Rants & Raves: letters to the editors

Review Rants & Raves etters to the editors Re: The Peter Bricklebank Review of PP/FF: An Anthology Like J.M. Barrie in 1904, Peter Bricklebank closes his eyes and incants, "I believe in something called prose poetry." He wishes to return to times before writers and editors had the audacity to question the boundaries of genre designations. After all, he insists, we've enjoyed a "comfortable variety of form and content" since the "dawn of time," so why ask questions now? What's more, Bricklebank makes clearthat he dismisses the term flash fiction as connoting "flash-in-the-pan superficiality, both showy and glib." He stands with David Lehman in viewing the term as equivalent to "a shifty fellow in a stained raincoat." He says that he much prefers the "comfortably timeworn" term "short-short." Fair enough. As I say in my introduction to PPIFF: An Anthology, "I have no interest in creating new confinements." Besides, I too believe in prose poetry. I also believe in flash fiction, short-shorts, and evolution . I believe that Daniil Kharms had every right to call his writing incidences. I believe that Camillo Sbarbaro wrote things not improperly called shavings. I believe that Robert Rauschenberg created combines, even though the term collage was already available to him. I believe that Russell Edson wrote fables, until he realized there were no morals to his stories, so decided to stick with prose poem. William S. Burroughs wrote some fine routines. But why is such a person as Bricklebank, who would seemingly allow for none of this variety, reviewing an anthology dedicated to writing that "expands the parameters of what constitutes a prose poem or a flash fiction"? It seems the anthology was at least 50% doomed before Bricklebank even opened the book. I find this missed opportunity for an even-handed review ofPPIFF all the more disappointing for the fact that it appeared in a publication that has consistently facilitated intelligent discussion of innovative writing. PPIFF contains work by some of this country's most important established and emerging innovative writers: Raymond Federman, Lydia Davis, Laird Hunt, Cris Mazza, Diane Williams , Peter Markus, Joyelle McSweeney (none of whom get mentioned by Bricklebank), and fifty-four others. None have claimed PP/FF as their preferred designation. I would never claim that for them either. Rather, using the symbol PP/FF allowed me the freedom to assemble a group of writers who define their work across a wide spectrum—from prose poetry , to flash fiction, to Language poetry, to flash novel, to short-short, to pp/ff, and fifty-five others—and use the writing itself, not genre or form designations—to illustrate how their writing overlaps. Those overlaps, I posit, create a body of work that best defines this literary moment. I felt the same way when I served as Focus Editor of the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of American Book Review (26.2), the place where I first put the term PP/FF into print. I only wish that ABR had taken the time to match the unique challenges ofassembling such an anthology with a reviewer more willing to reach outside his literary comfort level to assess it. Peter Conners Editor, PP/FF: An Anthology Peter Bricklebank Responds to Peter Conners Mr. Conners chastises me for not noting the most prominent writers in his anthology, which, presumably, he hopes will help sell it. For this I cannot apologize. There are over sixty contributors. I named a number of the others and commented specifically on them, in most instances when I had something very positive to say. I call attention to what I deem significant. As a reviewer, I cannot be upbraided for neglecting to provide a jacket blurb. That writers choose to call their works of various subtle stripes and variations by all manner of epithets is entirely fine by me. Mr. Conners is wrong to impute that I am against these terms just because I didn't accept his term and declare it a new and important genre. I consider "Shavings," "Combines," and such like, entirely fair and probably apt choices by these authors, but in my view they are usually nonce choices. For the most...