Bernadette Mayer's "Mimeo Argument"

A brief essay from 1982 defending DIY production methods and aesthetics

“The cheaper and slightly more instantaneous reproduction of poetry for those who can use it is not a bourgeoisie value; the craving for a book with a binding is.”

—Bernadette Mayer, 1982

Stumbling around online, as one does, I actually came across something good. In a post at Peach magazine, poet Ted Rees¹ refers to a brief essay by Bernadette Mayer in a 1982 Poetry Project newsletter. Mayer’s essay, succinctly titled “Mimeo Argument,” is a pointed refutation of a previous essay in the newsletter written by Eileen Myles. The subject at hand was the material aesthetics of mimeograph² publication—in other words, of non-professional, frequently side-stapled, hand-made productions. In sum, Mayer is for it, and Myles is against. While this may seem like a historical footnote, their argument distills a pivotal moment in the history of poetry publishing, its materials and values, and the implied politics of these. The terms may have changed—“mimeo” as a signifier has been replaced with “DIY,”³ “zine,” and (to some extent) “chapbook”—but the basic opposition here is still relevant to small publishers today.

In this argument, the antagonist to mimeo was the professional-looking, perfect-bound book: one that has a spine and looks attractive on a shelf. And this is the form of the book that seems to rule the day in the current literary landscape—for instance, SPD did not carry books without a spine—and “a real book” is usually expected to be perfect bound. This is the form of the book that Myles advocates for in their essay, “Opus Mimeo.” They write that, while they’d done a few mimeo publications themselves, and at one point they tried to get on board with mimeo as a form of “punk publishing,” they soon soured. Over time, they found the books were less accessible due to small print runs and lack of distribution. Granted, this is a “reasonable” complaint, so far as it goes, but Myles elsewhere asserts a totally different set of values.

After writing, “If you can do it yourself why bother” (!!), Myles refers to an experience browsing books at the NY Small Press Book Fair and admiring the more professional-looking books with their “full glossy grandeur, nice commercial high-production values”: “I like these shiny books . . . they look commercial, real, they look American” (lmao). Rounding out this line of argument, they write, “Doesn’t money make money? Won’t people take your poems more seriously in a great type face with a far-out cover, expensive, in color?” Money, expensive, shiny, commercial, American—now that’s what I call poetry!

Clearly, Myles is trying to provoke. Their claims here run blatantly counter to the ethos of punk, 60’s counter-culture, and the publishing culture they belonged to. I am sure they knew what they were doing, and of the irony of doing it in a mimeo publication. And the argument was driven by a real frustration with the insularity of the poetry scene in NYC and all the energy expended on mimeo works that just disappeared or became embarrassments of some kind. Nevertheless, the superficial aestheticism and materialism (derogatory) of their stated position is highly suspect and annoying.

And it seems Bernadette Mayer felt the same. Her riposte, “Mimeo Argument,” is relatively brief, so I’ll quote in full (bold type emphasis my own):

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Mimeo Argument

I've always liked mimeo.⁴ If I had the time and money to do it, I'd publish my complete works and the complete works of other poets in plain, finite mimeographed editions for distribution to probably no more than 400 people. Nor would this be a bad thing to do; in fact it would be pretty cool. I don’t like the preciousness of poems on a page—better to blend them in to a long series or a longer work, better to superimpose them, better to keep them forever in your back pocket⁵! Although everyone takes pleasure in a beautiful object, even a stone, the accident of what poetry is good in what consequent wrappings (the complete works of Bernadette Mayer $3,000, coffee stains on wrappers) seems both unaccountable and fascinating. I hate the precious-book-buying-business except in the ways that it can help to support poets. To prefer glossiness to modesty, for its own sake, is a step in the direction of condemning plagiarism, and its friends, obscenity and political freedom. With the proliferation (maybe now easing) of books produced through government grants comes direction from the governments that they will/will not "fund" mimeographed things. Apparently, as far as you can see, the governments prefer the glossy and the bound. (And bookstores seem to deteriorate as rapidly as the remaining mimeographed things in them). Nowadays it's not strange for small press publishers to accept a poet's manuscript and take four years to produce it. (Even a magazine will occasionally do that; the forthcoming issue of "Cold Spring Journal's" been forthcoming for 7 years). The cheaper and slightly more instantaneous reproduction of poetry for those who can use it is not a bourgeoisie value; the craving for a book with a binding is. The people who "actually understand poetry"⁶ are, at the very least, the ones who are served by the darling mimeograph, if the mimeographers have the energy. Lasting precious books are one thing—that's for the jobbers; disseminating poetry in a particular decade is pretty ephemeral. Nor do I mean to agree with Eileen that a poet wont put her best works in mimeograph form, because the very freedom from restrictions and forms of abuse of the author permits a more limitless devotion. I like books in all forms but I think it is strictly New-Grub-Street to advocate the theory in relation to poetry that "money makes money." There aint any real money, there never was, my dear fame. Without a doubt the better-looking book will rightfully aggrandize the poet but the fancy book never done nothing for the blank poem. (The Newsletter isnt ratty in its present form but suits the need to write to a large audience about events that arent planned a year & a half in advance & you wouldnt like it if they were). As luck will have it, America and fashion tout binding and lamination right now; mimeograph has a traditional reputation for being for beatniks and desperate Russian writers. But this momentary and urgent dissemination of poetry, which is also full of pleasure, is not the marketplace but a kind of cupbearing for the knowledge and pleasure of poetry. I believe that since the Industrial Revolution western questions of value are sardonic, if not sarcastic and that my only resource as a poet in 1982 is to put myself on the side of things which exists at an angle slightly askew to any desire for fame, or even value for the "works", forget about value as it's perceived, and take as much pleasure in my life as a poet as desire can construe and hurry to change the world in small performance as others like John Cage have done, since you cant stop fucking writing anyway.

