On Independence Day, 1855, Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. He did it himself—back then, self-publishing hadn't the stigma it does today (we'll get to that later).
Whitman would go on to publish at least six versions of his collection throughout his life. The work was never done; there was always word choice that could be improved, poems that would serve better in a different place in line in being removed entirely. A work forever unfinished, at least in the author's eye.
But what if Whitman had waited to publish Leaves of Grass until the last moment, his "deathbed edition," the last refinements (still not his idea of perfect) made? There would have been no letter from Emerson ("I greet you at the beginning of a great career"), no history-making controversy, no woman from Connecticut, upon reading his poems, offering to have Whitman's babies. No modern scholars declaring his original, slim, "unrefined" Leaves of Grass to be his best.
Of course, without these, who knows what might have become of "Song of Myself," or "I Sing the Body Electric" without such encouragements. It was an article by Emerson calling for a new poet for America that set Whitman on his way. And that letter? Published in gold leaf in the big second edition of Leaves. It must have meant something.
What we're saying here is that we're all our own worst critics. We see ourselves in dirty fluorescent-lit gas station mirrors—at least, those of us who care about beauty, anyway. It takes two things two things to get over this:
1. Get your work out there.
2. Get a little help from your friends.
And that's where Elleiptikos comes in. That crazy-eyed arrangement of letters back there? That's a Greek word meaning 'defective, marked, falling short.' But it's also the root of the English 'ellipsis,' used to indicate something left out, something ongoing, something unfinished.
We hope you see where we're going with this.
Leaves of Grass is a publishing pun. It means 'pages of little value'.
Every work of literature (like its creator) is a work in progress. But there comes a point when the second half (or two-thirds, more like) of any piece must step in: and that's the reader. You might be looking in that dirty gas station mirror. But the reader sees with fresh eyes, the page lit by bright sunlight.
And what about that self-publishing thing? We're writers publishing writers. Publishing ourselves. Doesn't that make us dirty, too?
What of it? This is a collaboration. For the future of writing, whatever that may be. Put questions about legitimacy and rights out of your mind. It might look like we're just singing about ourselves, and we may be. But remember this -- in stories, in poems, in words on paper, you get in the writer's head. And the writer gets in yours. And then who's singing who?
That's not to say we're not after high-quality works, though. We're in this together, so we've all got to pull our weight, put our best feet forward.
So, how about it?
Fiction, poems, creative essays?
We're waiting...
