Sam Hamill

From Fierce Contention: Conversations with the Established Order and Other Parodias de Discursos y Diálogos con Sordos

While hunting for a photo of Ron Camel, co-founder of Nickel Chasm Press, I came across an interview. Camel was a fattish gray-haired character, a little older than me, and with heart problems. I’d been fishing around his Poets against Conflict website and didn’t like some of the things on it at all, including its highlighting of established-order poet Martin Blada. So, I wanted to cartoonify the fellow. That’s what I did, I cartoonified established-order fellows, mostly literary and academic, sometimes big, often little. I read through the interview, which resulted from Camel’s appearance at a university in the mid-west. So, I contacted the Chairperson of the Poetry & Writing Department of that institution, Barbara B. Bright Meth, and threw out the ole gauntlet:

As a dissident poet and editor, perhaps I would make an unusual speaker at your university. As a Poet against Prominent Poets, I would stand in direct antipodes to Ron Camel and his Poets against Conflict. If there is no chance, as I highly suspect, might there be a chance that your university library would subscribe to the nonprofit journal I’ve been editing since 1998 (only $20/year)? It might be of interest to your students to be exposed to the alternative viewpoints expressed in the journal.

It was tough as nails getting universities to subscribe… for evident reasons. But I persisted and persisted and persisted over the years. To my surprise, Meth actually responded. Normally, challenged professors did not respond. Her response was a good one in its revealing brevity: “How could you possibly be against Ron Camel? Ron is a dear friend of mine. What did he possibly do to you?”
So, Camel was a friend. The poetry networks fostered backslapping, eulogy ad nausea, and general incest. Throw in a sudden jolt of fiery critique and it would shock the system like a stick in the spokes of business as usual, though only for a moment. The American Academy of Arts and Letters didn’t even try to hide the incestuous nature of its system. To become a member, one had to be selected by a member. Thus, Ginsberg chose Burrows who chose Ferlinghetti who chose Creeley who chose Snyder who chose Baraka. In any case, Meth’s was the old don't criticize my good friend because if you do, I'll shut the door on you. But since she asked, I responded:

It is really amazing to me just how closed so many academics can be to criticism. Yes, Camel is your friend, so anyone daring to criticize him must be ostracized and excluded! How sad. It is as if your poet friends are somehow above reproach. But poets are not gods. They are mere mortals. Yet you and so many like you seek to deify them, always pushing the fame of their names. Camel parades around as a dissident, but was pumped up by established-order monies. How to explain that? He drools obsequious thank-yous to the NEA on his website, yet the NEA is a corrupt public organization if ever there was one. Moreover, it is an easy thing to criticize war afar, but a difficult one to criticize the very close-to-home academic hand that feeds a lot of the Poets against Conflict, especially the “prominent” ones (did you hear that?).
Camel doesn’t want to heed that criticism. I suppose academe has been feeding him well too, directly or indirectly via invitations like yours, etc. He will not put my anti-war poem on his website… probably because it is critical of leftists Hillary and Obama. He will not include my essay on socially-engaged poetry with other essays he’s included… on socially-engaged poetry. He probably won’t do that because the essay is very critical of academic poets, including the ones he’s published.
Camel admits he made an error by voting for Obama, the anti-war candidate war president. But I ask how someone his age could have been so easily duped, unless of course he buys into PC, heart and soul. In fact, one must ask how someone like him was invited to the White House in the first place. Evidently, he and the other “prominent” invited poets were perceived to be docile… and for good reason.
Camel provides a separate page on his website: “Poems by Prominent Poets.” But what constitutes a “prominent poet” and why should a “prominent poet” write better poems about war than poets, who, for example, actually spent time fighting in war? Evidently, “prominent poets” are poets who, for the most part, acquired a certain expertise at playing the game of climbing up the ladder of “success”, turning a blind eye, right and left, making sure not to criticize, making sure to kiss ass wherever ass should be kissed. They are poets of the system—the established order. Finally, it seems that the creation of Poets against Conflict was a nice ploy for Camel to further his name and give himself a title, Director of Poets against Conflict. Christ, do we really need a director of that? SILENCE (is always golden in academe).
BTW, I just noticed Branchlet Benson, CEO of the Academy of American Scribes was CEO of Camel’s Nickel Chasm Press. The Academy censored and banned me. So, let’s add that to the list of why I think Camel ought to be criticized. Would you protest the censorship incident? SILENCE.

