Cultural Center of Cape Cod

Cultural Center of Cape Cod... Where Hypocrisy Rules!

No response was ever received from the Cultural Center! 

 

From: George Slone <todslone@hotmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 2, 2016 10:28 AM
To: bnash@cultural-center.org
Cc: ahowes@cultural-center.org; lwolk@cultural-center.org; info@cultural-center.org; apiliavsky@gmail.com
Subject: Query for a potential art exhibit
 
To the Cultural Center of Cape Cod:  
        Besides vaunting “inclusivity,” as in “all the arts for all of us,” why not do something truly inclusive by not excluding “some of the arts for some of us”?   Why not exhibit the “Entartete Kunst” series I’ve been working on for the past several years?  It features art unlikely to be included, for example, in the inclusivity mantra of local arts centers because of its critical component (fond) regarding local arts centers themselves, as well as other “muzzlers” of the arts, one might call gatekeeper guardians of forme.  
The watercolor below (see also attached) is included in my “Entartete Kunst” series and features the Cultural Center of Cape Cod (i.e., you, Lauren Wolk, and Angela Howes).  Now, why would you reject such art?   Indeed, by rejecting it, you increase its validity and veracity.  
Well, hopefully, at least, this little missive might actually compel you to think a moment—just a brief, brief moment—out of the local arts box.  

Thank you for your hopeful 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
www.theamericandissident.org
wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com
todslone@hotmail.com
217 Commerce Rd.

Barnstable, MA 02630

 

 

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: ahowes@cultural-center.org
Subject: Query
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2015 18:33:51 -0400

Hi Angela Howes, Publisher, Bass River Press (Cultural Center of Cape Cod):  
Am I perhaps unofficially excluded from all things Cultural Center of Cape Cod for having criticized the Center last year with regards its inclusion statement et al?  If not, I'd love to send a manuscript on poetry pertinent to Martha's Vineyard Island or something more critical.  Please let me know what subjects are taboo, besides the usual.   Please do respond.  Thanks!  
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
www.theamericandissident.org
wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com
todslone@hotmail.com
217 Commerce Rd.
Barnstable, MA 02630

Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 20:03:30 +0000
> From: ahowes@cultural-center.org
> To: todslone@hotmail.com
> Subject: Re: Query

Good afternoon,

The submission process is open to all residents of the Cape or 
Islands. Are you a full or part-time resident of the Cape? If so, you 
are eligible to submit to Bass River Press.

All manuscripts that follow the submission guidelines and contain the 
$20 submission fee will be considered. Bass River Press utilizes a 
blind reading process, so all manuscripts will be reviewed anonymously 
and judged on their merit alone.

There are no restrictions on subject or style, and the poetry does not 
necessarily have to be about the Cape or Islands.

Thank you for your email!

Sincerely,

Angela
From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: ahowes@cultural-center.org
Subject: RE: Query
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 11:57:12 -0400

Hi Angela,
Thanks for your response.  Nothing personal here.  I do not know you.  BUT, as an artist and poet, I do overtly question and challenge.  I'd rather stand for truth, than get published.  Here's a few things for you to contemplate:  

1.  "Merit alone" really makes no sense.  What might the definition of "merit" be for a poem?  Who might the anonymous person or persons be to define the term?  Without a concrete definition, it remains vacuous.  Judging poems is entirely subjective.  But the term "merit" gives it some kind of vague, false objectivity. 

2.  "There are no restrictions on subject or style" is simply NOT true, so why make the statement? Examples of subject restrictions would likely include poems critical of pillars of the Cape Cod community, as well as cultural institutions, including the Cultural Center of Cape Cod from which Bass River Press was hatched.  They'd likely also include personal experience poems critical of the cultural scene on Cape Cod, which tends to abhor criticism and manifest apathy regarding democracy (e.g., issues of freedom of speech and due process).  Also, business and poetry have become far too intimately connected today and here on the Cape.  

3.  Why the $20 submission fee?  That seems quite unusual for a poetry journal.  I publish such a journal and never require a fee.  Besides, with your connections, surely you'd be able to haul in a bundle of taxpayer money from the Mid-Cape Cultural Council, which will NEVER accord my journal a dime because of its dissident stance.  

