Phylum first began in December of 2000. In taking on such a commitment, in one sense Nancy and I felt we could find a place in what is a long and rich tradition of small press publishing that reflected not only aesthetic but political investments as well. Both in terms of “pamphleteering” and in literary cultural production, the fugitive press positions its work in the hands and the interests of artists and writers, rather than in the furtherance of a market economy. A glance at Granary Books’s A Secret Location on the Lower East Side or their Angel Hair Anthology (I especially am touched by the double forward to the latter by Lewis Warsh and Anne Waldman) gives ample testimony that there have long been editors and poets doing similar things. We need only point to Whitman’s self-publishing and Dickinson’s fascicles to see the roots of this history. But what served really as the final catalyst for us to become actively involved with publishing was our encountering the work of Simon Cutts, Erica Van Horn, and Coracle Press. The commitment indicated by and as those productions provided us with the imagination of what was possible if one thought alternatively to producing mainstream books.
     At the beginning we were motivated by what we perceived to be a lack. There seems to be ample (all things being relative of course) outlets or venues for those who are “mainstream” as well as for those who are dogmatically experimental. We felt (and of course still do) that there are far fewer houses that were participating in the kind of work we most value. In six years time, though, we have seen remarkable changes on that front. A glance at our list of links indicates a growing number of presses interested in poetry that crosses various divides in order to discover the possibilities—and sometimes limitations—of aesthetic engagement.
     We think Roberto Tejada and Peter Gizzi to be prime examples of this aesthetic that we find compelling—that is, poets who are revisiting in vastly different ways the questions of lyric subjectivity after the various problematics have been brought to light. Indeed, all of the poets we have published take on the difficulties of what it means to be a writing subject when subjectivity and authenticity is in question. The writers we publish are (relatively) young and fugitive. We’re reluctant to describe precisely what our poetics might be, reluctant to suggest a particular school. Instead, we see ourselves as suggesting certain elective affinities among poets who are pursuing lyric poetry as a text of negotiations, whether the negotiations are with self, history, or culture, or something else entirely. This is less a school or movement than a sensibility I suppose.
     When we first discussed what we might publish, we decided on chapbooks because we could afford to produce them and we could do all the work ourselves. That would not be the case if we were to produce perfect-bound books. We started doing pamphlets because Tejada’s book hit some production snags, mainly due to the logistics of the covers, which were designed and produced by Thomas Glassford, an artist living in Mexico City. In the meantime because I’m a protestant from New England (“my culture did this to me”) I got anxious that we weren’t producing. We decided to do a few pamphlets that we could put together very cheaply and then hand them out. We liked the subversive idea of it all. Immediately people responded extremely positively to the size and focused nature of the pamphlets.
     We had always intended on getting ISBN numbers and getting them marketed on Small Press Distribution. I insisted however that the poet would sign every copy of every book. I’d been bothered for a while by the strange alienation of poetry production. We really do believe that poetry is a gift economy—and beyond that it makes possible a sort of community at least in the sense of elective affinities. Because of that I had to ask myself, if poetry isn’t really capitalist, why was it still so often participating in the market economy model? Think of it this way—it costs money to purchase ISBN numbers, about two hundred dollars or so, which for us was a fair amount of money when we first began. Now, suppose we get those numbers—then what? There are precious few bookstores that sell chapbooks, and those that do don’t sell many of them. For instance, chapbooks at Grolier’s in Cambridge, MA may just as well not even be in the store. The other alternative would be to get distributed by SPD. But would we ever sell enough to make the expense of ISBN numbers worthwhile? That’s when it struck me that even SPD is, of course, just another commodity-driven market in which one has to perform in such a way to be granted SPD’s legitimacy—all for the books to lie around. Too often have I seen even small, independent publishers (including those that claim to be alternative) publish work simply because it would sell. Even getting not-for-profit status is tricky and often should involve a lawyer and again costs a great deal of money. Worst of all, as Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop of Burning Deck advised us, the application materials have to give the appearance that the press has hopes of someday becoming commercially viable. Who knew it would cost so much to not make money?
     Thus, we put our money, sweat, and belief into every single book. We’ve struck a balance between an artist book, which is often rarefied and “untouchable,” and the standard poetry book. These are meant to be read. We have touched every single book, as have the authors—what clearer indication of our personal and social investment into a community of aesthetics? What we receive back is conversation, a measure of participation in a network of thinking about poetry as both an aesthetic and social act, as itself expressing a form of motivated participation with and in the world. Of course, despite such thinking, paradoxically, in the larger scheme our efforts don’t carry the legitimacy or authority of Knopf. Ah well, we do what we can. And perhaps all of this is naïve. I hope that it is more usefully idealistic than naïve, but even so I think that such estimations are only decided in comparison to the mores of the market economy that demands a particular brand of savviness.
     As we’re committed to the belief that poetry is a gift economy, we’ve never sold a copy of any of our books, virtually all of which are out of print. In trying to avoid complete complicity in the usual capitalist paradigms, we seek out alternative distribution, through word of mouth, social exchange, and so forth. We have never sought grant money and so usually we pay for them out of our own pockets and then give them away.
     We hope that you enjoy these books. Please let us know what you think.