Wanda Brown

Editorial Issue #39

The Corona Apocalyptic

Dear Mr Slone, Please feel free to criticise Quillette and myself in any forum you see fit. However please refrain from submitting to us in the future. Regards,Claire Lehmann  [“Quillette is a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress. Quillette aims to provide a platform for this exchange.”]”

—Claire Lehman, Ed-in-Chief, Quillette

Will the pandemic help destroy the little democracy we have left and increase the power of Big Government bureaucracy?  Gary Goude notes, “Well, for now the LA county sheriff and LA city sheriff,  on the mayor's orders, have closed gun shops in the county as ‘not essential’ and then the Gov ordered all background checks stopped, which means you are not able to purchase any firearm. I am no lawyer but I am certain this is a 2nd amendment unconstitutional violation. Hopefully it will be challenged in court.”

    Well, I was going to title this editorial, “The Business of Poetry & Writing,” but then came the apocalypse.  So, I changed it, though not much at all in the editorial.   Lehman’s comment (see above) is so amazing that I’ve quoted it a number of times in the past.  Perhaps it is a sign of the present apocalyptic times.  Such gems are rare.  The norm is deafening silence, a virtual echo of a quarantined literati. What is astonishing is that Lehman cannot even comprehend the gross intrinsic hypocrisy in her statement… in her very being.  And so had I committed an act of blasphemy?  Yes!  That’s what I’d done!  I’d criticized Quillette! 

    Sadly, the literary journals are never looking for rude-truth writers, apt to criticize the literary establishment that hands out the carrots—prizes, grants, invitations, awards, tenure, publications, etc. And yet the often self-aggrandizing statements of fluff exuded by poet and writer hacks of the establishment beggar to be criticized.  As an example, cite  Jamil Publishing:  

We know that poetry is greater than all its parts. We feel that it is truth from deep within and in its greatness, in its vastness, in its enormity we find that poetry is all encompassing and visionary—seeing deep into our history, the breadth of our present, and far into our future.  Creative writing is a tool that give voice to the voiceless.

     Moreover, the poetry journals openly profess their racist and sexist biases.  Again cite Jamil Publishing:  

We are looking for women and artists of color [i.e., white men need not apply!] who are actively working in the community.

      Few—very, very few—dare to call the editors out on their egregious racism and sexism.  NewPages.com has no problem with it at all!  BUT it does have a serious problem with a journal like The American Dissident, which will and does criticize the establishment, including NewPages.com itself, which of course refuses to list The American Dissident.  Well, I for one, as a poet and editor, call out the hypocrites, racists, and other poet fraudsters! My reward? Full ostracizing!  Oh, but of course!  And I’d have it no other way. 

Poets & Writers magazine hates criticism to the extent that criticism simply does not exist for the magazine, which incarnates the sad reality of the business of poetry. Its staff is composed of many well-paid haters of uncomfortable truths, including an Executive Director, Managing Director, Deputy Director—Development & Marketing, Development & Marketing Coordinator, Development & Marketing Assistant, Director of Finance & Accounting, Staff Accountant, Administrative Coordinator, Editor in Chief, Senior Editor, Managing Editor, Associate Editor, Assistant Editor, Senior Web Editor, Associate Web Editor, Associate Publisher, Senior Advertising Manager, Advertising Assistant, Director of Readings & Workshops, Program Associate, Director of Information Technology & Web Development, as well as a bunch of Fellows, including a Raab Editorial Fellow.  Wow.

  Money determines the direction of poetry (e.g., towards pc-diversity and diversity/identity politics, while away from rude truth), just like everything else.  And evidently Poets & Writers magazine has tons of money, although not as much as Poetry magazine with its $200 million foundation.  Cultural councils like the NEA grant tax-payer money to magazines that do not question and challenge cultural councils. Hardcore critique of the business of poetry is essentially banned by the grant-according machine, including its proponents and cogs.  Try getting a critical essay on the business of poetry published in a poetry journal or even a cartoon like the first one in this issue.   Bonne chance! Coopted prize-winning/tenured poets hate criticism.  For them, it simply does not/cannot exist.  Eileen Myles’ response to it reflects the general decrepitude of establishment poets like her:  “go away troll.”  

Over the years I have contacted many editors, poets, journalists, writers, curators, artists, and, of course, academics—professors, deans, and college presidents.  For some reason, I am still sort of surprised how they categorically refuse to address the hypocrisy and inanity underscored.  I still don’t quite understand their absolute reluctance to publish criticism in their diverse newspapers, journals, and magazines.  Alas, it is definitely the sign of our pitiful totalitarian times.  

    BTW, rarely do I ever NOT depict real people nowadays in my cartoons and aquarelles.  There are so many nut-jobs out there to pick from.  No need to invent them! And by nut-job, I mean blatant hypocrites and liars, inanity spewers, spineless virtue-signalers, reason-devoid professor poets, and on and on. Anyhow, an American Library Association bookmark, kindly sent to me by Jennifer Fulco, inspired the issue’s front cover, which depicts three American Library Association leaders: American Libraries Magazine Editor/Publisher Sanhita Sinha Roy, ALA President Wanda Brown, and Director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Deborah Caldwell-Stone.  Librarians are like journalists and poets today: PC-infested, self-congratulating ad nauseam, and extremely averse to outside criticism. My concerns regarding the ALA are that it refused to address questions raised regarding its total apathy and inaction regarding my being permanently banned from Sturgis Library. Its Office for Intellectual Freedom is as hypocritical as it gets.  And its American Libraries Magazine refuses to publish any hardcore criticism, regarding libraries and librarians.   

