I.   DAS GEDICHT (= ‘THE POEM’):
     review for poetry, essays and criticism

1. History

In the autumn of 1992 Anton G. Leitner founded his publishing house with a capital stock of DEM 50,000 (Anton G. Leitner Verlag – the acronym AGLV is a truncated anagram of the German word for ‘publishing house’; Internet address: www.dasgedicht.de). One of his objectives was to publish the annual review DAS GEDICHT.

Anton G. Leitner quit his job as a lawyer in order to be able to work full-time as a publisher, editor, author and critic from April 1993 onwards. The first edition of DAS GEDICHT was launched on the market in October of that year with an initial circulation of 1,500.

By now, seven editions of DAS GEDICHT have been published. With an initial circulation of 5,000 per edition, the journal has become one of the heavyweight literary reviews in the German-speaking world. At the moment there is no specialised review for contemporary poetry in Germany which can be readily compared with DAS GEDICHT.


2. Conception

Over the first seven years, the underlying conception of DAS GEDICHT has not changed to any marked extent. The review is published once a year (October) in book-format (approx. 200 pages per edition). It contains an informative mix of poetry, essays, and book reviews / bibliographies concerning relevant new publications.

As a rule, DAS GEDICHT has a three-tier structure:

a.    poetry: exclusive publication of texts by renowned authors and new talents;

b.    essays: provocative essayistic forays (e. g. ‘Clash of Poetries’ issue; ‘Is there such a
       thing as a European poem?’ German / Italian texts, in collaboration with the
       Florence-based review Semicerchio); interviews; reports on topical trends like slam
       poetry; and practical advice on how best to navigate the literary world;

c.    review section: short book reviews of all seminal new publications of poetry
       appearing in the year in question (about 50 reviews per edition), and bibliographies
       with precise data, incl. publishing details (a further 250 collections, or thereabouts,
       per edition).

The individual issues are supplemented by special sections covering the poetry scene in other countries (e. g. Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Italy) or by features on individual figures (e. g. John Ashbery, Pierre Garnier, Michael Hamburger, Mario Luzi, Craig Raine).

Issue number 8 of DAS GEDICHT will be appearing in September 2000, and will be an ‘Erotic special’ (together with a dossier on French-language poetry from Luxembourg).

Two editions of DAS GEDICHT will be coming out in 2001 (no. 9 in the spring, and no. 10 in the autumn).

In addition, the spring of 2001 will see the publication of the first collection in the new ‘edition DAS GEDICHT’ series: a bilingual volume of poems / poetic travel-diary by the Italian poet Mario Luzi.


3. Structure / staff / finances

Anton G. Leitner is now assisted on the editorial front by two employees and a number of freelance contributors (including two graphic artists), by people gaining ‘on-the-job’ experience, by students, by academic / journalistic consultants and by translators. About 100 people are involved in the preparation of each issue of DAS GEDICHT. The Anton G. Leitner Verlag has business capital of around DEM 250,000. The review has been awarded three distinguished prizes.

The work of a publisher’s reader, actual production (setting, proof-reading, coordination of the printing process), marketing (e. g. telephone marketing, negotiations with booksellers, canvassing of customers), advertising, public relations, sales and distribution, the payment process, accounts – everything is done on an in-house basis. A twelve-hour working-day (plus many weekends on the job) is the normal rhythm for the publisher.

Production of one issue of the review costs about DEM 90,000 (if the editor’s labour is left out of the equation). The financial situation is aggravated by Germany’s postal authorities, which compel the publishing house to dispatch its annual review on a ‘normal-letter’ basis (the cost of postage for mailing a single copy abroad is a cool DEM 12!). DAS GEDICHT receives no – or only very marginal – subsidies. Unlike other reviews in Germany, DAS GEDICHT has to pay its own way.

After incurring heavy start-up losses during the first three years, DAS GEDICHT is now able to cover its costs. Apart from sales and advertising revenue, the project can draw on the following sources of income:

-      services such as expert assessments for both professional and amateur poets (short
       expert reports, analyses and interpretations of specific poems);

-      proof-reading (including the scrutinising of book-length manuscripts);

-      provision of advice for people applying for literary prizes

Over and above this, the editorial staff organises seminars and workshops for poetry (creative writing).


4. Campaigns

The editor’s main objective is to get a wider readership excited about poetry, and to get this art-form firmly into the public eye. This is the reason why he has sought to initiate various happenings with the aim of attracting mass media coverage.