Finally, ”All the Art for All of US" is a hypocritical logo.  And "a democratic philosophy of inclusion" is downright Orwellian, especially coming from a cultural autocrat like Robert Nash, who has excluded all of my art from his Cultural Center.  How does that jive with that logo?  Most poets (99%) do not dare question and challenge people like Nash and institutions like his.  So when out of the blue a poet like me appears, the only reaction tends to be non-response.  After all, what could Nash possilby respond regarding, for example, criticism of the logo?  Questioning and challenging the Nashs clearly constitutes a hazardous risk to poetry and academic careers.  Sadly, most poets and academics prefer conformity and ladder climbing to bold truth telling.  Well, now you know who I am.  Anyhow, thanks again for the response.

G. Tod

Cultural Center of Cape Cod

For the unsurprising reaction to the broadside below, read the account of my protest at the Cultural Center in celebration of National Poetaster Month, "Nasty: Notes from a Protest and an Encounter with the Executive Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod," here:   https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/nasty-notes-from-a-protest-and-an-encounter-with-the-executive-director-of-the-cultural-center-of-cape-cod/. 

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An American Dissident Free-Speech Broadside (April, 27, 2022)

The American Dissident, a 501 (c)3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy & Dissidence (Publishing Biannually since 1998)

G. Tod Slone, PhD and Founding Editor  todslone@hotmail.com   www.theamericandissident.org   wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com

217 Commerce Rd., Barnstable, MA 02630

“Some of the Arts for Some of Us”

the Castration, Cooptation, and Corralling of Cape Cod Poets

(A “Dangerous” Poet’s “Dangerous” Statement to the Cultural Center of Cape Cod)

Estoit-il lors temps de moy taire? 

—François Villon, “Ballade du Guichetier Garnier”

 

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION is in serious danger of extinction when poets do not give a damn if another poet is ostracized, censored, and/or banned!  That is the sad reality here on Cape Cod, where local poets are far more concerned with government grant money, invitations, publications, tenure, and curatorial/censorial positions, than with FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.   

     The Cultural Center of Cape Cod—its Learning Director Diane Giardi—refused to accord me permission to read at its National Poetry Month “Poetry Marathon.”  Why?  Quite simply, the apparatchiks at the Center are unable to brook hardcore criticism—my criticism! Its motto, “All the Arts for All of Us,” embodies their grotesque hypocrisy. My art and my poetry have been excluded from its Orwellian realm of  INCLUSION IS EXCLUSION. “Join us for an all-day Poetry Marathon in celebration of the beauty and power of poetry in all its forms!”  But certainly not the power of poetry in my form!  

      Why should culture and its apparatchiks be exempt from criticism?  As editor of a poetry journal, I openly ask for criticism and publish the harshest received in each issue.  And I do NOT ostracize and ban!  If my criticism is not on target, then it is up to the Giardis and Demeulenaeres to prove it.  And if they did, I’d have no problem issuing an apology and correction.  How is the Center’s motto not hypocritical?!  Well, the cultural apparatchiks have yet to respond!  And so, as a rejected poet and artist, I stand outside today in protest. 

    In the beginning of this month, April, I wrote the Center’s PR Coordinator, who inspired a poem. Too bad I can’t read it at the “Poetry Marathon”! The PR-Apparatchik chose not to respond.  Imagine, a PR-Coordinator for poetry! On Cape Cod, the Chamber of Commerce has coopted, castrated and corralled the poets!    

To Becky Renaud, PR Coordinator, Cultural Center of Cape Cod:  Well, nothing personal here—I don’t know you.  But my request to read a couple of poems like the ones below at your April open-mic event was simply ignored (i.e., no response) by your Learning Director Diane Giardi.  Sadly, it really does seem that criticism of culture is strictly verboten on Cape Cod.   Please do at least contemplate that thought and what it implies for the state of democracy here in the midst of the tourist industry.  Fear not!  I am neither violent, nor do I ever make threats.  However, I am an ardent critic, especially regarding that which is taboo in the realm of establishment critics.  Finally, perhaps you might convince Mme Giardi to open her closed doors and permit me to read some of my poetry… 