No response. I waited two days, then shot out a brief email: “Nothing like VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONE OF DEMOCRACY, eh?! What about my comments on your friend Camel?” The democracy-catch was my customary bait. Sometimes it worked, most times it didn’t. But Meth responded, this time even a tad more vigorously.

Maybe white/Western democracy, but not Native-American democracy, where true democracy was stolen. I am an Iroquois woman! I don't have time to argue with someone who simply wishes to argue. Good bye.

Again, I responded:

So, I take it your answer is NO regarding a possible invitation and subscription? Too bad for your students who would likely benefit from an alternative viewpoint, one critical of academics and academe. It would likely open their eyes a tad. But apparently you want to keep their eyes closed and focused on literary icons and the positivist literary established order.

And again, she responded, this time longer and even more revealing.

Some of us have to work to feed our families, versus attacking people who are working, or other poets who we do not know. The academic field differs little from the tobacco field, or cracker factory. My dissent, for the moment, is taking issue with some white male who lurks on the internet attacking poets for pleasure.

The cracker factory! Now how could you beat that one? Yes, teaching 2-3 hours per day differed little from the 60-hour work week of a cracker-factory worker. That one reminded me of Frank’s comment that his teaching college courses was akin to sharecropping. Christ, they couldn’t even recognize how relatively easy their jobs were! I worked at a factory, I welded at a shipyard, and I taught college courses. But I know damn well what was tough and what was not. College was not. Hmm. I wonder if Meth were trying to insult me with the C-word, “cracker.” And how they hated the white male! He was the cause of all their problems, including their salary raises, paid-vacation sabbaticals, three-hour workdays, and even their new president Obama, not to mention their life-time guaranteed job positions. I wrote back.

“Some of us have to work to feed our families,” you state, echoing the excuse of so many professors who would dismiss anyone critical of them for not manifesting the courage to speak rude truth. And yet the tenured professor, unlike other professionals with the exception of the supreme-court justice, enjoys life-time job security that can only be revoked if laws are broken. So, how can one possibly explain the amazing silence of 99.9% of the country’s tenured professors regarding the corrupt institutions and administrators that feed them? In other words, your “some of us have to work to feed our families” excuse is nonsense. SILENCE!
You even use that excuse to dismiss the rude truth. After all, that rude truth inevitably makes those who have to turn a blind eye so they can feed their families, though they don’t really have to, look bad. No matter. The criticism remains valid. And there will always be excuses for keeping ones mouth shut in the face of corruption, which is why whistleblowers should be commended. In fact, rare academic whistleblowers should be honored with statues on their respective campuses. Because you have to work to feed your family and thus must not criticize the academic hand that stuffs your face does not mean that I cannot criticize it and that my criticism is not valid. At least have the intellectual integrity to recognize that fact. SILENCE!
Criticism ought to be examined and point-by-point refuted if you, for example, believe it not to be valid. Dismissing it as “ATTACK” has become a truly sad modus operandi of academic established-order literati. And I can back that assertion with scores of actual examples and statements, adding your correspondence to the sad, sad pile! Christ, what do you teach your students: the art of literary icon worship and groveling for three letters of recommendation?
Evidently, you've become yet another closed-minded academic of the literary established order—Iroquois female or white male, what difference? None at all! Sadly, you can't admit that even to yourself. You cannot even admit to having writer’s taboos, as in do not criticize the corrupt academic hand that feeds and do not criticize established-order icons. You cannot even admit that there is an academic/literary established order and that those like me who dare stand up on their hind legs apart from that herd to criticize it must be dismissed as angry or whatever and banned, censored, and ostracized. How sad… for literature AND democracy.

Meth responded: “I am not tenured, nor tenure track. You are wrong.”
Well, the response was laughable. Okay, I was wrong. She’s not tenured. And so what? I wrote again, but this time attaching a cartoon I sketched featuring Meth, Camel, and Branchlet.

