Cape Cod Art

Cape Cod ART

Cape Cod ART magazine is evidently an arm of the "Chamber of Commerce" and its tourist industry, which really does sum up what ART has become and is on Cape Cod, where I've been living for a decade.  In essence, art has become fully coopted and castrated, fully palatable for the local elites, including autocratic library directors like Lucy Loomis.  Criticize the latter and be fully ostracized, if not outright banned, by the latter.  

Now, I am not against art depicting little children playing on the beach or boats glistening in the sunshine, BUT I am against a machine that prohibits art critical of the machine and its diverse organizations and apparatchiks.  TOTAL SILENCE, for example, was the reaction I received last year regarding my criticism of the Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown (see my blog post on that below a bit).  The local newspaper, Provincetown Banner, refused to publish any criticism.  However, I actually did receive a rare reaction from an establishment-art personage the year before--Editor Chris Busa (Provincetown Arts):  "You are a silly pest that sucks blood from living things."  

In any case, below is my correspondence with Cape Cod ART.  Julie Craven Wagner, current editor, chose not to respond.  TOTAL SILENCE, by the way and contrary to general editorial belief, is not a cornerstone of democracy!  The previous editor, Matthew J. Gill, actually responded.  And how interesting it is to read his rationals for not questioning and not challenging the evident domination of business interests regarding the local art scene...

From: George Slone

Sent: Saturday, March 9, 2019 9:24 AM

To: jwagner@capecodlife.com

Cc: John Lauritsen; cbusa@comcast.net; ppronovost@capecodonline.com; sturgislibrary@comcast.net; curator@CapeCodArtCenter.org

Subject: The cooptation and castration of art and artists on Cape Cod

To Julie Craven Wagner, Managing Editor, Cape Cod ART:  

Why celebrate an art center that ostracizes art critics and only seeks to promote art apt to please tourists and business interests?  The boundaries of art should NOT be determined by the latter, but rather by independent artists not afraid to speak truth as they perceive it.  Contrary to your assertion, Cape Cod Art Center has NOT been “supporting artists and the community as a whole”!  It certainly, for example, has NOT supported me as an independent and highly critical artist living in the community!  

So, rather than celebrate the Center, we should instead DENOUNCE it and by doing so helpfully encourage it to embrace freedom of expression… ALL expression, including and especially that critical of the Cape Cod art scene.  You argue that, in your magazine, one will “encounter artists of all kinds.”  Yet clearly, one will NOT encounter artists that question and challenge the art machine!  That kind of artist is simply not permitted by the art machine.  Recall Thoreau’s dictum: “let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine.”  The publicized career artist today instead has let his or her life be an integral part of the machine.  By presenting only art that does not offend, you end up offending independent thinkers like me.  

You could begin by manifesting the courage to devote one little page in your annual magazine to such criticism… just one little page!  Without real criticism, art will suffer and continue on its journey to full banality.  If you cannot devote a page, and I suspect you cannot/will not, then clearly your role has been one of coopting and castrating art and artists on Cape Cod.  Might you somehow actually be proud of that?  

Contrary to your conclusion, one will NOT find “artists of all kinds” in your magazine.  One will certainly, for example, NOT find Cape Cod artists who criticize the Cape Cod art establishment.   After all, proponents of the latter tend to detest real debate and freedom of expression, cornerstones of democracy.  

Finally, for the correspondence I had with the former editor of your magazine, Matthew Gill, see  https://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/03/cape-cod-art.html.  Why not check it out.  After all, curiosity did not kill the art-magazine editor, the establishment paying her did that.  

As a footnote, I have yet to find one artist--just one artist--on Cape Cod willing to write a letter of protest against the permanent banning of my person in 2012 without warning/without due process from Sturgis Library.  Why the banning?  "For the safety of the staff and public" was the only reason provided by Lucy Loomis, despite the fact that I have NEVER threatened anybody and have no record of violence whatsoever.  It actually took an order by the State Secretary of Records to force Loomis to open library records to the public so that I could finally find the reason for the banning (for actual documents and details, see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/sturgis_library.html).  My civil rights are currently being denied because I am no longer permitted to attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library.  Do you care?  Paul Pronovost, editor of Cape Cod Times, has refused to publish anything regarding the banning.  Is that called good journalism... or rather journalism that suits the local elites? 