The back cover of this issue presents a satire on the vapid official Academy of American Poets April 2020 National Poetry Month poster (see image below), created by contest winner Samantha Aikman. The anointing judges were “renowned” dyke cartoonist Alison Bechdel and former U.S. chicano Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.  Identity politics rules!  The vapid, almost meaningless, words on the winning poster (not mine!) are those of U.S. Native-American Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo: “Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.”  Might Harjo be so implanted on Cloud 9 as to not realize that not  everything is growing, that somethings are in fact croaking?  No doubt.  And so, in the satirical version of that poster, the line was altered to better fit the reality of the business of poetry. Finally, despite my beggaring, I received no critical essays from contributors.  In any case, many thanks to those who have subscribed over the years and in doing so helped keep The AD afloat.  Many thanks especially to Dolores Granger for her generous contributions!  And many thanks to Russell Streur for his directing a contribution for nonprofits to The AD.

Alexandra Alter

The Hillary Poets of the Hillary Resistance

Poetry has become very important again, at least according to New York Times hack-journalist-for-the- publishing-and-literary world Alexandra Alter.  In her article, “American Poets, Refusing to Go Gentle, Rage Against the Right,” she quotes a number of Hillary poets, though somehow doesn’t mention Hillary in it.  Under the previous political regime, the poets were conspicuously silent… or rather lap-doggie.  Poet Jane Hirshfield explains: “When poetry is a backwater it means times are O.K. When times are dire, that’s exactly when poetry is needed.”  Yes, everything was wonderful under Obama and yes, somehow poetry will take down he, who Hillary couldn’t.  

Across the nation today, poets have awakened and are walking like groupthink zombies out of the “backwater,” though only partially, because they’re still holding their PC-pens and writing from the confines of their groupthink “backwater” safe-spaces.  They are raging, though not against the poesy establishment, not against the poesy academy chancellors, not against the black poesy laureate autocratically-anointed by the black Librarian of Congress appointed by the former black president, not against the poesy academic gatekeepers—those poesy executive directors of poesy societies and poesy academies and publishers of establishment poesy rags—, not against their well-fed poesy idols usually entrenched in academic sinecures, and not against the inherent corruption in the according of poesy stipends, poesy grants, and poesy tenure slots.  

Most poets couldn’t even fathom questioning and challenging such things and persons.  After all, doing that would mean being free-minded and going against the academic grain, rocking the establishment boat, and bucking the literary system, those giant hands that feed only poets in lockstep.  Not a good poesy-career move at all!  Far too risky!  Far too much individuality required!  

As for the new raging verse, Jeff Shotts, one of those poesy executive editors (Graywolf Press), argues:  “This isn’t just confessional poetry, but poetry that’s meant to stir us into action.”   Action for Hillary, the Prevaricator, once again in 2020?  Action for more Russian-collusion inanity?  Alter informs that the poets are forming part of the Hillary-resistance movement (without mentioning Hillary of course).  Will their icon Maya Angelou step out of her academic cocoon to denounce Trump?  Well, I guess not.  She’s dead.  “There’s going to be a major shift in our poetry,” announced Alice Quinn, yet another of those poesy executive directors.  Poetry Society of America is her fiefdom, you know, that members-only society, where only members can anoint new members. “The poems that I have been reading, which are freshly minted, most of them, have a powerful sense of urgency and reckoning and responsibility,” she stipulates.  Responsibility to speak truth as staunch individuals and to poesy-power figures like her?  Of course not!  

Self-declared gender-free poet Danez Smith, whose verse is used by Black Lives Matter, provides some lines of “urgency and reckoning”:  “on the TV/ is the man from TV/ is gonna be president/ he has no word/ & hair beyond simile/ you’re dead, America.”  Brilliant!  Daring!  Original!!!  Well, apparently Alter must think so.  “We turn to poems in moments of crisis for comfort,” announces Jennifer Benka, yet another of those poesy executive directors.  Yes, poets with lofty titles!  Her fiefdom is the omnipotent Academy of American Poets.  Dare criticize it and be banned forever!  Yes, that’s what happened to me quite a while ago!  Read all about it here!  After all, curiosity didn’t kill the poet, PC-groupthink did that!  Do the Hillary poets care about my banning?  Of course not!

“We’ve seen this spontaneous swell of people coming to read poems that speak to this moment,” says Benka.  Oh, yeah, now they’ll be putting some of those Academy-approved poems in those academic safe-spaces next to the crayons, legos, and teddy bears!  

Alter informs that “Poetry readings around the country have come to resemble leftist political rallies.”  Does she mean the violence and rioting against those with the wrong opinions?  Such rallies are of course not inclusive or at all open to diversity of thought and remind of Stalinist Pravda poetry and of the incarcerated Cuban poets, who could not and did not walk in lockstep with the communist Castro regime, the one praised by, well, you know.

