When compiling an anthology, the greatest ethical problem the anthologist faces is the compulsion to include herself. A good anthologist will always have some professional interest in the subject of the anthology. If there were an anthology about the poetry of purple laser beams, it’s certain that, somewhere, the anthologist has composed passionate paeans for focused purple light. The temptation to include oneself is great, especially if the anthologist has skill and can be objective in feeling that she has something to contribute. No one might write laser beam poems as good as she.
However, the proper course, in all circumstances, is to resist auto-inclusion. The primary reason is simple: By including oneself, one is necessarily excluding other worthy work.
The message here is one of compromising egotism. Consider the editor who excludes herself and passionately considers all the available purple laser beam poetry, who makes a claim for her anthology based on the work she collects, not the work she herself supplies. She makes a far greater statement with her exclusion than with her inclusion.
The Canadian literary canon boasts many examples of anthologists who fall on either side of the spectrum regarding auto-inclusion. A seminal moment in this debate can be traced to an argument between Al Purdy and Harold Town over their never-completed anthology of contemporary Canadian poetry.
Town, commissioned as illustrator, felt that Purdy shouldn’t include his own poems, while Purdy felt entitled to, reasoning that he was a leading Canadian poet. It’s hard not to think now that Town was right. Purdy never maintained that he was compiling a representative anthology, something that had to be a cross-section and, being a cross section, should necessarily include himself. On the contrary, Purdy felt that he should auto-include because he was important.
This kind of strategy is hopelessly temporary; Purdy’s reputation exists not because he wanted to publish himself in this forgotten piece of Canlit history. (And Storm Warning 2: The New Canadian Poets scuttled any hope of Purdy as anthologist; all the poets selected sounded like Purdy himself.)
However, the argument persisted between poet and illustrator, and eventually scuttled the project.
More recently, and speaking of Al Purdy, Paul Vermeersch edited The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology. While the project is focused around a noble cause (profits are being used in an attempt to preserve the Purdy A-frame as a writers’ retreat), Vermeersch’s judgment in including a piece by himself about never actually meeting Purdy in the A-frame is troubling. Such a piece is different than writing an overview or an introduction; Vermeersch gives his work equal weight with the work of others in the book and approaches it from a hopelessly personal perspective. While other pieces in the A-Frame Anthology were personal, they were written by persons other than the editor (most of whom knew Purdy quite well) and so earned it. With the A-Frame Anthology, Vermeersch fails in his responsibility to contextualize rather than self-aggrandize.
Another example of self-serving anthologization comes in the form of the Mansfield Press-published, and Stuart Ross/Steven Brockwell edited, Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament, which was released earlier this year to some fanfare. The anthology includes 72 poems; Ross and Brockwell claim to have received over 300 submissions as part of their call. Here, the inclusion of poems by both Ross and Brockwell undermines the purpose of the anthology to serve as a protest against the Harper government’s decision to prorogue parliament. By choosing poems by themselves over two thirds of the poets who submitted, Ross and Brockwell effectively mimic the government policy they’re so firmly opposed to.
On the other side of the argument, not all Canadian anthologists feel the need to self-publish. Zach Wells did a fine job editing Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets and resisted the urge to round out the anthology at 100 with his own work, despite the sonnet being one of his specialties. When Carmine Starnino edited The New Canon, an ambitious book that tried to legislate the canon for a generation of Canadian poetry, he wisely decided to let his argument stand without the easy indictment of his judgment.
My objection to auto-inclusion has a personal basis. In 2009 I edited an anthology of essays and poems called Approaches to Poetry: The Pre-Poem Moment with Frog Hollow Press and refrained from including my own work in it. I am also, with Brian Bartlett, editing an anthology of Canadian poems for and about children. The first order of business discussed was eliminating ourselves from inclusion in the anthology – wanting the anthology to speak for itself.
Which is what all anthologies should do: Refrain from the ventriloquism of their editor(s) and be entities unto themselves that have a life outside, separate, from their assemblage. The best way an anthology can take its brave first few steps is to be free from its editor’s own work.
Shane Neilson is a family doctor and writer living in Guelph, Ont. His most recent collection of poetry is Meniscus (Biblioasis).