Finally, if you ever decide to open up to freedom of expression and devote a little page to criticism, then please include this letter on it.  Thank you for your hopeful attention.  

From: George Slone

Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2017 10:15 AM

To: mgill@capecodlife.com

Subject: A suggestion et al

To Matthew J. Gill, Ed. Cape Cod ART,

As a rather different kind of Cape Cod artist, I was wondering how I might get profiled in your Cape Cod ART magazine.  Although I do not try to capture the beauty of boats and sand dunes, I do try to capture the reality of the arts establishment on Cape Cod.  I would certainly have plenty of thoughts and anecdotes to share with you, including my view that art should be more than that approved by local chambers of commerce and apt to be purchased by tourists.  

You do mention in your editorial that some of the work you present is “to put it simply, fun.”  Well, “fun” is a rather subjective term.  But, well, I do have some rather “fun” aquarelles for your perusal.  To date I’ve done 50 in a collection I call “Democracy” and now 16 in a collection I call Entartete Kunst, many of which depict local Cape Cod personalities.  Entartete Kunst, as you might know, is the term the Nazi’s used to what they considered to be “depraved art” (i.e., art that had to be destroyed and suppressed).  So, in today’s America, as opposed to yesterday’s Germany, entartete kunst refers, from my point of view, to art that must be suppressed, banned or censored because it is critical of pillars of the academic/literary/art establishment.  It is the glaring taboo that few artists seem able to grasp, let alone willing to break now and then, especially here on Cape Cod.  

It has always been difficult for me to comprehend the artists, editors, poets, cultural apparatchiks, etc., who cannot bear to be criticized.  As an editor, I make it a point to not only brook criticism, but to encourage it and publish in each and every issue the harshest lodged against me and the journal.  What’s the big deal?  Well, apparently it is a big deal.  

Hopefully, you’ve been able to digest what I’ve written here, though I’m certainly not convinced that will happen.  Why not a few pages, even just one page, in your magazine devoted to artists who break art taboos.  

From: Matt Gill

Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2017 12:23 PM

To: George Slone

Subject: Re: A suggestion et al

Hi George,

What a very interesting letter that was. Very interesting.

Thank you for reaching out.

Can you send me 2-3 images of your artwork that I can check out?

In a few weeks time we will be hosting an editorial board meeting to plan out the 2017 ART issue, and we will review all candidates for profiles.

I'll show your artwork to the group at that time.

I'll keep you posted.

Matt Gill

Cape Cod LIFE

Cape Cod ART

From: George Slone

Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2017 2:21 PM

To: Matt Gill

Subject: Re: A suggestion et al

Hi Matt,

Thanks for getting back to me.  It would be very (very, very, very) surprising if your group proved sufficiently open to my dissident aquarelles.  It just ain't gonna happen!  But I'll attach 3 of the pieces anyhow.  I have been openly critical of just about every literary or art organization on the Cape over the years.  Sadly, that has gotten me essentially 100% ostracized.  

Now, if you want more neutral stuff, I am also a photographer, specializing in scenes from Newfoundland and Labrador, though have also been shooting on the Cape of Course.  I will be a featured photographer in an upcoming issue of Newfoundland's Downhome Life magazine.  Yes, I can get published up there (guest editorials et al), but not down here.  Newfoundland is as the Cape might have been 150 years ago--cod fishing.  Well, there's the moratorium now.  I'll attach three photos too.  Thanks again!

G. Tod

From: Matt Gill

Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 9:55 PM

To: George Slone

Subject: Re: A suggestion et al

George,

Alas, you were correct. We ended up choosing a different lineup of artists for this year's issue of ART.