—Bernadette Mayer

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As may be obvious, I agree with Mayer. There are many points here worth examining, but one crucial point is that more money doesn’t mean more money: higher production values don’t necessarily lead to anything but higher costs. (It may not even lead to that many more readers!) Even with a shinier commodity to put on the market, the margins are still likely to be vanishingly small. This is because (typically, not always) the perfect-bound book circulates through an infrastructure in which many people (e.g. distributers, printers, bookstores) all expect to get a part. It’s not a system designed to help poets—one could even argue it is designed against them.

What’s more, this increased cost often requires you to change how you operate so you can pay for things you can’t afford. There are ways around letting this compromise you (e.g. a publisher may be independently wealthy, have wealthy connections, be willing to lose money or go into debt, or simply be effective at crowd-funding), but it also opens the door to the non-profit publishing model with its donors, corporate funding, and state-funding that privileges only the most professional (a model in emergence roughly at the time of this mimeo debate). And to be clear: it is not that non-profit status on its own is inherently “bad”; rather, it’s the accompanying structural changes that came with it. In a previous essay on this blog, I wrote a bit about these changes and their effects.

Now, at the time all this was happening, Eileen Myles was surely not alone in their desire to move beyond mimeo. Ultimately, they simply showed where the winds were blowing: DIY production still exists, but much glossier, perfect-bound books is what poetry largely ended up with across the next few decades (of course, this reflects changes in technology too). And for many, this is all perfectly fine!⁷ But for those of us who do think about this stuff and want a poetic counter-culture free of institutionalism, professionalism, commercialism, and capital, then it makes sense to think critically about how the desire for “high production-values” compromises⁸ things. And Mayer’s view outlined in “Mimeo Argument” is a great point of reference that marks a crucial historical juncture.

1. Rees credits Ryan Skrabalak (of Spiral Editions) with pointing him to the essay. S/o to Ryan if you’re reading!

2. Referring to the mimeograph machine, “mimeo” was often a metonym for any DIY publication even if it used other means to produce the work. And so a “pro-mimeo” argument can be translated into today’s discourse as, say, “pro-DIY” or “pro-zine,” or (with some qualifications) “pro-chapbook.”

3. I would add here the term “econo,” which is Minutemen slang for an ethos of the modest, cheap, effective, and autonomous.

4. Here, she positions her essay in direct, unequivocal contrast to Myles’s which opens, “I’ve never liked mimeo.”

5. Again, she plays on a line in Myles’s essay: “If you can do it yourself why bother? Why not just xerox your favorite new poems from time to time and hand ‘em to your friends? Or better still, why not stylishly fold your latest into your back pocket and show it to the several people who matter?”

6. Again, quoting Myles: “How many people’s taste do you trust? I mean, who actually understands poetry?”

7. Until I am proven wrong, I am just going to assume that—at any given moment—roughly 75% of poets and writers who operate in the “small press” world simply can’t be bothered to care about the material production of books and its politics (it’s probably a higher number, but I’m feeling generous). They’re only focused on what’s on the page, on their career, and on popularity, and it will continue to be like this until capitalism ends or “creative writing” education changes to emphasize the material aspects of publishing.

8. And here is a crucial point: this compromise is not a top-down thing. That is, it is not that funders explicitly dictate what is published. Surely, there are instances of such pressure being exerted, but a problem that many overlook is the indirect rationalization and accommodation that occurs within a larger culture of professionalization. You don’t need to be pressured to make decisions donors like once you have professionalized enough to reap the rewards: compromise is in the air you breathe now. The real issue, as I see it, is not being told what to publish: it’s how a poet and publisher understands themselves and their position relative to structures of power and prestige. And I think one needs to be free to be AGAINST these structures, even aggressively so, and not feel like a fraud about it.