I repeat: Will you consider inviting me as a rare dissident poet? Will you ask your university library to consider subscribing to The American Dissident so that it might abide by the ALA Library Bill of Rights, as in "Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view..." not for the sake of faculty, but rather for that of students. Attached is a satirical cartoon I just drew on you and Ron. Enjoy.

No further response would ever come from her Barbara B. Bright Meth. DOA.

Open Letter to Americans for the Arts

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Open Letter to Americans for the Arts
Indirectly, I received your urgent email, “Breaking News,” regarding the approval of the “egregious amendment offered by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)” to the economic recovery bill, which stipulated, as noted in that email: "None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project."

You, of course, were disappointed: “Unfortunately, the amendment passed by a wide vote margin of 73-24, and surprisingly included support from many high profile Senators including Chuck Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and several other Democratic and Republican Senators.”

However, I was delighted! Indeed, why should DISSIDENT poets, writers, artists, and editors be at all upset by what seemed to have upset you so much? After all, we did not receive funding. We did not receive awards. We did not receive lucrative fellowships. We did not receive grants. We did not receive NPR invitations to jabber on the air with PC-bourgeois tonality. The easy public monies were simply not for us!

The Boston Globe ran an article rightfully against the push by multimillionaire Quincy Jones to get Obama to establish a Ministry of the Fine Arts. What it failed to realize, however, was that the nation already had such a Ministry. The NEA served that function, while NPR acted as its voice. Former director Dana Gioia served the role of arts tsar, a good term for it, since the arts tsar served as dictator of aesthetics and taste, inevitably favoring the bourgeois over the dissident. Indeed, the art the NEA tended to push was ineluctably of the established-order variety. What the Boston Globe needed to do was examine the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which acted as the state Ministry of the Arts. Why did it not do that?

As long as all political artistic persuasions were not treated equally by state cultural apparatchiks, public money should not be spent on the arts. The nation did not need more NPR smiley-faced multimillionaire artists with effete sounding voices a la Quincy Jones or Herbie Hancock! What it needed was more artists daring to “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways” (Emerson) and who let their lives “be a counterfriction to stop the machine” (Thoreau). Of course, such artists would not make successful careerists, let alone cultural apparatchiks like Charles Coe and Mina Wright of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Money, like it or not, determined which art would be promoted and end up in the nation’s museums. Lack of money, connections, and networking prowess would likely relegate the artist (or writer), no matter how good, into the oubliettes.

Indeed, why would dissidents wish to see more public taxpayer monies flow into the hands of cultural agencies and projects? Why would they wish to see such monies flow into the hands of the Concord Cultural Council, for example, which recently adopted a rule eliminating from funding any project it decided to deem of a “political nature.” This year it gave public money to Friends of the Performing Arts of Concord, for its “Concord Messiah Sing.” Yet how could one possibly conceive according public monies to religious song events as apolitical? In fact, it was perhaps unconstitutional! The new “political nature” rule was adopted, by the way, to keep me from obtaining public funding. The Concord Journal refused to publish my criticism of the Council.

Why would dissidents wish to see more public monies flow into the hands of the National Endowment for the Arts, which made autocratic determinations? Indeed, it deemed The American Dissident “low” and “poor” and refused to provide any specific information with that regard, despite my citizen requests. Why would dissidents wish to see more public monies flow into the hands of the Academy of American Poets, which acted as bourgeois censor and held bourgeois panels of "distinguished" bourgeois poetasters on bourgeois aesthetics? As for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, its hack-appointed apparatchiks simply refused to respond to my citizen questions:

1. Why did taxpayers fund Agni and Harvard University Museums, for example, when both organizations were connected to private billion-dollar corporate-educational institutions? Did that not indicate something rotten in the very hearts and minds of grant-according panelists and in the MCC in general? SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILENCE!

2. Why did the MCC only fund literary journals that didn’t really need the funding? In other words, why did a journal with a budget under the necessary $10K minimum not even merit consideration for funding? As editor of The American Dissident, a highly unique literary journal devoted to unusual vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, I could not even get funding from the local Concord Cultural Council. Nothing! And I’d been trying for over a decade! SIIIIIIILENCE!