I'm curious though. Why have you been so critical, as you mention, of all the different literary and art organizations on the Cape over the years? Are you too extreme for them, or are they too run of the mill for you, or something?

I'm not an art expert, really more of a novice - I'm just good at editing and organizing, that kind of thing.

Let me know some more of your story, and I'd be happy to meet you one day if you wanna swing by our office.

Sincerely,

Matt Gill

Cape Cod LIFE

Cape Cod ART

From: George Slone

Sent: Thursday, March 9, 2017 9:26 AM

To: Matt Gill

Subject: Re: A suggestion et al

Hi Matt,

Thanks much for responding.  That alone makes me feel not 100% solitary, as an artist on the Cape, just 99%.   Anyhow, as I see it, an artist ought to seek truth and exercise his/her basic right of freedom of expression.  An artist ought to ask him or herself what he or she should not depict… then, now and then, depict it!  Break the artist taboos, the main one, of course, being criticism of artists themselves and their organizations!  Indeed, one truth I have found is quite simple:  artists and their organizations hate to be criticized and will usually ostracize any rare artist daring to do that.  And thus I exploit that fact in my art.  Academics are the same.  Now, without hardcore criticism, how can there be improvement?  

Should I not be critical, for example, of the Concord Cultural Council that at one point had banned "political" art, as a direct result of the art I’d sent it for grant consideration?  Should I not be critical of the Mid-Cape Cultural Council, which will simply not respond?  Should I not be critical of the Cape Cod Poetry Review, which will not publish my poetry for the evident reason that my poetry has a critical component?  And on and on.  In fact, I have given up trying to get public grant money.  I'd even spent $500 to get the 501c3 designation for The American Dissident in the hope that that might open the gates for public grant money.  Of course, I was wrong.

Again, I am confounded by artists, academics, poets, journalists who canNOT brook criticism.  As an editor, for example, I not only encourage harsh criticism of me and the journal, but also publish in each issue the harshest received.  From criticism, I create.

Again, I test the waters of democracy.  On the Cape, those waters are very murky!  And of course one does not know that unless one actually tests those waters.  The gatekeepers of art on the Cape keep their gates hermetically-sealed vis-a-vis the rare artist, who tests them.  In fact, I know of no other artist on the Cape who will question and challenge those gatekeepers.  In essence, doing that has become my artist modus operandi.  I'd rather speak rude truth, than gain entrance through the art gates.  In that sense, and sadly so, I am definitely too extreme for them.  I do not seek to make all art critical of art gatekeepers.  I simply seek to get the latter to open their doors to a little critical art.  Why not, for example, just one little page at the end of Cape Cod ARTS devoted to rare artists who criticize the art machine, including Cape Cod ARTS?  Or how about 1/8 of a little page?  Get my drift?  It's the same absolutely-not'ism found in poetry and writing magazines across the country, not to mention newspapers.  Imagine, for example, I could not get the Cape Cod Times or Barnstable Patriot to publish a tiny paragraph reportage that I, a citizen living on Cape Cod, was permanently banned from Sturgis Library, my neighborhood library, w/o warning or possibility of due process.  My very civil rights are thus being denied because I am not permitted to attend any cultural or political events held there.  Did the Barnstable County Human Rights Commission care?  Of course not!  

My story is a long one, for I have "battled" at Elmira College (NY), Fitchburg State University (MA), Bennett College (NC), Grambling State University (LA), American Military University (WV), Festival International de la Poesie de Trois-Rivieres (Quebec), Martha's Vineyard Regional High School, Walden Pond (MA), etc.   

Perhaps it would of interest to you personally to contemplate what art might be prohibited from the pages of Cape Cod ARTS.

Anyhow, thanks again for your interest!  And indeed I'd be happy to meet.  

G. Tod

From: Matt Gill

Sent: Friday, March 10, 2017 10:22 AM

To: George Slone

Subject: Re: Je suis Charlie et al...

Morning George,

Excellent points made in this letter.

I admire your convictions!

I do see the irony of phrases and philosophies such as "all the arts for all of us," and then, yet, there's exclusion.

