Wyatt Townley, Poet Laureate of Kansas

Kathleen McCartney

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From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: sophian@smith.edu
CC: wendykaminer@aol.com; kmccartney@smith.edu; has@harveysilverglate.com
Subject: Kaminer, McCartney and Sophian J. Houston lampooned in a new P. Maudit cartoon
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 11:12:50 -0500

To the Student Editors of The Sophian Censor, Smith College:

It would truly amaze me if you simply responded to this email.  It would actually knock me over, however, if you possessed the INDEPENDENCE you boast and the spirit of INCLUSIVITY to publish the cartoon sketched on one of your own, as well as Wendy Kaminer and President Kathleen McCartney, posted on the American Dissident blog site:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Feel free to comment.  The American Dissident NEVER censors comments. 

[NO RESPONSE]

Michael Dirda

Notes on Michael Dirda's Review of Ted Kooser's Splitting an Order

You need to write a book on how to get so excited over such a banal poem, “Painting the Barn,” by established-order ex-insurance executive, former poet laureate of the USA Ted Kooser, “the most [apart from Billy Collins] accessible and enjoyable major poet in America,” according to you.  Have you ever wondered what “major poet” implies besides linguistically deft?  Clearly, it implies a poet who never makes waves, never goes against the grain of literary established order, and thus never bucks the ivory-tower system.  Is that good?  Methinks not at all! 

Perhaps Kooser is “enjoyable” to you, but why should he be enjoyable to me and other individual thinkers?  Sure, hordes of academics could likely write 350-page dissertations on that poem, but does that make it great… or even simply good?  And isn’t great subjective?  Yet you and so many other established-order cogs would have people believe it is an objective term.  Now, what I look for in a poem is obviously NOT what you look for:  unusual wisdom, as opposed to sentimentality, for example, over a dead dog.  What you and other literati of the established-order do is promote the innocuous, like Ted Kooser, because the innocuous does not upset established-order literati.  It is really quite that simple.

Few poems contain unusual wisdom like, for example, Villon’s “Estoit-il lors temps de moy taire?,” Jeffers’ “Finally I say let demagogues and world-redeemers babble/ their emptiness/ To empty ears; twice duped is too much./ Walk on gaunt shores and avoid the people” and Neruda’s “Nací para golpear las puertas, para empuñar los golpes,/ para encender las últimas y arrinconadas sombras/en donde se alimenta la araña venenosa./ Serán nombrados.”    

What we need are poets with guts like Villon, who dared criticize the ruling Parisian theocrats during his time and risked death by hanging.  Where are those poets today in America who RISK in their poetry upsetting established-order apparatchiks, who promote coopted, innocuous poetry… and thus weaken literature, dulling its blade, rendering it palatable for the established order? 

Why not try being original and not push celebrity literati in your literati columns?  Why not seek out rare poets who really do RISK speaking rude truth in their verse—RISK not getting tenure, RISK not getting grants, RISK not getting invitations, RISK not getting awards, RISK not getting reviewed in your columns?  Nature and feelings are fine in poetry, BUT poetry should NOT be limited to those things.  “Such imagery from a vanishing America further enforces the overall autumnal quality of these recent poems,” you write regarding Kooser’s new book.  Wow.  “Overall autumnal quality”!  Now, that’s a good one!  What about overall RISK and bold TRUTH TELLING? 

“But if you reflexively dismiss modern verse as dauntingly esoteric or embarrassingly corny or tediously singsong, you need to try Ted Kooser,” you conclude.  Rather than “dauntingly esoteric,” I find modern verse devoid of any criticism at all of the academic/literary established order machinery, professors, and favored icons diligently working to keep poetry castrated. 

 

 

 

Breanne Fahs

 

 

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: breanne.fahs@asu.edu
CC: lmanderson@asu.edu; alesha.durfee@asu.edu; michelle.mcgibbney@asu.edu; yasmina.katsulis@asu.edu; kimberly.a.scott@asu.edu; sally.kitch@asu.edu; koblitz@asu.edu; heather.switzer@asu.edu; sujey.vega@asu.edu
Subject: Fahs lampooned in a new P. Maudit cartoon
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 09:52:02 -0500

To Prof. Breanne Fahs,

You are featured in a new P. Maudit cartoon this week on The American Dissident blog site:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Nothing personal, since I don’t know you.  I’ve done 100s of cartoons on professors and other academics over the years.  Only two or three student editors have dared publish them.  I’ve forwarded the cartoon to the student editors of ASU News, who will likely not publish it… because student editors generally tend to be like their professors:  PC-indoctrinated, lacking in individuality and courage, and scornful of democracy’s cornerstones—freedom of speech and vigorous debate.  Hopefully (and there is always hope, no matter how dim that light may be), those student editors will prove to be somewhat unique and respond.  Hopefully, you too might respond.  Now, how about getting your university library to subscribe to The American Dissident, not for the sake of the faculty, but rather for that of students.  LOL, right?

Laura Beth Nielson

Cornel West

 

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From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Cornel West satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon...
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:22:58 -0400

  

To Anita Cole, Executive Assistant to Cornel West,

Please pass on the attached cartoon on CW to CW.  Also, please consider getting Union Theological Seminary to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year).  Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

 

 

G. Tod Slone, PhD (universite de Nantes, FR) aka P. Maudit,

Founding Editor (1998)

The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence

 
 

From: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
To: todslone@hotmail.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:25:19 -0400
Subject: RE: Cornel West satirized in a new P. Maudit cartoon...

Hello,
My name is Maria -- not Anita, and much like that mistake, your cartoon is further evidence that your ability to comprehend what you read and hear is quite limited. I won't be sending this on to Dr. West as I am personally insulted and will not spend anymore time on this.

Sincerely,

> Maria Cole
> Assistant to Professor Cornel West
> Union Theological Seminary
> 3041 Broadway, AD 522
> New York, NY 10027
> 212.280.1481
> mcole@uts.columbia.edu
> www.utsnyc.edu

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Fragile little egos...
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:45:35 -0400

Hi Maria,
Sorry for that little mistake.  But how does one get so uptight over a simple error like that?  Well, thanks much for the LOL!  Cornel's little discourse was as clear as it gets.  My cartoon riposte was as clear as it gets.  Perhaps you, as hyper-uppity executive assistant, misunderstood his discourse and my response to it?  Perhaps you should ask Cornel to help you out with that interesting term re-niggardization?  Now, why does he need to buffer his fragile ego and mindset with a gatekeeper like you.  That too seems like gross hypocrisy on his part.  Now, how many poor people does he know who have their own personal gatekeepers?  Hmm.  :)
G. Tod

[No response.]

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: bjamesp519@gmail.com; cskpickles@earthlink.net
CC: mcole@uts.columbia.edu
Subject: Satire and democracy!
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:04:33 -0400

  

To Benjamin Perry and Carolyn Klaasen, Body Caucus, Union Theological Seminary

What your institution needs is a DEMOCRACY CAUCUS, where FREEDOM OF SPEECH and VIGOROUS DEBATE would be praised and studied.  You could begin with the attached cartoon I sketched on one of your instructors.  Sadly, his executive assistant refuses to forward the cartoon to him.  Perhaps you might do that?  She obviously does not believe in VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy.  Do you?  Or have you become PC-indoctrinated like her?  If there is a student newspaper, please let me know.  I couldn't find it on the website.  Thanks for your attention.

[No response.]