     Oddly, my last solo protest was precisely two years ago on April 27th in front of Sturgis Library in Barnstable, which was celebrating Kurt Vonnegut.  On the sidewalk, I stood with a sign and handed out flyers.  If I had stood on library property, director Lucy Loomis would have called the cops.  Why?  Well, in 2012, she’d permanently banned me from her publicly-funded library w/o warning, w/o due process.  Since she refused to provide a written reason, a poet friend in Georgia, Russell Streur, who has a certain expertise in dealing with corrupt organizations, contacted the Massachusetts State Secretary of Records, which nine months later forced Sturgis to open its records (see sturgisbansdissident.blogspot.com). Only one short email from Loomis to the trustees revealed the reason for the banning: “for the safety of the staff and public” (see theamericandissident.org/orgs/sturgis_library.html).   In vain, I contacted every pertinent organization on Cape Cod, including Cape Cod Poetry Review, Cape Cod Writers Center, Barnstable County Human Rights Commission, Cape Cod Times, Barnstable Patriot, Provincetown Arts, Provincetown Banner, Town Counselors of Barnstable, Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, and the 25 library directors of the Clams Library System (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2017/10/free-speech-organizations-apathetic-and.html).  Not one person gave a damn!  Not one Cape Cod poet, artist, or writer gave a damn!  And yet my very civil rights are still being denied today because I am NOT permitted to attend any cultural or political events held at my neighborhood library, where the “Generative Poetry Workshop” is being run by.paid-poet hacks Bellinger, Miller, Bonanni, and Chen.  Do they care?  Of course not!  Is there one poet here who cares?  Likely not!  Curatorial censorship of expression IS NOT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION!

Vive la liberté de parole, câlisse ! ! !

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The American Dissident, Issue #50

Below is the front cover of the latest issue, as well as the editorial.  Please send poems et al in accord with the FOCUS (see website) for next issue, to be published April/May.  

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Editorial

Dough, Moolah & Art

My position is that even hate speech should be completely and totally allowed in our country.  The most disgusting speech should absolutely be protected.  The ACLU used to hold this viewpoint.  The American Civil Liberties Union, they sued so that legitimate Nazis could march through downtown Skokie.   As soon as you use the word ‘hate,’ that is a very subjective term.  Then all of a sudden it is in the eyes, or it is in the implementation, of whomever has the power.

—Charlie Kirk, assassinated free speech advocate 

Well, this is the fiftieth issue of The American Dissident, published twice annually since 1998.  Yet, to date, only a handful of libraries have been willing to subscribe, despite my having “knocked” on many library doors over the years.  Even my two alma maters, Northeastern University and Middlebury College, refused to subscribe.  And not one of the 38 libraries on Cape Cod, where the journal has been published over the past 15 years, has been willing to subscribe. One of the library directors, Lucy Loomis, even rejected a free subscription offer and banned me without warning and due process (theamericandissident.org/orgs/sturgis_library.html). Another library in Massachusetts banned me for six months, again without warning or due process (theamericandissident.org/orgs/watertown_free_public_library.html).  Are libraries, in general, open to free expression and vigorous debate, cornerstones of a thriving democracy? Certainly not! Are they, in general, open to criticism of libraries and library directors?  Hell no!  Sadly, the American Library Association mirrors that undemocratic modus operandi.  Examine the dialogue de sounds I had with the former director of its Office for Intellectual Freedom (wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2017/04/james-larue.html).  Its magazine, American Libraries, will NOT publish any criticism with its regard.  

Over the decades, I have personally tested the waters of democracy.  For some of those tests, examine theamericandissident.org.  MONEY seems to be the prime controller of libraries, poetry, art and cultural organizations and magazines.  As a flaming example, examine my letter to Rattle in the Literary Letters section and also my essay, “Non-Response and Free Speech” (www.newenglishreview.org/articles/non-response-and-free-speech/). 

    Stemming from the Kirk assassination, a veritable bullet into the heart of freedom of speech and vigorous debate, too much god this, god that has been blasting from the government, as well as the media.  The prime problem with god-belief is the total absence of reason, logic, and fact.  And, of course, it is impossible to convince believers of anything contrary to their god-ideology in the same manner as those into trans-ideology, DEI-ideology, global-warming ideology, socialism/communism-ideology, etc.  

      Positivity on steroids ends up drifting into vacuity on steroids.  Perhaps  in lieu of that, culture ought to be a weapon, not of the establishment, but rather one against the establishment, be it GOD right-wing or DEI left-wing.  Socialist/communists like Mao, Stalin, Castro, and Hitler fully controlled culture, rendering it another weapon in their arsenal of autocratic control. My “Entartete Kunst” series of aquarelles, including the front and back covers of this issue, serves as a reminder of not only Hitler’s control over art, but also that of the establishment in modern-day America.   