However, I cannot take on that particular battle on this particular day (day off).

Have a good weekend George. We'll get coffee some day.

Matt

From: George Slone

Sent: Friday, March 10, 2017 2:40 PM

To: Matt Gill

Subject: Just Say No to Alt-Art!

Matt,

Good enough, though you did not address a number of issues evoked.  When Cape Cod ART opens its gates to alt-opinions and alt-art like mine (don't worry I definitely will not be holding my breath!), then we should on that "some day" have a cup of coffee... or better yet a bottle of champagne!  Bon week-end!  

T.

From: George Slone

Sent: Saturday, April 1, 2017 1:08 PM

To: Matt Gill

Subject: New issue just published...

Hi Matt,

You are mentioned in my editorial for the new issue of The American Dissident, fresh off the press.  The reason for the mention is my unanswered challenge to you:  why not provide 1/8 of a page in Cape Cod ART to criticism of Cape Cod art (and ART)?  That question is of course at the crux of the art problem.  Copies are just $9.  And sorry, you won’t be able to read a copy in any library on the Cape because not one Cape library director is sufficiently open-minded to subscribe, whereas directors of Concord, Newton, Lincoln, and a handful of university libraries (Harvard, Yale, Brown et al) are sufficiently open-minded…

G. Tod

Bards of a Feather Flock Together… 

At the Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown

[This essay, as well as a few satirical cartoons, was sent to FAWC staff and a handful of workshop poet instructors.  Nobody responded.  It was sent to Provincetown Arts and Cape Cod Poetry Review.  Nobody responded.  A vastly truncated version was also sent to the Provincetown Banner.  It was not published, despite Assoc. Ed. Edward Miller's BS:  "We are interested in your opinions."]  

  

Cape Cod, where I’ve been living for eight years, hates criticism of art and poetry.  For its art curators, poetry editors, writing professors, art-center executive directors, and cultural-council apparatchiks, criticism simply doesn’t exist.  If you stand up to criticize what needs to be criticized, as I have done, then you simply don’t exist.  If you never test the waters of democracy, then you will never know just how murky they are.  

In poetry, vigorous debate is dead. Ideology has coopted poetry (and art).  Inevitably, ideology runs counter to reason and truth.  Poets (and artists) ought to be staunch individuals with the courage to stand alone and speak truth to power (i.e., ideology) and not reside in groupthink ideological clusters.  Poets must put reason and truth first, even at the expense of money, prizes, recognition, tenure, and especially cherished ideology. 

“Generative” seems to have become the poetry workshop monkey-see, monkey-do term of the day.  Perhaps, I thought, the Urban Dictionary might have a special PC-meaning for it, but, well, it doesn’t.  So, “generative” means what it’s always meant:  producing and reproducing… ad infinitum and sometimes ad nauseam.  Regarding her workshop, Solmaz Sharif, for example, writes:  “leave with a ton of ways to generate poems.”  Patricia Spears Jones notes, regarding hers: “this workshop is designed […] to help to generate new work.”  The copycat examples abound in the Fine Arts Work Center catalogue:  “this class will utilize daily generative writing exercises” (Craig Morgan Teicher), “both generative and a workshop” (Brenda Shaughnessy), “workshop focused and generative” (Jennifer Tseng), “this generative workshop invites participants to write new poems” (Major Jackson), “once a poet locates an approach that makes quick work of the generative process” (Marcus Wicker), and “Revising & Generating: A Poetry Workshop” (Martha Rhodes).  When paid poets spend too much time with other paid poets, they inevitably end up producing generative BS.  

Grocery stores often stock tourist pamphlets, brochures, free newspapers, and other chamber-of-commerce-friendly innocuity in their entranceways next to their weekly ads, bottle-return machines, and garbage buckets.  Thus, I picked up the 73-page glossily-expensive “Creativity [i.e., Generativity] Thrives Here” catalogue from one of them, thinking I’d likely come up with a couple of critical cartoon ideas from it.  And sure enough, I did, though there was more in it with that regard than I ever could have expected.  In fact, the catalogue seemed to incarnate the mind-numbing world of poetry workshops, which serve, more than anything else, to propagate the recognition status of workshop poet-instructors, to “generate” more money for them, and especially to “generate” more reams of vacuous, establishment and ideology-friendly verse.  

