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Monday, October 19, 2009

Books More Subtext

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 4:33 PM

Earlier today, I wrote about the very quiet shuttering of Subtext, a local poetry reading series. I was just reminded that Travis Nichols compiled a great oral history about Subtext for us back in 2007, when the reading series was leaving the Hugo House:

Doug Nufer

I first attended Subtext in the early '90s at the Speakeasy coffee shop, where billiard balls falling on the ceiling from the 211 Club upstairs punctuated many readings. I'd be sitting there in the dark, with a beer, trying to make sense of these incredibly convoluted pieces, and I'd be thinking that if I ever finished this novel I was starting where no word could be used more than once—Never Again—at least I might be able to present it for these people.

Nichols produced an expansion of the history on one of his own websites:

Matthew Stadler: Subtext was a huge resource for me, as it was for many writers in Seattle in the 90s. They were focused and reliable. Hooking up a visiting writer with someone in town for an evening event was a really simple way to start to build networks of conversation and of reading among writers who had much to learn from each other but might not otherwise have come in contact.

These two pieces should give you an idea of what we're missing, now that Subtext is no longer around.

Comments (2) RSS

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Can any journalist EVER use a term other than "shuttering" when they are talking about something, closing, going out of business, shutting down, folding or even just plain being shut -- see there are lots of words you can use. Shutter. What does that even mean? How is that even a good metaphor? To shutter something might be to fortify it, as you would do by putting hurricane shutters on a house. Does anyone outside of journalism ever use this term? It's like in a movie when someone refers to "the others." No one ever says that. It would not be so bad if it were not so uniform. It is the only term you see any more. I think I read it every day in some or other publication. Can we try to go a week without it? That would be a start.

Posted by Quincy on October 19, 2009 at 9:39 PM

Wow, @1. Way to address ZERO points made in the post. Why not begin by shuttering your own overly verbose mouth? How's that for a start?

Posted by katallred on October 19, 2009 at 11:48 PM