     Both the front and back covers illustrate what most poets and artists will not dare do: criticize the local cogs of the academic/literary establishment.  The front cover was incited by an email from the Cultural Center of Cape Cod highlighting its new “Art-Dog-in-Residence” Olive.  A joke?  Well, if so, then my front cover can also be a joke, though one that would no doubt elicit frowns, not chuckles, from the local arts apparatchiks.  Such cultural centers with huge assets and revenues tend to serve, more than anything else, to render culture innocuous and friendly to the socio-political power structure that inevitably backs them and rules over the regions in question.  For them, culture canNOT include criticism of the culture they push, including cycling as somehow culture… and even more so anointments of dogs as “Art-Dog-in-Residence.”  

“We're looking for enthusiastic volunteers to help make the upcoming Second Summer Bike Ride a huge success on Sunday, September 14. 2025! Whether you're passionate about cycling, love supporting community events, or just want to be part of a great cause helping Cape Cod non-profits, we could use your help!”  Even Olive -– the Cultural Center's Art-Dog-in-Residence –- will be helping! Follow her on Instagram: @olive_theartdog.” 

     The Cultural Center of Cape Cod, for example, has $3,000,000 in assets, over $1,000,000 in revenues, and its executive director, Molly Demeulenaere, makes over $80,000 per year. Sadly, MONEY definitely determines the direction so-called “culture” takes. The Center’s motto, “All the Arts for All of Us,” constitutes a typical example of blatant hypocrisy à la DEI, whose reality is UIE (i.e., Unity of thought, Inequality of treatment, and Exclusion).  Some nameless “judge” on the Cause IQ website (www.causeiq.com/organizations/cultural-center-of-cape-cod,043553295/) proclaimed:

The Cultural Center of Cape Cod is more than a building. It is a world-class, inclusive space that cultivates curiosity, creativity, and Cultural exploration through exhibitions, learning, music, and events.

     

  “Inclusive space” or rather BS 101?  The Center’s DEI-Marxist Honcho-in-Residence, executive director Demeulenaere, has refused to permit any of my critical art, including satires with her regard, to hang upon its walls (wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/search?q=cultural+center). Is that somehow INCLUSION? Art—at least that which gets to appear in museums, cultural centers, local newspapers, and libraries—tends overwhelmingly to be that which does not offend the cultural-apparatchik control-freaks like Demeulenaere.  The art/cultural/literary money-machine is so powerful that it is NOT possible for rare dissident artists and writers to pierce it with an iota of hard-core criticism.  That is the state of our UN-democracy in the realm of not just the Center in question, but also of art, literature, and culture in general.  

    As for the back cover of this issue, it illustrates a handful of local arts apparatchiks of the Truro Center for the Arts and their total silence regarding the open letter I’d sent to them and published in this issue.  Salaried arts apparatchiks willingly render art palatable for the leaders of the community and their reigning ideology.  They eliminate any serious questioning and challenging with their regard, as well as with that of their favored artistes.  And so, I examined the diverse arts “leaders,” who simply backed a conclusion I’d already made:  humans, in general, tend overwhelmingly to choose to be in-lockstep team players, as opposed to staunch individuals.  Few will dare go against the grain, rock the boat, and make waves.  In a nutshell, the Faustian pact is MONEY in exchange for willful COOPTATION, CASTRATION, and CORRALLING…

     Finally, thanks much to those who have subscribed and buy issues.  Without that support, The AD would be fully unfunded.  As previously mentioned, over the years, I have not been able to obtain any grants whatsoever.  I’d even paid $500 a while ago to become a nonprofit in the hope that maybe the National Endowment for the Arts would provide a grant, as it does to many other literary journals.  The faceless NEA arts apparatchiks simply commented as briefly as possible: “poor design, low artistic merit”

(theamericandissident.org/orgs/national_endowment_for_the_arts.html).  

Robert M. Nash

Open Letter to Robert M. Nash,

Executive Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod

(From Issue #28, The American Dissident)

 

As a fervent free-speech proponent, who actively tests the waters of democracy here on Cape Cod, I find your statement commendable:
 

The Cultural Center of Cape Cod is a community-based organization that strives to live up to its motto “All the Arts for All of Us” by offering a wide range of events, exhibits, and educational programs.  Everything that happens at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod—everything it does and represents—is predicated upon a democratic philosophy of inclusion, encouragement, and accessibility. Everyone who comes to the Center with an idea, question, or request is given the time, attention, and energy it takes to consider all possibilities and address needs creatively and compassionately.  At the same time, the Center strives to maintain a level of quality in its offerings that puts it among the area’s best galleries and performing arts centers. Its goal is to encourage both excellence and inclusion.
 

