Morty Sklar is the editor and publisher of The Spirit that Moves Us Press, a small press publisher who has published, among other things, the best of the Actualist movement, including The Actualist Anthology, one of my favorite of all poetry books. It's hard for me to explain the essence of Actualism, but to me the essence of it was that "you shouldn't have to know the history of Greek tragedies to understand poetry," or, you should be able to appreciate fine poetry just with well-made images of the everyday. It had a healthy streak of absurdism in it, too, but I'll leave it for the reader to explore what it really was and whether it was deserving of attention. I actually knew a few of the poets in the movement, but I wasn't a poet at the time; in fact, I had my own reasons for rebelling against the Writer's Workshop (which, one could say, the Actualist movement was a rebellion against), yet I had so little actual standing in the real world, that I could barely see beyond putting food on my own table.
Now, however, many years later, I have come to see the Actualist movement as one of the most precious things about Iowa City in the 1970's, and in fact, I'd like to write a novel about it, but I need this particular book to give me the background and some of the poetry I'd like to include in it. The novel would be set, obviously, in the Iowa City of the 1970's. I would fictionalize some of the more important poets, if not all of them. I would search for ways to make the novel interesting to even the most casual reader.
I'm not sure Morty will get much business out of my meager fan base, or the few who read what I write, here or elsewhere. It's important to me to say this though. Actualism is like anything that is pushing fifty - one wonders what will be left behind, whether there will be a trace, or what. I have written extensively about Actualism here. I'll do my best to keep it alive!
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