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The above cartoon I sketched a year ago. For some reason, the editor of Provincetown Arts, Chris Busa, who HATES debate and alt-opinions, sent me an email yesterday (2/4/2020) with the Subject: "{Virus?} RE: Mary Gannon featured in a new essay and P. Maudit cartoon." No message was included with the exception of "This is a message from the MailScanner E-Mail Virus Protection Service. The original e-mail attachment "8119-17893_City_Report.doc" was believed to be infected by a virus and has been replaced by this warning message [,,,]"
So, thanks to Busa I just posted the cartoon and also sent him the following message: "Yes, definitely a VIRUS, one that will mortally affect your very limited ability to deal with hardcore reality criticism! By the way, I am not at all violent. I do not bite. Ah, but I am a critic, not a publicist disguised as a critic. Do you understand the difference? Probably and sadly, you likely do not. Anyhow, good to hear from you."
One must wonder how such frail characters like Busa manage to become editors. Anyhow...
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Notes from the Literary Landscape: Hot Air in the Blimp
A Review of an “Interview” (i.e., Literary Advertisement)
The writing establishment was perhaps best reflected by Poets & Writers magazine (P$W), which incarnated perhaps better than any other periodical, even more so than Poetry, the corporate carcinoma. For a critic like me, it would be difficult to find just one noteworthy article or interview in any issue of P$W not begging for the sledgehammer. Indeed, the magazine had proven to be an excellent source of grist.
In its latest issue, my attention was drawn to a photograph of an authoritarian-looking woman, glowing in self-contented grandeur—Mary Gannon, former associate director and director of content for the Academy of American Poets. In the world of poetry, euphemism had a particularly foul odor. What was a director of content, after all, if not a director of censorship, a Minerva-goddess gatekeeper? As an example, the Academy censored (removed) my comments and essentially banned me from expressing my point of view on its publicly-funded website. The term “censorship” seemed not to have lost its negative tinge, which explained the euphemisms, moderation and director of content.
Today, Gannon was the new executive director of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). Prior to her stint at the Academy, she had been editorial director of… P&W and was (surprise!) married to its current editor-in-chief Kevin Larimer. Had the interviewer, Cat Richardson, editor-in-chief of Bodega magazine (“Your literary corner store”), somehow presented an objective and critical interview or just another thinly-disguised promotional advertisement? Imagine if Cat had posed a few tough (i.e., uncomfortable) questions. Would Larimer have published her interview of his wife?
So, keep it clean, Cat! Keep it banal, Cat! Keep it lit-as-usual, Cat! And, of course, Cat had no problem at all doing that. “What is CLMP’s most important role?” was the first question she asked Gannon, who responded:
Our main role is to help raise the organizational capacity of literary magazines and presses and to support them in whatever way that they need.
Now, what did “organizational capacity” mean? Likely, it was corporate-speak for money potential. CLMP’s website seemed to highlight money and presented CLMP as a publishing business, where membership fees, dues, and more dues form the key to its existence.
CLMP offers membership to publishers in three categories: Full, Associate, and Chapbook/Zine Publisher. What all CLMP publishers have in common is a focus on publishing literature and a commitment to doing so ethically.
What did publishing literature “ethically” even mean? Was it ethical to publish praise of ones wife? Or was that a kind of unethical nepotism? Was it ethical to criticize CLMP and its diverse literary apparatchiks, those self-appointed gatekeepers of ethics? Was it ethical to buffer an organization spewing nebulous terms like “ethics” and “literary democracy,” as in “Support literary democracy donate to CLMP!” But what was “literary democracy”? Sounded nice! But the reality—the reality of those like Gannon and Larimer—was of course not so nice and not so democratic, but rather undemocratic censorship, banning and ostracizing of those who dared go against the grain of the literary establishment. It was one of support for poets and writers who chose literary careerism over freedom of expression.
Gannon not only looked like an executive apparatchik, but she talked like one: “Intentional communication is a really valuable thing to help facilitate.” Now, what did that mean? Clearly, my critique was a concrete example of “intentional communication,” but would Gannon help facilitate it? Would her husband publish it? Oh, yeah, I forgot fees and dues.
We want to continue to make those spaces on a national level for members to collaborate, leverage one another’s strengths, and work toward this higher goal of making sure that literature thrives.
In fact, everything Gannon said in Cat’s rather short interview demanded clarification, if not outright challenge. Sadly, Cat failed royally in that endeavor. What kind of literature did Gannon want to survive? Smiley-face lit? PC lit? See-no-evil/hear-no-evil lit? Hagiography lit like the kind her husband adored? Certainly! But what about lit that sledgehammered that kind of lit with hardcore, no-holds-barred, unapproved criticism? Certainly not!
Cat then posed question #2: “What are the most significant needs of small presses and literary magazines right now?” Before I examined the response, I contemplated a possible answer regarding the literary journal I published: finding rare poets and writers who dared stand up and write against the academic/literary establishment, its icons and organizations… including CLMP. Now, how did Gannon respond to the question? Money, money, money? Well, yes: “distribution” and “fund-raising.” Sure, distribution was nice, but I’d reached the point of not really giving a damn about it. Truth telling. That was the prime objective of my magazine, not getting on the shelves of Barnes & Nobles and all the libraries that knee-jerk rejected it. That was certainly something that a businesswoman like Gannon likely could not grasp. And how sad it was when business (corporate) mentalities took control of poetry and art. I read through the blather, through her blather, the vacuous elation, and of course the obligatory terms “inclusive” and “diversity” eventually formed part of it.
Having said that, it’s also a really exciting time for independent and small publishing, because in the wake of the conglomeration of big publishers, it has created space for innovative, dedicated people to put together these projects that connect writers with audiences and make sure that literature is inclusive. Not to say that the big publishers aren’t also putting beautiful books and magazines into the world, but for a healthy ecosystem you need diversity. And I think that’s where the smaller publishers come into play.
Now, how “inclusive” were the many magazines that advertised in P$W or in NewPages? To find one, just one magazine open to a critical essay like this one would have been no less than miraculous! Ah, but “inclusive” had become Orwellian Newspeak for exclusive, as in “seeking essays from women of all ages, races, and sexual orientations who have experienced bullying” (Anthology: Relational Aggression in Females), “seeking personal essays from women of all ages” (Change of Life), “ inviting young, female-identified writers and artists” (Girls Right the World), “poetry by students currently enrolled in graduate or undergraduate programs worldwide” (Mistake House Magazine), “seeks submissions of well-groomed poetry” (The Ravens Perch), and “devoted to sharing the literary voice of black women” (Blackberry: A Magazine). Inclusive?
The real elephant in the room of “inclusivity” was not sex, age, or skin color, but rather harsh critique, the kind that the local chamber-of-commerce-tourist-industry-cultural-council-literary-festival complex (e.g., the Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown) could not bear. Now, if indeed “you need diversity” for a “healthy ecosystem,” then why was hard-core criticism not part of it? Evidently, the reason was that the lit milieu was one of ubiquitous thin skin and, especially, rampant backslapping and self-congratulating, the kind P$W advertised ad nauseam…