Sadly, however, the waters of democracy on the Cape seem to be quite murky.   Might the Cultural Center waters be equally murky?  Does “all the arts” include my art too?  Likely it does NOT.  “Inclusion” pronouncements tend to be fraudulently issued by cultural apparatchiks, poets and artistes of the machine, political hacks, and Cape Cod library directors… you know, as in “libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view,” but somehow manage to permanently exclude points of view like mine.   Director Lucy Loomis, for example, permanently excluded my viewpoints from Sturgis Library without warning or due process, proving the point. 

These things said, how about a show to counter your “Heavenly Bodies:  The Human Form, Transformed” exhibit called “Shaky Community Pillars:  Business-as-Usual” in which artists would submit work critical of local art apparatchiks, librarians, chamber-of-commerce bureaucrats, academics, etc.?   Why is art so dull, predictable, and safe on Cape Cod?  Why is it so smiley-face and lacking in societal criticism?  Why is it rarely, if ever, art against the established order?  Evidently, the latter has been quite successful in coopting it.  “Quality” and “excellence,” two highly subjective terms, are evidently used to dismiss art of a critical nature. 

Can I meet with you to propose an art and literary exhibit that would test the veracity of your “inclusion” statement above?  Your poet curator, Joe Gouveia, has already proven it to be essentially untrue, so I thought I should check with you before drawing my final conclusions.  Thank you for your attention and hopeful response.  I’d be glad to come down to the Center to meet with you.  If I do not hear from you, I will come down to knock on your door.  Thank you for your hopeful attention. 

[No response.  Nothing like excluded inclusion!]

 

Open Letter #2 to Robert M. Nash

So, your non-response leads me to believe that you are commonly thin-skinned regarding valid criticism and also shamefully hypocritical regarding your very own statement, in particular, “All the Arts for All of Us” and “democratic philosophy of inclusion.”  Clearly, you have decided that I am ONE ARTIST NOT FOR YOU and YOUR CENTER, which clearly points to the hypocrisy of your purported “inclusion.”  Why feel compelled to jabber about INCLUSION when you must certainly know in your hearts that by nature you wish to be EXCLUSIONARY?  As a perhaps rare intellectually honest person, I do have great difficulty understanding the COMMON CULTURAL APPARATCHIK.  How about helping me in that endeavor?  When will you be available to meet with me at YOUR Cultural Center… in the name of INCLUSION?  Please do respond!  I am a taxpaying citizen of Barnstable… and you are receiving tax funding. 

[No response.  No accountability. Culture as Usual...]

Richard Blanco

The cartoon below was sketched in 2013.  I publish it now because Director Lauren Wolk (i.e., Woke) of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod highlighted Blanco for National Poetry Month.  Rather highlight a Woke Cuban immigrant, than a rare critical poet who dares criticize the political/cultural machine...

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From: George Slone

Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2021 1:53 PM

To: lwolk@cultural-center.org <lwolk@cultural-center.org>

Cc: bruce childs <bruciea@yahoo.com>; Garry Goude <GarryGoude@mail.com>

Subject: Is silence golden on ole Cape Cod?

 

To Dir. Lauren Wolk, Cultural Center of Cape Cod:

Thanks to you, I just posted the Richard Blanco cartoon I sketched in 2013:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2021/04/richard-blanco.html.  Are you capable of independent thinking?  If so, check it out and why not allow me, a local Cape Cod artist/poet, to exhibit at your Center some of my highly critical poems, cartoons, and aquarelles, regarding the other side, the dark side, of the Cape Cod art/poetry scene?  If not, as I suspect, then you are just another cultural apparatchik… just what Cape Cod needs.  

 

Verlyn Klinkenborg

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A Critical Note on the Writing Industry

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

―George Orwell, "Why I Write"

By the Editor 

Criticism, real criticism, seems to be absent—inexistent—within the writing industry/community in the same darkness as in the arts industry/community. When the chambers of commerce and tax-payer money-distributing state cultural organizations support those industries, evidently that is indicative of a certain writers/artists castration and cooptation. To criticize, really criticize, those industries and their diverse cogs is essentially a prohibited activity, punishable usually by ostracizing, rejection of debate, and perhaps a little sprinkle of ad hominem.  

    The Cape Cod Writers Center brochure, which I picked up at one of the Cape libraries, incited me to write this essay.  First, however, it provoked me to sketch a satirical cartoon on the Center and its Keynote Speaker.  And, of course, as I usually do, I sent it to the targets who, as they usually do, chose not to respond. Silence is golden for those who detest debate (i.e., democracy).