How to make great brouhaha out of great nothingness?  Poetry was once a solitary activity.  Now, it’s become pervaded by groupthink groups and groupies, lack-of-originality hip-hop jazz poesy readings, poetry tourists, and increasing pervasive self-congratulating and backslapping ad nauseam.  “Fine Arts Work Center Writing Fellows have won virtually every major literary prize awarded in the United States,” boasts the staff (Executive Director Michael Roberts, Writing Coordinator Sophia Starmack, Online Writing Coordinator Jill McDonough, Marketing and Communications Director Cary Raymond, Associate Director Bette Warner et al).  Throughout the catalogue, the boasting (i.e., backslapping and self-congratulating) is echoed over and again.  “This extraordinary group of poets and writers will be celebrated throughout 2018 in a series of readings and conversations in and around Provincetown.”  “The caliber of our Summer Workshops faculty is unparalleled.  Nightly readings and artist talks offer students a rare opportunity to learn from and interact with faculty at the highest levels of their disciplines.”  “Work Center fellows have gone on to number among the most accomplished artists and writers working today, winning MacArthurs, Whitings, Pollock-Krasners, Tiffanys, Prix de Romes, Guggenheims, National Book Awards, and eight Pulitzer Prizes.”  

But what does “accomplished” really mean in the realm of poetry, if not 100% coopted by the academic/literary establishment?  The true purpose of FAWC is exposed in the last sentence of its own introduction:  “Our programming also offers 100 public events, bringing 10,000 annual visitors to Provincetown…”  Tourism!  Money!  Tourism!  Money!  Those visitors will pour money into the restaurants, motels, and souvenir shops.  The entire June 10th to August 24th FAWC workshop event really does incarnate the business of poetry and art:  the selling of accommodations ($800/six nights), books, artwork, tickets to see singing poets, etc., as well as the very selling out of renowned poets and artists.  

Immediately after the introduction page, a handful of pages are devoted to FAWC’s other purpose, which is really the same purpose:  money.  “Our 50th Anniversary Campaign 1968-2018:  The Goal—Raise $5 Million.”  And of course the wealthier FAWC becomes, the more it will reward unquestioning and unchallenging poets and artists, who toe the line of inoffensiveness, with fellowship grants. 

Somehow, prizes and popularity seem to cast a faux-air of objective determination of brilliance upon certain poets.  But poetry, like art, is entirely subjective, no matter how much the machine wants us to think its objective.  Might any of the poet and artist FAWC “faculty” possess the capacity to even contemplate when poetry and art become tourist attractions, they’ve inevitably become castrated or coopted?  And for that to occur, something intrinsically wrong must occur in the very heart of poetry and art.  In reality, FAWC’s “renowned faculty” of poets and artists have been well-trained like donkeys.  Hold a carrot (i.e., money, fellowships, tenure, prizes, renown et al) in front of their snouts and they’ll move toward the carrot in an innocuous waddle.  

Of the numerous (I avoid the term “diverse”) workshops offered in the catalogue, many, if not most, are in poetry, each lasting six days and costing $600 to $725 to attend (There are also a number of online workshops offered lasting up to two months.).  Now, what kind of poet is going to spend that kind of money to attend a poetry workshop?  Well, a trained poet will do that because he or she feels the need for more training.  He or she also wants to rub elbows with renowned workshop poets and make connections, which will hopefully lead to increased recognition and even prizes.  Perhaps also he or she is being supported by grants of public or university money, so it’s not coming out of his or her own pocket.  And, after all, isn’t “recognition” the goal of the poet today?  It certainly isn’t rude-truth telling, as in “go upright and vital and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson).  Indeed, you ain’t gonna find that at the FAWC, nor are you going to find poets apt to go against the grain of the poetry machine, as in “let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine” (Thoreau).  