By way of example: the editor had ten poems printed on one million baguette bags and distributed via food-retailing chains. This campaign was reported on in all important German media (including in news magazines, radio and TV).

On the publishing house’s Internet homepage, www.dasgedicht.de, Anton G. Leitner floated the idea of a ‘chain-poem’ (i. e. renga) (‘LyrikNet’).

Not long ago he had some short poems printed on paperbags in collaboration with a sugar-product manufacturer (Südzucker AG) and had them distributed in cafés.

The Hitliste der Jahrhundertdichter (Hit-List of the Century’s Top Poets), published in DAS GEDICHT No. 7, 1999, met with a world-wide response. On the eve of the millennium the editorial staff of DAS GEDICHT invited 50 well-known poets and reviewers to choose „the 100 most important German and international poets of the 20^th century“. The front-runners turned out to be Gottfried Benn (national list) and Ezra Pound (international list). The leading German news magazine Der Spiegel styled this ranking the ‘cultural sensation of the week’. International press agencies commented on the two ‘Top Ten’ lists (‘The Top Ten in Poetry’), which were distributed in a number of countries. In Germany alone, the lists were copied over 20 million times by the print media and triggered heated debates (source: Observer Argus Media GmbH, Stuttgart). In South America the International List was a focus of critical discussion in leading daily newspapers.


II. Poetry publication in Germany (the situation for poetry reviews)

The quality of circulating manuscripts would be higher and there would not be any sales problems involving poetry if all people writing the stuff in Germany bought and read collections of poems as well. The editorial staff of DAS GEDICHT receives about 2,000 poetry manuscripts a year, but only a few prove suitable for publication.

The fact that producers of poetry outnumber consumers of poetry is partly the fault of the practitioners themselves, who often prefer to present themselves as ivory-tower dwellers. Even poets as famous as Inger Christensen are very bad readers of their own excellent texts. Their recitations remind you of the joke: Question: How can you clear an overcrowded hall in no time at all? Answer: You ask a poet to read his poems.

The younger generation is remedying this situation with the help of slam poetry. Hundreds of mostly young listeners are attracted by poetry competitions, resembling classroom parties. Some of the slam poets are able to enact and recite their poems so skilfully that they could even read out a telephone directory and still make it sound like a poem. It is true that these very skilfully recited texts lose a lot of their flair when printed, since their unfinished character is often exposed in the process. But we should not underrate the importance of slam as an ‘oral’, optically-engaging, media-friendly presentation of the poetic art, especially because of its proven ability to get young people fascinated in poetry. Indeed, poetry has actually become a thing for festivals
(c. f. the festival ‘Lyrik am Lech’ – ‘Lyric Poetry by the [River] Lech’ in Landsberg, Germany, June 2000), and this is surely not a bad prospect for the future.

Unfortunately, the major German publishing houses – above all, S. Fischer and Rowohlt – have succumbed to those ubiquitous manias Globalisation, Mergeritis and Profit Maximisation. Management consultants are hammering it into publishers’ heads that they should only act on the basis of business-management dictates (in other words: not to touch books which are projected to sell less than 6,000 copies).

The upshot is that poetry is disappearing from the programmes of those ‘bulge-bracket’ publishing houses which could most easily afford to publish it.

Small publishing houses with modest working capital are jumping into the breach to help keep this literary genre alive, even at the risk of self-laceration. Admittedly, some of the bigger publishing houses are still committed to publishing poetry, a case in point being Reclam Verlag. C. H. Beck Verlag is home to Christoph Buchwald’s meritorious – if risk-averse – Jahrbuch der Lyrik (Poetry Annual). A similar but more ambitious (hardcover) project, ‘Unterwegs ins Offene’ (Moving Out Into the Open), has just been brought out by the small Cologne-based Verlag Landpresse (editors: Anton G. Leitner and Axel Kutsch).

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung takes a pessimistic view of the situation, stating that «a divide is looming between publishing houses and the book trade, which is becoming ever more inefficient, ever less cultured and ever less enthusiastic. Big bookshops are filling the gap». It is self-evident that this trend does not bode well for poetry, which in the view of many booksellers is hard to sell – if not downright unsalable.

But the exceptions – like the review DAS GEDICHT, which does sell pretty well – prove the rule. Ways of overcoming the calamity might be direct selling and distribution via the Internet, and recognition on the part of a great many poets that they can no longer afford to spurn modern marketing strategies. Terms like ‘curiosity’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘cooperation’ ought to function as buoys at a time when the cold waves of capitalism are once again lashing even the highest ground.