According to Alter:  “Major publishing houses are rushing out their own volumes” of resistance verse.  And yet what is really needed is a drain-the-poesy-swamp movement, not more poesy-swamp- creature empowerment under the guise of resistance.  Alter notes, for example, that Boston Review published “Poems for Political Disaster,” which has a foreword by academic poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera, and includes poems by academics Stephen Burt, Monica Youn and Jorie Graham.  Alter, however, does not inform that they are indeed academics and, of course, is incapable of questioning and challenging the poesy establishment.  Her job depends on that incapacity.   All she can do is ahh and ooh before elitist establishment names and titles.  Can she and those establishment poets possibly comprehend the words of Emerson, which inevitably damn them?   “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”  

Interestingly and again without any manifestation of capacity to question and challenge, Alter notes “But poets tend to be liberal, and the submissions skewed heavily to the left.”  But if the poesy machine is liberal then clearly the poesy machine will be actively suppressing poets not deemed liberal (i.e., of the groupthink PC-mindset).  In other words, in the darkness of suppression, how can one know just how many poets might not be of that liberal-ilk?  

Amit Majmudar, editor of Resistance, Rebellion, Life, a book of 50 poems published by Knopf, argues regarding to his call for submissions:  “I was equally open to an anti-globalization poem as I was to a Trumpocalypse Now poem.”  Was he sincere or would sincerity have eliminated him from being chosen editor?  Likely the latter!  Alter, again mesmerized by “badges and names,” notes poems by former academic poet laureate Robert Pinsky, Eileen Myles, Kevin Young and Solmaz Sharif will be in that volume.  

Finally, most poets shamefully hate and reject vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy.  When criticized they will normally remain silent, especially if the critic is not of the known elite-poesy variety, or they will call the critic a “troll” or some other infantile ad hominem, or they will simply respond with vacuous politesse.   Burt chose silence regarding my critical cartoon with his regard, “The Professors—Why Poetry Doesn’t Matter.”  Myles called me a “troll,” regarding the critical cartoon with her regard, “The Poets—Identity Politics, But Still Bourgeois to the Core.”  Majmudar chose the vacuous-politesse option regarding the critical cartoon on him and others, “Poetasters of the Resistance.”  “Thanks for your creative engagement, George! Keep up the good work!”  Oh, yeah.  I’ll try to do that, Mr. Majmudar!  And if he were not a flaming hypocrite, why did he reject my poem, “The Fall of Hillarius, the First,” but publish Frederick Seidel’s poem, “Now”?  “Now a dictatorship of vicious spineless slimes/ We the people voted in has taken over.” […]   Brilliant!  Daring!  Original!   Now, if Alter possessed an iota of “fair and balanced” in her literary reportages, she would have included a counter sentence or even two in her extremely PC-biased article.  Now, which establishment poesy magazine out there would be willing to publish this counter essay?  Not one, of course!  And that constitutes the core flaw embedded in the heart of the lit resistance…

Amit Majmudar

...............................................

From: George Slone

Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 1:57 PM

To: amajmuda@neomed.edu; kevin.young@emory.edu; juan.herrera@ucr.edu; eileenmylesstudio@gmail.com; alison@blueflowerarts.com; nitz@graywolfpress.org; solmazs@stanford.edu

To Amit Majmudar, Editor of Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now; Eileen Myles; Jane Hirshfield; Kevin Young; Juan Felipe Herrera; and Solmaz Sharif:

A cartoon I just sketched on you and your new book is attached and also published on the internet (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com).  Feel free to comment.  Comments are NEVER censored, uh, moderated.  

Well, Hirshfield’s email address was simply unavailable on the internet.  She is too high up on the elitist literary ladder for a plebe like me to contact.  Like Trump, each of you form part of an elite, quite apart from We, the Plebes.  In your case, it is the literary elite.  

You do not respond to criticism, for you are part of that buffered elite, where not truth, but hagiography, PC, and money constitute the modus operandi.  

Calling me a “troll,” like Eileen Myles did, is certainly not an intelligent point-by-point counter response to the criticism, but rather an indication of being intellectually-challenged.  Myles like you can simply not comprehend anything beyond the hagiographic business-as-usual m.o. of the academic/literary establishment. 

How sad it is that not one literary journal out there, besides the one I publish, would even consider publishing the cartoon or any real criticism of your ilk.  Each of you cower--such great fear of hardcore criticism!!!  

Beacher Wiggins

The following open letter was sent in 2014.  

Open Letter (2014)
To the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center,
Another Odd Sponsor of Banned Books Week Proudly… Banning Books

Should public servants be in the business of determining what literature should be accepted and what literature should be rejected at the publicly-funded Library of Congress?  Should they be serving as Gatekeepers of Propriety—Grand Censors and Banners of Books?  How can such activity possibly conform with the principles of democracy?  

Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions & Bibliographic Access, finally responded to my query, originally sent in January 2014, then again in August and again in September of the same year, regarding the procedure for getting the Library of Congress to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence.  His response was a curt “My apologies for not having responded to your earlier message.  The Library has determined that it will not acquire your serial.”  Period.  I’d received the same kind of curt response from the NEA regarding a grant request.  And the NEA refused to provide any details as to why its flat-out rejection of the journal as “low” and “poor.”  Of course, anything critical of the NEA or Library of Congress or National Poetry Month or Academy of American Poets or any other established-order organization, cog, or icon would have to be deemed “low” and “poor.”  

                As for Rob Casper, Director of the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center, he has yet to respond to my query as to how The American Dissident might be placed on his shelves (i.e., the public shelves of the Library of Congress!).  He and Wiggins have yet to respond to my request for details on the process of determination, that is, acquisition and non-acquisition.  Is their silence with that regard an indirect statement that the simple opinion of public-servant apparatchiks is the determining factor?  After all, how can one possibly make an objective determination regarding poetry and poetry criticism?  

