Recently, I was contacted by Michelle Siu of Ricepaper Magazine, to let me know that they are publishing an upcoming review of Paolo Javier’s “the time at the end of this writing“.

As an aside, she asked:

“I am also in the position of literary editor, and I was browsing your online store. I’m interested in developments on your e-chapbook series. Have you found the series successful? Do you have plans to expand the project?”

I thought I’d turn my answer into a post. In just a few days, Eileen Tabios’ “Songs of the Colon” has surpassed 200 downloads. We are looking at releasing an e-chapbook every three weeks for the remainder of the summer. Up next? Something from David Kennedy!

We live at a peculiar juncture, it goes without saying, wherein the book and the internet still, however briefly in the grand scheme of things, co-exist as mediums.

William Gibson has an interesting take on all of this, in the most recent issue of Wired magazine wherein he describes the the traditional album as “archaically passive”. It’s doomed to fail, he writes, because of another archaic term: the audience. In a refutation of Milton Berle’s famous rhetorical question “what is this, an audience or an oil painting?”, the audience today isn’t watching at all, it’s involving itself. It’s becoming part of that which it consumes.

In a sense, this is the problem that plagues that pesky RIAA; repeated ad nauseum, it simply is trying to hold on to a method of delivery that does not keep pace with the rapidly changing nature of digital media. It’s a dinosaur.

It’s cool to see how we, as poets and editors, are reacting to the rapid pace of change. Tony Tost, over in the Unquiet Grave raises some interesting points in an argument born on Ron Silliman’s blog (when Ron claimed that nobody does the online thing half as well as Jacket:

Someone in his comments trots out the “get rid of issues” argument, but I’m not convinced. Ultimately, web journals serve as massive databases and archives, and I think should be geared and edited towards that means to be of most use, and I think the issue by issue format is the best way of doing this; it might be an arbitrary organizing device for an online journal, but it is a means of organizing and editing at a workable level.

What will be interesting to watch, will be the manner by which the digital age rethinks the book, the way technology popularizes new forms of art, vis-a-vis jazz and the long-playing album.

And this brings up the point that I want to close with. Is Ahadada Books dedicated to expanding its online chapbook project? Absolutely. Why? Because it serves the community in the manner by which it is demanding to be served. The audience, now more than ever, is asking for quick, unfettered, access to work.

Why? I guess its a measure of the digital age. Within a couple of days, a handful of sites had already posted capsule reviews of “Songs of the Colon”. People were starting to become involved in the dialogue that it provokes. The work makes its way into the collective conscious more expediently. It is the speed that this recombinant, collective age demands.

And it, in my estimation, is a gorgeous thing to watch.