But, of course, you’ll find plenty of ideologically-correct (i.e., PC) variety poets and artists, especially during FAWC’s “Social Justice Week” of “Writers & Artists as Activists,” or rather as Blind-Ideologues of Democrat-Party-line propaganda.  So, poets, who don’t share the party-line views on global warming (uh, climate change), open borders, gun control, #me too, BLM, anti-white racism (i.e., white privilege), islamophobia, hate speech, and so on, will have to adorn an additional muzzle, that is, if they wish to keep their recognition status and teach future poetry workshops at FAWC. 

“Writing the Forbidden: A Poetry Workshop” seemed to take the prize, amongst all the workshops, for contradictory absurdity.  After all, the rude truth regarding “writing the forbidden,” as in this very essay, would be forbidden at FAWC.  Earlier this year, I had already written the forbidden regarding Provincetown Arts magazine and received this memorable response from its brilliant editor, Christopher Busa:  

Silly Slone, I was trained in literary studies during a decade in graduate school with some of the foremost critics of the time. Your idea of criticism, from the shrillness of your rants, excludes any sense of illumination. Please do not contact me again.

And when I wrote back regarding that comment, Busa continued with his, uh, “rant.”

Clearly, your eyes are too clouded to read excellent writing, let alone understand. You are a silly pest that sucks blood from living things. 

And so, what was the monstrously horrible thought crime that merited such a response from the high-and-mightily educated Busa?  Well, below is the email I’d sent.   

To Christopher Busa, Founder and Editor, Provincetown Arts, “An annual magazine devoted to art, writing & theater since 1985”:  

Might I humbly suggest that you insert the word “establishment” in front of the word “art” in your subtitle?  After all, should not art and writing be concerned with rude truth?  

I attach a challenging aquarelle because it stands at the crux, at your very problematic crux.  Examine it, that is, if you still have an iota of curiosity regarding things exterior to your art-establishment safe space.   Why will nobody publish it?  Is that a problem?  Yes!  It is a problem.  It is at the very crux of the art problem… to the extent that any artist even capable of contemplating it will likely experience problems in the world of the art establishment, your world.  I also attach the old aquarelle I did with you standing in the background.  

“Go away troll,” had written one of your poesy-establishment cover girls, Eileen Myles.  And indeed that seems to be the extent of permissible debate in the establishment world of poesy and art today.  Rude truth is not permitted in such safe spaces!  Only ideological echoing is permitted.  The crux!  Think!  Now, why not one little page in your journal devoted to criticism of you and your journal?  Pipe dream?  You bet!  The crux!  Think!

The two aquarelle (and a cartoon on Myles) can viewed on the American Dissident blogsite (http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2018/05/sebastian-smee.html, http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2016/08/eileen-myles.html, and http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/kevin-howard.html).  I also posted the cartoon I sketched on Busa after receiving his response of raving indignity (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2018/07/christopher-busa.html).  

Criticize the establishment and it usually goes whacko… or more often reacts as if you didn’t even exist (i.e., deafening silence, though with eternal ostracizing).  

Well, I do not digress because Busa is likely as tightly linked with FAWC as he is with the Chamber of Commerce and its diverse cultural councils and art centers.  One must wonder if any real dissident poets or artists even exist in the tightly-bound Provincetown community.  And what happens when “dissidents” become the establishment?  Well, clearly they were never really “dissidents” to begin with.  Think of Ai Weiwei, darling of the art establishment today and FAWC “special guest.”  