Does the collection development policy of the Library of Congress include, like so many other libraries, the American Library Association's “Library Bill of Rights” statement that "libraries should provide materials and information providing ALL points of view"?  If so, why do chief acquisitions apparatchiks like Casper and Wiggins not adhere to it?  If not, why is that statement not part of it?  Do they espouse the left’s inclusivity mantra?  If so, why do they effect de facto exclusion.  Hypocrites?

Clearly, The American Dissident is a unique literary journal because it dares criticize what few if any other journals dare criticize:  the academic/literary established order.  Indeed, it questions and challenges, in the spirit of democracy, organizations like Poetry Foundation, the NEA, the Academy of American Poets, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and PEN America.  It has been critical of the knee-jerk ostracizing and banning of viewpoints subjectively deemed inappropriate or uncivil.  In fact, it also criticizes, in the spirit of democracy, the Library of Congress itself, including the aforementioned apparatchiks and its CEO Librarian James H. Billington.  The front cover of issue #18, for example, featured a satire on Billington and the poet he chose to be Poet Laureate of the USA (see https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=239569862679528067#allposts).  The front cover of issue #30 also featured Billington, this time with his new anointed poet laureate (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2016/01/juan-felipe-herrera.html).
Perhaps it was the watercolor I did on the Poetry Society of America that irritated Casper, former Programs Director of Poetry Society of America (see http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2014/08/alice-quinn.html)? Satire?  We no need no stinkin satire!  Is that it?  Sadly, those visiting the Library of Congress will not be exposed to such satire and criticism thanks to its gatekeepers.   Moreover,  one must wonder how American education failed not only them, but also the many American poets who manage to intellectually accept without question or challenge such an autocratic anointment effected by one man, Billington.  

Why have Casper and Wiggins decided to essentially ban The American Dissident from a publicly-funded library of the purported representative of the American public, the Congress?  Well, you’d have to ask them, for they have not been responsive at all.  After all, they do not have to be responsive, for they are public servants wholly unaccountable to the public.  As citizens are increasingly learning (hopefully!), public servants from President Obama to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on down seem to be less and less accountable nowadays.  

Essentially, Casper and Wiggins have decided to ban hardcore criticism of the academic/literary established order, including that targeting the Library of Congress itself, from the publicly-funded shelves of the Library of Congress.  What a twisted sense of DEMOCRACY they must possess!  Shame on those who gave them the power of selection (i.e., banning)!  Perhaps Casper and Wiggins might wish to reflect, stand up as men (as opposed to careerist ladder climbers), speak honestly for once in their lives, where few librarians would dare, and openly express their true scorn for and disagreement with the ALA’s core statement as noted above.   Pipedream?  Likely! 

Finally, as the PC-hammer and sickle, represented by Casper and Wiggins, continues making progress in America, how not to be outraged?  Casper and Wiggins illustrate the fundamental problem with America as a democracy.  The country is much too large to operate as a democracy.  Its public servants will often simply not respond to the public.  The powerful organization Judicial Watch serves as an example, for it must battle tooth and nail to obtain Freedom of Information documents from the Obama administration.  Now, how can a simple publisher like me expect to obtain a response?  

Matthew Zapruder

..............................................................

L—A—M—E

A Dialogue de Sourds with the New York Times Magazine Poetry Editor 

Matthew Zapruder is the new poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine, as well as MFA director, creative writing at Saint Mary’s College of California and editor at large at Wave Books.  His words are taken verbatim from his self-introduction in the New York Times.  Since the latter would NEVER publish my alternative view, I’ve woven it into this dialogue de sourds.  PM, poète maudit, is my cartoonist sobriquet.  

MZ:  As I started to choose the poems that will appear each week in the New York Times Magazine over the next year, I imagined who might be reading them. 

PM:  You mean like, uh, well-to-do, politically-correct, bourgeois poets and their groupies—you know, other safe, pensioned, and cocooned academics like you, who have opened wide and just said ahh to poetry?  

MZ:  I thought about how life is already so complicated and busy, and how, on Sunday mornings, people might want to just sit and drink coffee and quietly move through the paper. I thought that people might turn the page and see a poem and say: “Oh, no. Something else I have to do. Except for the crossword, I thought I was safe.”  

PM:  Well, any poem you likely decide to select will inevitably be a safe one!  So, no problem, people, the poem next to that ole crossword puzzle will just make the safe space a bit larger.  Yawn!  More coffee, please!!!  

MZ:  For most of my life as a poet, I have been thinking about this very moment, when a poem enters into someone’s life.  Most of the time, this happens in expected situations: a classroom, a wedding, a funeral.  Maybe we have even chosen to pick up a book of them. But I believe that poems are meant to be a part of our lives. They are made up of our language, reconfigured and rearranged to make our minds move in different directions than they ordinarily would. At their best, they make something close to a waking dream.

PM:  Well, for most of my life as a poet, I haven’t been thinking about that at all.  Instead, I’ve been trying to shake up the comfy lives in which far too many poets like you dwell.  The poems I write are sure as hell NOT going to be part of your life in the ivory tower, though they’d probably make your mind move in a different direction if you didn’t keep the door so firmly shut and would probably be a waking j’accuse nightmare for you and those like you.    

MZ:  It’s great to have the chance to put poems in front of people in the midst of what they are otherwise doing. I like the idea that someone would turn the page of the magazine and see a poem, and that those words in the poem would have a chance to follow up on, refract, amplify, reconfigure the language of culture and news. The poem gets a chance to exist in a place that is not isolated or rarefied. 

