poetry craft and other keywords, and still seems a favourite
with schools and colleges.

Some of that matter, recast and updated, appears on Ocaso Press —
notably the ebooks on Critical Theory and Verse Writing — but this site
is really for literary work, plus articles that take
the first enquiry further. Recently, I've added brief surveys on the
founders
of Modernism, coming to conclusions that are very unwelcome. Or at
least they
are to me. I grew up with Modernism, to which I was much committed,
though remaining ignorant of the many problems and issues that a
balanced examination
yields. These issues seem increasing relevant now that poetry is
losing its broader public. As business studies emphasize: there are
companies
that continually rethink their strategies, and there are companies that
go out of business. Contemporary poetry is in danger of falling into
the second group.

The first aim of Ocaso Press is literary quality. There are literary sites far more popular than this, well placed in the search engines, that seem to turn
out new translations monthly. Many are immensely useful to students in translating classic works into an easy-to-read style, but
they do not exemplify the literary qualities that were once the reason for the studying those works in the first place. It would be unkind to call their verse inept or doggerel, but
I do not myself see why preexisting, if rather indifferent, renderings should be adulterated even further. A new translation should be an advance on the old.
It may be that translations can only faintly echo the
original, but that echo should be true one, bringing into aesthetic prominence what was praiseworthy in the original. Fashions change,
but if today's free verse is a welcome change from the plodding fidelity of traditional verse written badly, it can also slim the original into attenuated prose, rich in meaning but lacking
the aesthetic depth that real verse provides. Semantic meaning predominates in academic discourse, but a rendering shorn of its aesthetic aspects is akin to opera without
the orchestra, and it is the music that we love and return to.
The above is only background, what distinguishes Ocaso Press from other
small presses. Most readers may simply like to know that the work here
is
written to older standards, and attempts, above all, to make enjoyable
reading.  Ocaso Press can be contacted by email on
[email protected]. A little more about me can be found on http://www.cjholcombe.com
.