Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Franz Wright

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Why Poetry Doesn't Matter--Yet Another Example...

Above is a cartoon I sketched in 2004 on Franz Wright, who actually paid me $10 for a copy of it in person at the Emerson Umbrella for the Arts (ah, but not for my arts!) building when he saw me with signs and flyers protesting his scheduled reading at Concord Poetry Center.  He chuckled and never did comment on it.  

          I thought I should post it here for the record, since Wright just croaked.  "Award-winning poet" Michael Dickman presented his blind-poet accolade write-up in Time magazine (6/1/15).  "Award-winning" poets like Dickman and Wright of course rarely, if ever, possess the individuality to question and challenge the academic/literary established order machine handing out the prizes and accolades.   Dickman, in a typical outpouring of hyperbolic lit-dysentery, states "Franz Wright was a haunted and passionate poet, creator of some of the most devastatingly beautiful and dangerous poems written in English in the past 50 years."  Sadly, MFA poesy students will likely swallow the shit without questioning it.  And Dickman evidently needs a dictionary to look up the term "dangerous."  

          "The hole he leaves in contemporary American poetry will not, as Wright once wrote, be 'scarlessly closing like water' anytime soon," concludes Dickman as if somehow making an objective statement, which sums up the entire canon-making machinery, which inevitably performs its hocus-pocus and voila subjective becomes objective.  Just swallow and say ahh, just like Dickman has been doing all his life right up the ladder to the safe penning of a Time mag obit hagiography.  Dickman, by the way, briefly responded to my critique of his hagiography (see below for correspondence).  I'd mistakenly written that Charles Wright, current Lit-Innocuity-in-Chief aka Poet Laureataster of the US Congress, was Franz Wright's father.  In fact, the two are not related.  Sadly, that was all Dickman had to say.  

          Regarding my Concord protest, Franz Wright, of course, unsurprisingly, did not give a damn about it, and I doubt he possessed the capacity to understand the cartoon he'd purchased.  The protest concerned, not just him, but also the Concord Poetry Center, who's director, Joan Houlihan, had aberrantly stipulated that if I stood before her center in protest, she would not permit me to teach a workshop on dissident poetry and poets.  Where most poetasters like Wright would probably have said, well, ok, I won't protest, I certainly did not.  Below is the letter I wrote to Wright, who never responded...

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                                                                                                      October 17, 2004

Franz Wright, Pulitzer Poet

74 Parmenter Rd.

Waltham, MA 02453

Dear Franz Wright:

We met Saturday night quite briefly (see my poem on that encounter).  I was/am the lone poet protester of Concord (I spent a day in a Concord jail for protesting the absence of free speech at Walden Pond several years ago).  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all dialogue, rather than chuckle at each other?  Wouldn’t it be nice (generous) if the academic lit journals, workshops, classes and poetry centers opened their scope to other possibilities and even manifested CURIOSITY?  Yes, I am aware that you are not an academic… but I suspect, if you are not already, you shall soon be with workshop opportunities, adjunct courses, and offers of tenure from the nation’s poetry department heads.  

Anyhow, enclosed is a copy of the literary journal I created as a result of academic corruption at Fitchburg State College (MA).  I was a professor there (5 years) and am now a blacklisted unemployed professor with a PhD… for whatever that is worth.  

Enclosed also is a self-published chapbook (who else would ever publish such a thing?) of my poetry and especially my literary manifesto.  The latter is what I’d really like you to examine.  Over 40 academic journals have rejected it.  I thought it might be interesting if you simply contemplated for a moment how impossible it is for a dissident poet to find a publisher in today’s society.  Indeed, recently reading Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the Calf, I could not help but compare America’s Academic-controlled literary scene (the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex) with that of the Soviet Writer’s Union.  

Thank you for helping to support The American Dissident with your $10 contribution.  

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From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: mdickman@princeton.edu

CC: lewiscenter@princeton.edu

Subject: Adjudicated: Insufficiently Deferent

Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 11:16:51 -0400

To Michael Dickman, (Academic) Lecturer in Creative Writing, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University:

Yesterday, I read your obit on Franz Wright, while waiting for my car inspection at Toyota.  My comments with its regard, including a cartoon I’d sketched on Wright ages ago, have just been posted on my blog site here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Why not take a gander.  After all, as I've always said, curiosity did not kill the cat, careerism did that.  

In fact, why not manifest unusual openness and expose your creative-writing students to it?  Pipe dream?  Most likely, and despite the following deceptive statement of implied inclusivity:  “The Lewis Center for the Arts is designed to put the creative and performing arts at the heart of the Princeton experience. This mission is based on the conviction that exposure to the arts, particularly to the experience of producing art, helps each of us to make sense of our lives and the lives of our neighbors.”

Ah, but which “creative and performing arts” are to be included… and which are to be excluded… in the name of inclusivity of course? Which poets are to be included and which shall be excluded?  Do you teach your students that?  Do you teach them to question and challenge the lit canon?  Do you teach them to wonder about the faceless judges concealed behind the scene who choose this poem but not that poem?  Do you teach them to wonder why those faceless Pulitzer judges chose Franz Wright?  Did they choose him because he was harshly critical with their regard?  

Finally, why not get Princeton to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year) or better yet order copies for your students.  After all, where else might they read criticism of lit icons and their acolytes?  Where else might they be able to examine satirical cartoons, poems, and essays on those like Wright… and even you?  Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Buffalo, and a few other universities thankfully subscribe.  To date, only one professor has been willing to open up his classroom to opposing viewpoints and invite me to speak about The American Dissident.  Professor Dan Sklar (Endicott College) has been doing that for almost five years now.  For all student comments, see http://theamericandissident.org/students.html.

Thank you for your attention.

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From: mdickman@Princeton.EDU

To: todslone@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: Adjudicated: Insufficiently Deferent

Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 15:36:17 +0000

Mr. Slone, 

Charles Wright is not Franz Wright's father. 

Good luck,

Michael Dickman

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From: todslone@hotmail.com

To: mdickman@princeton.edu

Subject: Adjudicated: Insufficiently Deferent

Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 20:21:59 -0400

Michael,

I stand corrected!  I always thought he was the father.  Somebody must have told me that a while ago.  I shall note on my blog that I erred.  Now, too bad you are not OPEN to different viewpoints... too bad for your students.

G. Tod

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.]

Nancy Gibbs

It is difficult to believe, or perhaps not, that the statement issued by Nancy Gibbs is in fact not a fabrication of P. Maudit! One must wonder if the minds of PC persons simply become inoperant when it comes to PC and multiculti inanity.