PM:  You mean it’s great to have the chance to be an official gatekeeper of poetry and serve as a filter for what poems people will have in front of them.  And how does a poem get a chance to exist in such a place when it is created by an isolated (insulated) entrenched ivory-tower academic like your first choice, rarefied Poet Laureate of the US Congress, Juan Felipe Herrera?

MZ:  Poetry is in fine shape now, as it has always been, even though there is a small industry of people periodically informing us it’s dead.

PM:  Oh my, so I must belong to that small “birther” industry of literary deniers, who argue that poetry has indeed become a protected safe space to the extent that whoever dares openly question and challenge the ineluctable flaccidity of the poetry—the dead poetry of zombie poets—presented to the public by the gatekeepers of the literary established order, will be ostracized and banned.  

MZ:  Nevertheless, people go on writing it in all sorts of different ways. Why? I guess we need it. Virginia Woolf wrote, “The poet is always our contemporary.” I believe she meant that poets, for all time and in all lands, have always found the places in language that continue to be common to human experience. 

PM:  Well, I write it not out of some vague “need,” but rather as part of my citizen duty to decry corruption in all its forms.  For me, it is not the language (forme), but the message (fond)!  And why choose such a vacuous quote?  Well, it does seem to back the flaccidity of your self introduction.  How about this quote by Charles Bukowski?  After all, he’s now perfectly acceptable as part of the literary establishment.  You can find him on the Academy of American Poets website.  It really sums up your MO perfectly.  “Poetry has long been an in-game, a snob game, a game of puzzles and incantations.  It still is, and most of its practitioners operate comfortably as professors in our safe and stale universities.”

MZ:  Poems are, in and of themselves, an assertion of both a particular imagination and a common humanity, the possibility that my dreams can be yours, and vice versa. 

PM:  Now what the hell does that mean?  My dreams of inclusion will never jive with your dreams of excluding poets like me.  And your dreams of obtaining and publishing badges and names could never have jived with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s… you know, as in “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names [Herrera], to large societies [Academy of American Poets] and dead institutions [St. Mary’s College]. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.”  Rude truth?  Well, we ain’t gonna find that in your poesy selections for the New York Times Magazine!  

MZ:  My exciting and somewhat daunting task is to pick, each week, a poem and write a very short introduction, which somehow manages to open up the poem without interfering with it. When I think of these introductions, I imagine them as little keys that will open the lock of the poem. And each time, just like in those old stories we heard as children, once the lock opens, the lock and key will disappear, and it will be clear that nothing was ever locked at all.  

PM:   Locks that have to be opened by special gatekeepers of poetry?  No wonder poetry doesn’t matter!  No wonder it’s dead!  Rather than stories heard as children, how about stories heard as adults, you know, like censorship and banning by the Academy of American Poets, Banned Books Week hypocrisy, ivory- tower speech codes, etc., etc.?  Now, how about a little rare honesty and tell us what poems and poets you will kneejerk reject in the name of inclusivity from appearing in the New York Times Magazine?  How about stepping aside from the gate for a moment and allow this dialogue de sourds ,as clarion for new openness, real inclusion, and vigorous literary debate, enter into your realm? 

MZ:  [Silence is golden…]… or  [adhominize me as angry, jealous, hateful, illiterate… in an effort to entirely divert attention away from the points made in my argumentation]

Department of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside

NO RESPONSE 

Not one response from over 20 Professors at the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

DEPARTMENT OF CREATIVE WRITING!  

How sad it is that out of 20 some odd university professors contacted, not one deigned to respond to my criticism.  How do such professors become such detesters of vigorous debate, one of democracy's prime cornerstones?  Clearly, they reflect the closed doors of the general Academic/Literary Established Order.  Clearly, they are part of that PRIVILEGED elite!  How sad they are and how sad it is that NOBODY from the university student newspaper would respond either.  Evidently, those 20 some odd professors have succeeded in indoctrinating the student editors.  Below is the OPEN LETTER I sent.  See also the post after it regarding one of their own...

From: George Slone

Sent: Sunday, January 3, 2016 9:46 AM

To: juan.herrera@ucr.edu; reza.aslan@ucr.edu; charmaine.craig@ucr.edu; josh.emmons@ucr.edu; stephen.erickson@ucr.edu; katie.ford@ucr.edu; nalo.hopkinson@ucr.edu; michael.jayme@ucr.edu; christopher.buckley@ucr.edu; michael.davis@ucr.edu; judy.kronenfeld@ucr.edu; eliud.martinez@ucr.edu; laila.lalami@ucr.edu; goldberry.long@ucr.edu; tom.lutz@ucr.edu; susan.straight@ucr.edu; allison.white@ucr.edu; andrew.winer@ucr.edu; maurya.simon@ucr.edu; ben.stoltzfus@ucr.edu; chuck.whitney@ucr.edu; dwight.yates@ucr.edu

Cc: editorinchief@highlandernews.org; opinions@highlandernews.org

Subject: Open Letter to the Department of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside

Open Letter to the Department of Creative Writing, University of California, Riverside

As you know, one of your own, Juan Felipe Herrera, is now Poet Laureate of the US Library of Congress.   As you do NOT know, he was lampooned on the front cover of the latest issue of The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence.  You do not know this because not one library in California is willing to subscribe to the journal.  Universities like Harvard, Brown, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Brown, and a few others are subscribers. For those of you, who still have an iota of curiosity of what goes on outside the California PC-box, you can examine the front cover, as well as the editorial pertaining to it, here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com.  Below the editorial is the Open Letter to Juan Felipe Herrera I wrote in August and sent to Herrera and Michael Rios, student editor of The Highlander.  Neither deigned to respond.  Evidently, neither is a proponent of vigorous debate, one of democracy’s prime cornerstones.  Are any of you?