Anyhow, “award-winning poet” Jennifer Tseng, the instructor and creator of the “Writing the Forbidden” workshop, declares in a not very forbidden statement, “What’s forbidden to one writer may not be forbidden to another.”  She then puts forth the supposed taboo-breaking purpose of the workshop:  “Whatever your forbidden territory is, visit it with curiosity and attention.  We proceed as risk-takers together.”  It would be quite surprising, of course, if Tseng and her adult poet students could even fathom the real great taboo, let alone risk breaking it:  thou shalt not question and challenge the academic/literary establishment, including its icons, literary prizes, awards, judges, cultural apparatchiks, and various organizations like FAWC itself.  After all, doing so, might really entail risk, that is, risk of no more paid FAWC workshops, of career destruction, of diminution of recognition and eternal exclusion.  And so, I sketched my first cartoon from the catalogue on Tseng.  Does that mean I’m racist or misoginist and not a worshipper of identity politics?  Perhaps.  And, if so, I don’t give a damn.  My purpose is truth, not recognition, not obtaining a prize, award, fellowship, grant or workshop to teach, and especially not obtaining PC-certification.  Truth.  Nothing but the truth.  And for that, you shall never hear or read of my existence in Provincetown Arts or Poetry magazine.  

Now, Tseng might very well be a nice person.  But how can a dissident poet like me not call her out for helping the establishment give the false impression that it is somehow open to criticism and risk-taking poets who really dare go against its grain?  Yes, for the truth, I have sacrificed teaching jobs, publication possibilities, invitations, and grants, as well as the very right to enter my neighborhood library.  Indeed, my very civil rights are being denied today because I am not permitted to attend any cultural or political events held there, thanks to the permanent trespass decree issued by Sturgis Library director Lucy Loomis (see theamericandissident.org/orgs/sturgis_library.html).  Might any of the renowned FAWC poets give a damn about that?  Of course not!  Perhaps Tseng might wish to consider working for Xi Jinping as a propagandist.  Well, she’s already working for Michael Roberts.  

One thing these poet characters seem to have in common is their worship of the poetry prizes.  Don’t-Bite-the-Hand-That-Feeds Poet Cornelius Eady—NEA, Guggenheim, Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, Lamont Prize and Pulitzer nominee—boasts, for example, “I read a lot—manuscripts I’ve read for contests have turned into Nat’l Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners.”  He and his ilk seem entirely incapable of questioning and challenging the prizes (e.g., who are the judges? what are their ideological and stylistic prejudices?) or perceiving their precise role in the cooptation (i.e., castration) of poetry.  A poet who is fed by the establishment like Eady is a poet of the establishment.  

FAWC poets are clearly lost in verbosity, which can only create superfluity and general lack of originality.  What to think of poet assistant professor of Creative Writing (Kansas State University), NEA Fellow et al Traci Brimhall’s statement:  “We will focus on how to create a balance of tension in poems between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect.  Using models and exercises, we will generate [oh, yeah, generate!] new work that tries to balance our inherent strengths by employing vocabulary, syntax, and tonal choices we normally shy away from.  Sign up for a tune up.”  Mind-numbing!  Anything but rude truth!  The poetess as filler of reams and reams…

The brouhaha in the catalogue is deafening… and utterly dumbing.  “Artist as Activist: Ai Weiwei.”  Oh, yeah, but Weiwei is certainly not an activist against the bourgeois art and poetry scene that’s been feeding him royally or rather as royalty.  “Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project.”  Yes, imagine the poems that tenured-academic, government-anointed poet laureate Pinsky would choose.  

(see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2010/06/common-citizens-plea-for-justice-equity.html).  Or how about tenured academic Fred Marchant, who has kept the doors of his Suffolk University Poetry Center  hermetically closed to the poets published in The American Dissident (see 

http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2012/05/fred-marchant.html)?  Yes, his poetry workshop, “Writing the Water Songs,” will surely make waves in the poetry establishment.  Oh, yeah.  It’s enough to make a thinking, unattached poet puke.  Or how about “we will have a good time” workshop poet Eileen Myles, who dismissed me as a “troll” because I dared criticize her identity-politics inanity.  Her “Basic Tools:  A Poetry Workshop” will surely highlight how safe-space cocooned poets like her cannot bare to be criticized.  