3. Why did the MCC rarely, or perhaps never, have as panelists individuals whose very creation was focused on hardcore criticism of the academic/literary established-order milieu and canon itself? If a project highly dissident in nature with such a focus were to be presented before established-order type panelists, evidently it would immediately be deemed not of “artistic excellence.” After all, it would take a rare panelist who could look at criticism of the panelist him or herself… and actually proceed objectively. How could I become a rare dissident panelist for the MCC? SIIIIIIIIIIIILENCE!

4. Dan Blask, MCC Program Coordinator, stated: “Since we rely on panelists solely for their artistic opinions, when selecting them we focus on their artistic expertise and accomplishments…” Since “accomplishments,” however, inevitably translated as popularity in the established-order milieu, didn’t that rule for obtaining panelists exclude someone with a dissident outlook and focus (i.e., someone not popular in the milieu, thus not “accomplished”)? SIIIIIIIIIIILENCE!

5. Since the MCC was a public organization, should it not make a special effort to open its doors not simply to multicultural viewpoints, but to dissident-political viewpoints as well? Would that not benefit democracy, as opposed to literature as usual in the status-quo oligarchy? SIIIIIIIILLENCE!

Clearly, those were tough questions without simple answers. For democracy, however, they demanded answers.

Finally, funding the projects Americans for the Arts wanted funded would likely not produce jobs in a time where jobs were desperately needed. As an unemployed professor, I was perhaps unemployable in my profession because I had spoken out against the likes of Americans for the Arts, NEA, MCC, etc. Indeed, until your group spoke for all artists, poets, and writers, how could one not perceive it as just another hissing snake head of the established-order GORGON, enemy of democracy?

Herd poets, writers, artists, professors, cultural council apparatchiks and others in the “Arts” seemed to harbor a clear preference for bourgeois tone and etiquette over vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. Because of that egregious preference, it would be surprising if you responded to this open-letter blog entry. Miracles, however, did happen… though quite rarely.

Praise Song for the Wealthy… White and Black

Why beat a dead horse… poet? The "change" mantra was why. Being unmoved by the "change" promises of DemRep politicians, I did not watch the Obama brouhaha on CNN hosted by fawnalist Wolf Blitzer, who made the brilliant observation that "It looks like the new president is taller than the old one."

However, a couple of days after the "event of a lifetime," I thought I’d take a look at the inaugural poem to be published in an initial 100,000 chapbook copies by Graywolf Press for $20 each. That's an initial $2,000,000. The poem was on the Internet (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-poem.html?ref=books), so I read it, as well as diverse articles with its regard. Evidently, a dissident like me would not like it.

Elizabeth Alexander was a tenured professor poet at Yale University, from a moneyed black family, and quite comfortably distant (like Wolf Blitzer, Bush and Obama) from the strife currently felt by the average American citizen. Yet she seemed to equate herself with the latter, as in “I know there’s something better down the road./ We need to find a place where we are safe.” Well, there wasn’t much better or safer than the Yale tenured life! Alexander was selected because she was a friend of the new president, not because she was a concrete manifestation of the “change we can believe in” mantra, which she evidently was not. Selecting her was rather a manifestation of the business-as-usual faux-change we couldn’t believe in. Selecting friends or friends of friends was perhaps as commonplace in the literary established-order milieu as it was in the political milieu.

As for the poem, it was the kind of verse that would have been given the stamp of approval by the former Union of Soviet Writers because of its utter innocuousness. The Huffington Post dared not even criticize it, while The Yale Daily News titled its article: “Inaugural poem garners praise.” “It’s a beautiful psalm of praise, celebrating an extraordinary historical event by means of praising ordinariness, or the heroism of everyday life,” noted John Rogers, director of undergraduate studies for the English Department at Yale. But could one actually have expected gut truth from someone in a position like that? Certainly not! What one could expect, however, was the reigning collegiality provoking widespread blandness in academe. Indeed, blandness like the inaugural poem itself.

“I heard, I wept, I took great pride,” noted Yale English professor Leslie Brisman. “Elizabeth Alexander did most admirably in a particularly difficult genre. The poem makes us feel we are all heirs of those who have died so this day could come to be. Praise to her song for walking us forward in that light.” Brisman too was likely bathed in the comfortable light of wealth and the Yale easy life. So, it certainly didn't take much at all to walk her in it. The only thing I liked about the poem was its lack of mention of Jesus and God, though it was nevertheless bathed in an aura of blind positivism in a time where most of us would likely have preferred some gut anger in the poetry--most of us, that is, with the evident exception of the corrupt bankers and their political puppets that stole our life savings. Fuckem. Yes, why wasn't "fuckem" in the poem?