Why are each and everyone of you likely entirely indifferent to the fact that the Academy of American Poetry censored and banned me, a creative writer and poet, from expressing my views on its website?  Why does academe favor a smiley-faced herd professorate over staunch individuals daring to “go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways?” (Emerson)  That is an important question confronting democracy in America today.  Thankfully, I have failed as an academic teamplayer and thus do not possess titles of Endowed, Distinguished, Emeritus, Distinguished Emeritus, Laureate, or any of the other such dubious honors normally accorded those with exceptional turn-a-blind-eye ability.  BTW, the first part of that Emerson quote is “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions…”  Can any of you grasp what Emerson meant by that?  

Finally, might there be one of you, just one of you, who might actually encourage students in a creative writing assignment, for example, to criticize you, your department, your institution, or any of the established-order organisations from Poet Laureate to Poetry Foundation, Poets & Writers magazine, Poetry magazine, the Academy of American Poets, etc.?  Silence seems always to be the “response” of those possessing comfy sinecures, pensions, fringe benefits, titles, badges, and hefty salaries.  Sadly, it seems also to be the response of those they teach like student editor Michael Rios…

Juan Felipe Herrera

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Editorial The American Dissident #30

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

―George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

Absolut Vacuity

Assaults on Freedom of Expression

Privileged journalists and cartoonists, white and black, seem bent on drawing PC-red lines for satire and, in general, freedom of speech. I say, fuck’em!  In fact, any satirist worthy of his or her salt would say, fuck’em! They argue only the privileged—not them of course—should be targets of satire. But what about stupid statements, hypocrites, believers in idiocy, and speech-code pushers? Shouldn’t they also be targets of satire? Charlie Hebdo criticized Islam because of its fundamental idiocy. But that should have been off limits according to some privileged journalists, academics, and even establishment cartoonists like Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury fame. DIVERSITY/INCLUSION has become the establishment’s mantra. It is an Orwellian term meaning EXCLUSION of anyone not towing the UNIFORMITY of the PC-party line. 

The inspiration for this issue’s cover came from the website of the Academy of American Poets (www.poets.org), which I rarely visit.  Blazened on the main page in large letters were a couple of lines from the new poet laureate of the US Congress, high-and-mighty Academy of American Poets Chancellor Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Latino academic/literary hack to achieve that dubious position. For those lines of absolut vacuity, see the cartoon below. It is astonishing that only one person chooses/votes for the laureate, the Librarian of Congress (soon-to-be-replaced James Billington). It is even more astonishing that thousands and thousands of poets and academics across the country accept that autocratic- selection process without question or challenge.  Sadly, their open-wide-just-say-ah modus operandi represents the state of literature in a nutshell.  Dare question and challenge any of the literary organizations, organizers, or icons and be prepared for full ostracizing.  It is all very Soviet-like.  And if you don’t believe it, read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Oak and the Calf. The similarities are egregious! By the way, Billington is advised via the James Madison Council, a group of one-percenters led by hedge-fund plutocrat David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of the Carlyle Group.  Thanks to the Council’s massive amounts of money, Billington has been treated to a one-percenter jetset lifestyle à la Michelle and Barack Obama.

The new editor of Charlie Hebdo, Laurent Sourisseau (aka Riss), was wounded during the Paris massacre and only survived by playing dead. I was tempted to cartoon him for what he’d said in a post-mortem July interview, but decided against it because of what he’d gone through. However, I do think he should have resigned rather than become editor and simply declare DEFEAT (i.e., the magazine would no longer draw Muhammad). Victory went to violent Muslim Islamofascists.  Defeat went to FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.  What really ticked me off was what Sourisseau had said: "We've done our job. We have defended the right to caricature.”  Well, that was true.  But now they were not going to do their “job” anymore. It would have been much better for the magazine to close its doors. Sourisseau aberrantly argued, “We still believe that we have the right to criticize all religions.”  Yet evidently that is NOT true for he has given up the right to criticize Islam.  He also put forth the lame everyone-else-does-it non-argument to justify the magazine’s decision not to draw Muhammad:  “The mistakes you could blame Islam for can be found in other religions.” Yet clearly people in those “other religions” are not out raping women, enslaving, beheading, and torturing in the name of their “other religions.”  In the case of Charlie Hebdo, Islamic violence defeated freedom of speech.  Former editor Charb, if he’d survived, would probably not have given up to the dictates of Sharia Law, as in Thou Shalt Not Draw Muhammad.  