The descriptions of the workshops not only echo tedious repetition, but also absurdity and silliness:  “Keep Your Foot on the Sustain Pedal:  Writing Long Poems” (Ed Skoog); “Delightful Duos:  Collaborating Poets” (Laura Madeline Wiseman) [How not to think of the French collabos during WWII!]; “The Poet as Spy:  4 Tricks from Espionage” (Jillian Weise); “Anthro-Poetics: Living, Seeing, and Wonder” (Nomi Stone); “I Am Trying to Be Marvelous:  The Poetics of Body Positivity” (Emilia Phillips); and “Griffins, Harpies, and Jackalopes:  Hybrid Poetics” (Sarah Rose Nordgren).  Why are these superfluous workshops even created?  To fill available space at FAWC?  Ross Gay describes his exciting workshop:  “In this generative workshop, we will stoke our imaginations by (often collaboratively) writing and performing mini operas, puppet plays, poem-type things, making books, studying flowers, and making a way together.”  And shouldn’t poets expect more from FAWC Board of Trustees workshop instructor and poet laureate of New York, Sarah Lawrence College professor Marie Howe, who begins the description “Intention & Discovery:  Form as Portal, Form as Path” with “This workshop is primarily generative”?  For poets of the machine, forme always takes precedent over fond (substance).  In fact, for many of them, poetry does not even need fond.  

Why is criticism of the poetry machine conspicuously absent as a workshop possibility?  Surely, it would provoke ample discussion and even thought amongst the poets.  “Against the Machine:  An Unusual Poetry Workshop.”  In this workshop, poets will not be encouraged to generate or fill reams and reams of paper with vapid theme-based verse.  Instead, they will focus on questioning and challenging all things poetry, including FAWC itself, poetry prizes, fellowships, other monetary lures, and what it really means to be a recognized poet.  They will be encouraged, by the instructor, to question and challenge the instructor himself.  Pipe dream?  You bet!

Money serves to tame poets and artists.  “The ambitious goal will grow our $1.5 million endowment by $3.5 million which will underwrite our residency program and provide additional resources to bring senior and mid-career artists and writers to Provincetown, offering our Fellows essential mentorship,” notes FAWC.  So much money will surely serve to further muzzle and fully control poetry by enhancing the already insurmountable propaganda machine led by Poetry Foundation’s $200 million endowment, managed by investment bankers of course.  

“Fellows are accepted entirely on the excellence of work submitted,” notes FAWC.  But who determines what “excellence” constitutes?  Can criticism of the bourgeois writing industry ever be considered “excellence”?  Of course not!  FAWC then quotes one of its obedient backslapping Writing Fellows, Ann Patchett, who seems to incarnate the vacuity of bourgeois writers of the writing industry:   “It is quite easy to bet on a horse that you know has already won.  What the Fine Arts Work Center does is it bets on the horses that haven’t run yet.  And to give the gift to people who need it, in order to save their lives, is the difference between handling someone a laurel and handing someone a lifetime.”  Patchett, the horse, argues in The Guardian, “If writers are to survive we must take responsibility for ourselves and our industry.”  When poetry becomes an industry as it already has, then poetry is dead.  Finally, one might wish to contemplate the likelihood that no “great” poet of the past ever took a course in poetry, let alone a poetry workshop.  But that very thought ineluctably runs counter to the industry grain.  For those who I did not mention in this essay, please forgive me.  There are just far too many of you carrot-chasing poet donkeys to critique in one essay.  Opening the hermetically-sealed doors to a wee bit of criticism might provoke a wee bit of unusual debate, open the scope of acceptable poetry, and even get workshop poets to perhaps seek a wee bit of originality, as opposed to copycat generative BS.  Poet Charles Bukowski provides some rare words of poet wisdom:  “A writer is going to get resistance to his work always unless he feeds the mass mind the pap they [sic] want.  The only thing you can do is write the way you want to write and to hell with everything else.  It’s better to fail your way than succeed their way.  […] If you fail to make anybody hate you, then you haven’t done your job.”  Well, then I guess I sure as hell have at least done my job…