Poetry Society of America

Tim Green

The following was created in 2009.

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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.

Lucy Loomis

The following cartoon was sketched in 2011.  I post it now because I decided out of the blue this morning to compile a book on the Sturgis Library banning incident in 2012.

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P. Carl

Robin Abrahams

Dan Kennedy

Professors as Information Censors

On a l’impression que le dessin est de moins en moins toléré, que c’est une forme d’expression qui, même au sein des médias, est encombrante. Un peu trop atypique, un peu trop libre…  Même dans les grands journaux, les dessins deviennent extrêmement consensuels, il n’y a pas beaucoup de prise de risque éditoriale, les dessins deviennent un peu insipides.  [You get the impression that cartooning has become less and less tolerated, that it’s a form of expression which, even in the heart of the media, is burdensome.  A bit too uncommon, a little too free…  Even in the big newspapers, cartoons have become extremely consensual, there’s not much editorial risk taking, the cartoons become a bit insipid.  —trans gts]

—Riss, editor of Charlie Hebdo

It is the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre.  Are Northeastern University students aware of that?  As an alumnus of NU and out of respect for the murdered cartoonists, I request that the student editors of The Huntington News override the decision made by one of their professors, Dan Kennedy, to censor information.  Indeed, Professor Kennedy refused to circulate to his students a cartoon (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/democracy-under-siege.html), which I’d sketched satirizing The Boston Globe.  I’d sent it to the columnists depicted in the cartoon, as well as to the editor and several other journalists.  In a separate email, I’d also sent it to Professor Kennedy, who teaches in the School of Journalism.

To Professor Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University:

It is highly likely you will choose NOT to present the attached cartoon to your Northeastern University journalist students… and that would represent in a nutshell your problem as a professor of journalism.  Why not address it, instead of ignoring it?  

Professor Kennedy was the only one who responded.  For that, I praise him.  From my experience, The Boston Globe tends to ignore/censor hardcore criticism with its regard, something that clearly ought to be a focus for professors of journalism.  Professor Kennedy’s response was brief.

Hi, George —

I like the one of me and Renée Loth much better.

No, I won't be presenting it to my students. It's puerile.

DK

Apropos, the other cartoon, which Professor Kennedy refers to and also refused to circulate amongst his students can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/renee-loth-and-dan-kennedy.html.  I just posted it.  “Oh, my God, this cartoon is fantastic,” had written the professor, but again he would not circulate it amongst his students.  In 2013, I’d posted a different cartoon again satirizing the professor, and again he would not circulate it amongst his students (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2013/07/rosanna-cavannah-and-dan-kennedy.html).  Moreover, last June I’d posted an “Open Letter to Northeastern University School of Journalism.”  Not one NU professor would circulate the letter to his or her students.  In fact, The Huntington News would not respond.  It can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/06/northeastern-university-school-of.html.  

In any case, rather than issue a general kill-the-messenger message-killing epithet, “puerile,” why not instead contemplate precisely what points are made in the cartoon, then via reason and fact prove the points faulty.  That should be precisely what a professor and any thinking individual does.  But when one is bound by ideology and/or career connections, one tends NOT to do that.  Sadly, to dismiss a message that one does not like with a simple epithet has become a common practice today.  Hopefully, professors are not teaching and encouraging it.  

Was Professor Kennedy’s a worthy response?  Shouldn’t his students be able to make their own determinations?  Should professors serve as academic censors of information?  In essence, would the cartoon NOT encourage debate amongst students of journalism?  And isn’t vigorous debate a prime cornerstone of a thriving democracy, even at a school of journalism?  For a professor to dismiss the clear message in the cartoon as “puerile” is troubling.  

How perchance is it “puerile,” for example, to openly criticize a highly-biased newspaper’s refusal to publish anything highly critical of its editor?  How perchance is it “puerile” to quote the puerile statements of two of its columnists, while simultaneously presenting the newspaper’s latest self-vaunting focus, “Democracy Under Siege”?  Indeed, how does publishing such puerile columns like “Miss Conduct” and “Love Letters” serve to solve the democracy-under-siege problem evoked by the Boston Globe?  How does the latter’s rejection of hardcore criticism/satire like that presented in the cartoon solve the democracy-under-siege problem?  How is it possible that Professor Kennedy seems incapable of grasping these fundamental questions?   Might the Boston Globe constitute one of the hands feeding him?  Any careerist, academic or other, knows and obeys the basic career taboo:  thou shalt not bite the hands that feed.  

How is it “puerile” to criticize/satirize the Boston Globe as a likely contributor to the democracy-under-siege problem?  Might Professor Kennedy (like him or not is irrelevant!) also be a contributor to the problem?  If so, that would explain his dismissal of the satire as “puerile,” thus not worthy of his students’ attention.  Newspapers, like the Boston Globe, publish satirical cartoons, but not when the satire targets them.  With good-taste censors like Professor Kennedy in academic positions and Globe Editor McGrory in journalism positions, democracy will remain under siege.  In fact, one must wonder what Brian McGrory and his journalist colleagues think democracy is.  Do they think it is implementation of ideology, restriction of freedom of expression, and limited debate in accord with the parameters of their particular ideology?  

Finally, for several decades now, as a Northeastern alumnus, I have tried in vain to get the library directors at the university to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal devoted to literature, democracy and dissidence.   So, how can Northeastern, year after year, ask me to contribute money?  Well, instead, I will now contribute a free subscription, but only if the librarian in charge assures that issues will be placed on the shelf and not thrown into the garbage.  The cartoon in question will appear in the next issue of the journal due out in April.  If the librarian in charge accepts the offer, then Professor Kennedy’s students will be able to circumvent his censorship of information and make their own determinations as to the worthiness or unworthiness of that particular expression of freedom of speech.  And the same goes, if the student newspaper editor decides to publish it.  

The American Dissident, unlike the bulk of journals and newspapers, not only brooks tough criticism regarding it and its editor (me), but encourages and publishes the harshest received in each and every issue.  How sad that the Boston Globe rejects that modus operandi, de facto preferring “democracy under siege.”  How about The Huntington News?  Journalism constitutes a part of the democracy-under-siege problem in America.   If it continues to deny that fact, as it tends to do, how can that possibly help resolve the problem?  If student journalists continue in that darkness, how can that help resolve the problem?   In the realm of journalism, careerism and ideology, which ineluctably oppose truth and reason, constitute two of the prime culprits.  

Riss concludes (see above quote), “I think that free expression is in itself a sufficiently fundamental value, which has a future if cartoonists have the courage to inject into their drawings courage and strength.  If it’s only to present nice cartoons which upset nobody, they might as well not sketch at all.”  [« Je pense que la liberté d’expression est déjà une valeur fondamentale suffisante.  Ce genre a de l’avenir si les dessinateurs ont le courage de donner à leur dessin de la force. Si c’est juste pour faire de l’illustration et des dessins gentils qui ne dérangent personne, autant ne rien dessiner du tout » —trans gts]

In sincerity, again, I thank Professor Kennedy for responding… because from his brief criticism, I was inspired to write this essay.  Please, professors, avoid the epithets and embrace vigorous debate and freedom of expression, democracy’s cornerstones.