Despite the dhimmi media, the Garland, TX draw Muhammad contest proved to be a real victory for freedom of expression in America and a consequent defeat for Islamofascism. Nevertheless, the organizers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, both prohibited from visiting Great Britain, where free speech has been greatly reduced by pro-Sharia-law, hate-speech legislation, must be extremely cautious in America. Their bold outspokenness has cost them the freedom to move about without armed guards.  Why hasn’t Obama spoken out about that?  Why has he not said a word about cartoonist Molly Norris?  Why does he not seem to give a damn about free speech?  Islamofascists in America will not rest until they’ve succeeded in replacing the First Amendment with anti-blasphemy laws. (Both Obama and Hillary worked with CAIR in such an effort known as the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18.) Bosch Fawstin, the winning cartoonist, must also be extremely cautious and keeps his whereabouts unknown. Amazingly, Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), a purported advocate of free speech, would not publish Fawstin’s winning cartoon (see right), nor would it even mention Fawstin, as the winner. A “conversation” appears in this issue of The AD with CBLDF executive director Charles Brownstein, who argued I did not have the legal right to publish his email correspondence with me. But I did some research, and it appears I do have the right. If not, I take a chance in the name of free speech. Now, imagine a free-speech advocate like CBLDF suing me over a free speech issue…
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Open Letter to Juan Felipe Herrera, Creative Writing Professor,
University of California at Riverside,

Poet Laureate of California & Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,

And more of both than anybody knows. […]

—Lord Byron, RE poet laureate Bob Southey 

“Is Poetry Dead? Not if 45 Official Laureates Are Any Indication” was the title of the New York Times article that featured a large photo of you et al.  However, it is not a question of “dead,” but rather one of having or not having pertinence.  Poetry, in fact, really doesn’t matter today in America because, for one thing, poet laureates and other poets accorded voice are largely paid for and/or promoted by the academic/literary established order to essentially push pabulum verse apt not to offend elementary school children… and easily offended, multiculti-minded adult apparatchiks.  The bland poems read at Obama’s two inaugurals—shame on any poet who stoops so low as to be willing to read a poem only after a politician gives it the okay—serve as examples of such pabulum, as does the verse written by you, Juan Felipe Herrera, cited in that article as a kind of “Whitmanesque tribute”:  “Architects engineers laborers drivers Viva!/Lifters callers crane operators Viva!/Cement mixers cable threaders Viva!”  Whitman could indeed be bland and inncouous in his glory, glory hyperbolic rhetoric.  What is wrong with the New York Times, if it really thinks that line of yours worthy of mention?  Indeed, it sounds as if it might have been taken from the “Communist International,” which for some odd reason omitted to include mention of the millions of hard-working kulaks butchered under the Soviet state.  

In any case, I wish to inform you that I was permanently banned from commenting on the Academy of American Poets’ website in 2007 (see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets.html).  For the transcript of my censored comments, see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets_transcript.html). If unusually curious you decide to actually check it out, you’ll note the absence of racist or sexist epithets and threats.  However, my comments were not PC smiley-faced.  Fortunately, I saved the transcript prior to its being censored.  Poets should fight tooth and nail against such lowly censorship!  Why did your colleague Chancellors not do this?  Well, for one thing, they tend to be the censors!  My comments were offensive to them because I had (and have!) the audacity to criticize established-order poets and their  academic/literary established-order machine.  For that, I have been ostracized into poet oblivion.  But that was certainly to be expected, for poets are hardly at all staunch defenders of freedom of speech.  What they tend to be is politically correct and gregarious, as opposed to steadfast individuals and fervent advocates of free expression.  

Now, do you care about that egregious incident of Academy censorship or will you attempt to justify it like several of your Chancellor colleagues?  Will you stand as an individual to protest against that act of censorship and RISK upsetting your colleague censors?  As a ladder climber, you will likely respond with a NO, though not directly or to me.  You state in the New York Times article that poets “have to float and be transparent and pick up everything we can.”  Well, what the hell does that even mean?  Most poets don’t give a damn about censorship or issues of freedom of expression.  Hell, if they did, they’d end up ostracized like me and with no grants or speaking invitations, let alone tenure at some university.  So, are they supposed to be “transparent” about their apathy?  Well, that would be a good place to start.  So, are well-fed poets like you blinded by the feed or are they being fed because they were already blind?  Perhaps it’s a little of both?  How long have you been turning a blind eye to rise, as you have, in the ranks of the established order?  As far as poets “floating,” I’d much rather sink and not “pick up” any of those titles, grants, and academic perks you’ve received over the years.  

Finally, since the New York Times would never publish this as an opposing point of view, I send it to The Highlander, your university student newspaper.  Will Michael Rios, editor-in-chief,  publish it?  Will he even deign to respond?  Sadly, experience with such newspapers and journalists tells me that likelihood to be quite low.  These things said, how about getting your library to be the first and only library in California willing to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year), a journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence?  LOL…

[Rios never responded, nor did Herrera.]

Juan Felipe Herrera

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From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: editorinchief@highlandernews.org; opinions@highlandernews.org
CC: juan.herrera@ucr.edu
Subject: Criticism and satire of one of your professors...
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 17:55:56 -0400

To Michael Rios, Editor-in-Chief, and Colette King, Opinions Editor, The Highlander:
How about being courageous and publishing the open letter (see below) and cartoon depicting one of your creative writing professors (seehttp://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2014/08/juan-felipe-herrera.html)?  If you are a fervent believer in freedom of expression, you will do so.  If not, you will not do so.  And the University of California is not a great institution for such freedom, as you likely know.  How about asking your librarian to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year) and be the first library in all of California to do so?  After all, where else would students be able to read and view such criticism of their professors et al?  Thanks!