“It reminds us of the way democracy in America is ideally the chance for all people to speak in the public sphere,” noted Yale literature professor Amy Brundage regarding the poem. But what the hell was Brundage talking about? Only the moneyed had voice in the “public sphere”! Only the moneyed would be able to get Obama's ear... just like they got Bush's.

"Elizabeth Alexander is a superb choice for the Obama inauguration: She is from Washington, she represents Obama's generation, and she has written about the civil rights conflict and other historical events that have shaped the character of this country," noted Tree Swenson, executive director of the Academy of American Poets. "At the same time, her intense personal vision reveals the commonplace life illuminated from startling new angles as good poetry always does."

Only an established-order poet like Swenson could have written such a well-turned vacuous statement on a lousy poem. Swenson, by the way, was an evident proponent of politically-correct censorship (see www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm). Was Alexander also such a proponent?

"I don't envy her," noted ex-U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. "Such poems are nearly impossible to bring off. Because of the heaviness of the subject the risk is that you will end up under it rather than on top. I wish her well and I'm certainly glad Obama is making room for a poet." But sometimes, perhaps often, no poet was better than a poet. Of course, the highly buffered like Collins wouldn't be able to understand that. Contrary to what he stated, such poems ought to have been very possible indeed to bring off, especially for a president calling for CHANGE! Of course, Obama would have had to select a poet, not of the established order, but rather one with a track record of daring to risk now and then, daring to make waves, and daring to go against the static grain! Change was what was called for! So why the same ole thing, though with a black face? True, the last inaugural poet, Maya Angelou, also had a black face, but wrote Valentine verse. Wanda Coleman, on the other hand, would have been a breath of fresh air… a real CHANGE… and with a black face!

"I think what I hope to symbolize and demonstrate is the important role that arts and literature can play in this moment when the country is thinking so keenly about moving forward and coming together," noted Alexander regarding her poem. Unfortunately, the only role the arts and literature had been playing was an entertainment and diversionary one, certainly not a critical one. And the problem with “coming together” was that it mandated the rejection of critical voices and reality. "You're always trying to catch a rhythm," noted Alexander. Well, while she was always trying to catch a rhythm, I was always trying to catch a corrupt intellectual in flagrant delit, which of course was perhaps a lot easier than trying to catch a rhythm.

Salon.com ran a long blathering open-wide-just-say-ahh article “How to write a poem for the president” by Jim Fisher. “What poet today would allow his or her voice to be yoked to the policy of a presidential administration, even one as popular as Obama's?” asked Fisher. Yet the answer was more than evident: 99% of the poets in America, including Fisher and Alexander. Money, prizes, tenure, sabbaticals, invitation and publication possibilities served to muzzle most poets because most poets did not possess strong principles. Alexander would be making a ton of money by “yoking.” “At what point would the poetry become propaganda?” asked Fisher. Sadly, he must have been keeping his head ostrich-like in the sand. Most American poetry was propaganda by eagerly fulfilling a diversionary role.

Finally, as evidence of the poem’s utter blandness, the established-order itself seemed unable to present a common front of praise. A reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, for example, called the poem “less than praiseworthy,” a euphemism for lousy, while a reviewer for the Chicago Tribune labeled it “prosaic,” another euphemism for lousy.

The inaugural poem was inevitably a poem written in service of the politician, lobbyist, and Wall Street financier oligarchic culture. It would not shake up the status quo because it was the status quo. It was a cliché poem serving to further entrench the cliché of the poet as a harmless personage unlikely to make trouble, which of course served the power structure. It was the kind of poem that only someone entrenched in a safe, comfortable cocoon could write. For a moment in time, Alexander had held the national podium and attention. Imagine the great poem that could have been written and read to surprise, shock, shake up, piss off, and move… perhaps even a poem that would have challenged the demi-god Obama himself! Why couldn't Yale seem to give us more than a Bush or Alexander?