Zoo Press: A Post-Mortem

I just received my copy of Priscilla Sneff’s debut poetry collection O Woolly City published with Tupelo Press, the same press that graciously picked up my second collection Other Fugitives and Other Strangers. As many poets know, these two titles were two of about five left in publication limbo after the downfall of our original publisher Zoo Press.

A major write-up on the fiasco appeared in Poets & Writers so I won’t repeat what’s already been stated, except to say that it’s all accurate despite the fact that Neil Azevedo wrote back to protest the article. His grievances, however, fell on deaf ears because most of us affected by the shut-down of Zoo Press had already moved on.
Other “left in limbo” poets who have recovered nicely include C. Dale Young, who found a champion in Four Way Books, directed by another Zoo Press poet Martha Rhodes, author of Mother Quiet. Martha is the classiest lady in poetry, but this was not simply a favor to Young. The book has stood on its own merits. The Second Person was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and received a glowing starred review from Publishers Weekly soon after its release.
Poetry editor Christian Wiman is another. His book of essays, Ambition and Survival, which was to be published by Zoo Press in 2004, has recently been released by Copper Canyon Press. I’m assuming it’s a slightly different manuscript, though the title didn’t change.
And now a happier ending for Priscilla Sneff. O Woolly City, winner of the defunct Kenyon Review Prize back in 2004, has finally been released.
My own Zoo Press experience is a thing of the past, though I’m wondering what lessons can be learned from it and how can something positive be shaped from what went down back in 2005. Was it simply a case of mismanagement? Was it too ambitious, an idea ahead of its time? Though it did affect individual careers, I don’t think that it crippled the poetry community’s faith or trust in poetry presses or book publication contests. Or did it? I’m also remembering the much-publicized exposés at Foetry, which also had its heyday and then moved on, though not without leaving its mark on the “po-biz,” some might say.
If anything, I hope that we are conscious of these two (of many) important stages in the development of an artist: we occupy one as we write and create, and we must cross over into the other as soon as the project makes its way into a product. Yes, its marketing and promotion and competition standing side by side with celebration and the participation in the larger artistic community as “a published poet.” I don’t think there’s anything obscene in that, though it can certainly be corrupt and corrupted. Your thoughts?
I’ll let Priscilla Sneff teach us something through one of her poems:
Congratulations, Condolences
Letting nothing look different the day that life took me
To heart, I took coffee and fritter, uneyed the bad lads, and
Perched on the high pink stool in my padded overcoat, but how
Proud I felt! Rising slightly out of myself
Like warm dough. O Chance become my science O City be dio—
I’m the metropolis. You are my miscreant critter.
I am the city and you are my work of great mischief.
Congratulator. Condoleo.
(From O Wooly City by Priscilla Sneff, Tupelo Press, 2007.)