...........................................................................................
No response.
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Open Letter to Juan Herrera, Writing Professor, University of California at Riverside,

Poet Laureate of California& Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets

He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose,

                                                                                                        And more of both than anybody knows. […]

—Lord Byron, RE poet laureate Bob Southey

“Is Poetry Dead? Not if 45 Official Laureates Are Any Indication” was the title of the New York Times article that featured a large photo of you et al.  However, it is not a question of “dead,” but rather one of having or not having pertinence.  Poetry, in fact, really doesn’t matter today in America because, for one thing, poet laureates and other poets accorded voice are largely paid for and/or promoted by the academic/literary established order to essentially push pabulum verse apt not to offend elementary school children… and easily offended, multiculti-minded adults.  The bland poems read at Obama’s two inaugurals—shame on any poet who stoops so low as to be willing to read a poem only after a politician gives it the okay—serve as examples of such pabulum, as does the verse written by you, cited in that article as a kind of “Whitmanesque tribute”:  “Architects engineers laborers drivers Viva!/Lifters callers crane operators Viva!/Cement mixers cable threaders Viva!”  Whitman could indeed be bland and inncouous in his glory, glory hyperbolic rhetoric.  What is wrong with the New York Times, if it really thinks that line of yours worthy of mention?  Indeed, it sounds as if it might have been taken from the “Communist International,” which for some odd reason omitted to include mention of the millions of hard-working kulaks butchered under the Soviet state. 

In any case, I wish to inform you that I was permanently banned from commenting on the Academy of American Poets’ website in 2007 (see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets.html).  For the transcript of my censored comments, see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets_transcript.html). If unusually curious you do actually check it out, you’ll note the absence of racist or sexist epithets and threats.  However, my comments were not PC smiley-faced.  Fortunately, I saved the transcript prior to its being censored.  Poets should fight tooth and nail against such lowly censorship!  Why did your colleague Chancellors not do this?  Well, for one thing, they tend to be the censors!  My comments were offensive to them because I had (and have!) the audacity to criticize established-order poets and their  academic/literary established-order machine.  For that, I have been ostracized into poet oblivion.  But that was certainly to be expected, for poets are hardly at all staunch defenders of freedom of speech.  What they tend to be is politically correct and gregarious, as opposed to steadfast individuals and fervent advocates of free expression. 

Now, do you care about that egregious incident of Academy censorship or will you attempt to justify it like several of your Chancellor colleagues?  Will you stand as an individual to protest against that act of censorship and RISK upsetting your colleague censors?  As a ladder climber, you will likely respond with a NO, though not directly or to me.  You state in the New York Times article that poets “have to float and be transparent and pick up everything we can.”  Well, what the hell does that even mean?  Most poets don’t give a damn about censorship or issues of freedom of expression.  Hell, if they did, they’d end up ostracized like me and with no grants or speaking invitations, let alone tenure at some university.  So, are they supposed to be “transparent” about their apathy?  Well, that would be a good place to start.  So, are well-fed poets like you blinded by the feed or are they being fed because they were already blind?  Perhaps it’s a little of both?  How long have you been turning a blind eye to rise, as you have, in the ranks of the established order?  As far as poets “floating,” I’d much rather sink and not “pick up” any of those titles, grants, and academic perks you’ve received over the years. 

           Finally, since the New York Times would never publish this as an opposing point of view, I send it to The Highlander, your university student newspaper.  Will Michael Rios, editor-in-chief,  publish it?  Sadly, experience with such newspapers and journalists tells me that likelihood to be quite low.  These things said, how about getting your library to be the first and only library in California willing to subscribe to The American Dissident (only $20/year), a journal of literature, democracy, and dissidence?  LOL…

 

 

 

 

 

Frank Bidart

Question:  Will just one poet staff member of the Academy of American Poets respond? 

Answer:  No.

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: jbenka@poets.org; gcoletta@poets.org; adimitrov@poets.org; engleson@poets.org; aference@poets.org; agaleo@poets.org; mgannon@poets.org; pguzman@poets.org; slasner@poets.org; plegault@poets.org; bmerrell@poets.org; mnesmith@poets.org; rquigley@poets.org; ksugar@poets.org
CC: mediarelations@wellesley.edu; fbidart@wellesley.edu
Subject: Bidart Satirized: Open Letter to the Academy of American Poets
Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 14:53:13 -0400

To Staff Member Poets of the Academy of American Poets (Jennifer Benka, Alex Dimitrov, Eric Engleson, Audrey Ference, Mary Gannon, Patricia Guzman, Stacy Lasner, Paul Legault, Billy Merrell, Meghan Nesmith, Gerard Coletta, Amber Galeo, Richard Quigley, Kate Sugar):

Please forward this email to the high-and-mighty Chancellors, since their emails are not available (i.e., Victor Hernández Cruz, Toi Derricotte, Mark Doty, Marilyn Hacker, Juan Felipe Herrera, Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Ron Padgett, Marie Ponsot, Claudia Rankine, Arthur Sze, Anne Waldman, and C. D. Wright).

Might there actually be a freedom-of-expression proponent amongst you and/or the Chancellors today? Might one of you actually be capable of thinking and acting exterior to the group-think, established-order poesy box? Have things changed at all at the Academy of American Poets since it censored and banned me in 2007 from commenting on its forums, or is it still censorship and indifference to censorship as usual? Your likely silence will serve as a response to that question. If just one of you is curious, for further details regarding the censorship incident, including the transcript of the censored comments, consult http://www.theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets.html.

For cartoons of former chancellors Bidart and Hejinian just posted today on my website, consult http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/. This letter with your names will be posted under the Bidart cartoon. Thanks to the Internet, dissident poets like me do have a voice and freedom of speech scorning poets like most or ALL of you can still be publicly denounced. Finally, as Bukowski perceptibly wrote,“Poetry has long been an in-game, a snob game, a game of puzzles and incantations. It still is, and most of its practitioners operate comfortably as professors in our safe and stale universities.”