    As a Cape Cod washashore writer and cartoonist, who never took a writing workshop course and whose writing is almost always provoked by vacuous statements issued by “esteemed” and “distinguished” writers of the emerita ilk, I have been excluded (fully ostracized) on the Cape, so I sure as hell know what “inclusion” really means.  In essence, it simply means thou shalt not criticize (question and challenge) the elite hypocrites manning the diverse cultural helms and usually bellowing Diversity, Equity… and, of course, Inclusion.  My lengthy list of bona fides of DEI-Exclusion, besides the Center, includes Mid-Cape Cultural Council, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Cape Cod Times, Provincetown Arts, and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.

    In 2012, I’d written and disseminated a free-speech broadside, “CAPE COD WRITERS CENTER:  Proponent of Censorship, Ostracizing, and Banning.”   Unsurprisingly, it did not elicit a response, nor did the tract distributed in 2014, “J’accuse Cape Cod Poets, Writers, Artists, Journalists, and College Instructors for Grotesque Apathy Regarding Issues of Basic Human Rights and Democracy.”  Again, silence is golden for those who hate debate (i.e., democracy).   

     In any case, the writing statement of privileged Keynote Speaker/Yale University English Lecturer Verlyn Klinkenborg, part of which was highlighted in the cartoon, was amazingly anodyne and was, essentially, the opposite of George Orwell’s statement above, which reflects why I tend to write and, of course, explains my being DEI-excluded. Sadly, writing has largely become another arm of the establishment industry. The writing workshops, writing professors, writing conferences, writing agents, writing scholarships, grants and awards, writing degrees and courses, writing magazines like Poets & Writers and Book Pages are integral parts of it.  Few writers dare criticize the writing industry and those making careers out of it.  Do so… and be prepared for full ostracizing. Below is Klinkenborg’s full statement, as it appears in the Center’s brochure on page 3.  

Why Write

We assume the answer is somehow implicit and that it’s a question barely worth asking. We write to express ourselves, of course, to join the global conversation of writers. We write because it’s culturally acceptable and desirable – an approved activity – and because good writers seem to accrue respect and admiration. But if you let the question – “why write?” – sit with you, you begin to realize there’s something strange and almost indecipherable in it. It’s a radical question – a troubling one that’s always been worth thinking about. My hope in my keynote talk is to look closely at this question – and in doing so, perhaps trouble you in ways you may find useful. 

Why write, according to Klinkenborg, is “a question barely worth asking,” and yet he asks it.  His response likely reflects the writers at the helm of the Center:  “to join the global conversation of writers.”  Yet that is certainly not why I write.  And so somehow I am not part of Klinkenborg’s all-inclusive term “we.”  My first criticism thus would be for writers like Klinkenborg to avoid that term, used perhaps by most political hacks.  As far as those like him, I am certainly not part of the “conversation,” not part of “we.”  The most absurd part of his statement is that “we” (all writers) somehow write to become acceptable, desirable, and approved.  Orwell must surely be rolling in his grave.  I sure am… and yet I’m not even dead… yet.  Soviet-State Poet Gorky must surely be clapping in his grave.  Recall he praised Stalin’s gulag concentration camps.  

     It is aberrant that an educated person like Klinkenborg would argue that so-called “good writers seem to accrue respect and admiration” without wondering or noting by whom. Clearly, the admirers tend to be the privileged establishment academics and other cultural apparatchiks with voice who deify writers, as laureates, honorable, and acclaimed.  If a writer is openly highly critical of the writing/money machine, he or she will certainly not be respected and admired by machine cogs like Klinkenborg.  Most writers learn to obey the prime writer’s taboo:  thou shalt not criticize the hands that feed (e.g., the distributors of tenure, grants, invitations, publications, awards, etc.).  And in the absence of hardcore criticism, as in “let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine” (Thoreau), the writing machine (e.g., Cape Cod Writers Center) will prosper and continue to co-opt and castrate writers… in the darkness of “selling more books on Amazon.”

    Klinkenborg states, “But if you let the question — ‘why write?’ — sit with you, you begin to realize there’s something strange and almost indecipherable in it.”  In reality, perhaps it is something the “we” cannot contemplate, but it is not really strange at all, at least no stranger than why we exercise, why we travel, why we watch the news.  Death obnubilates everything, which is why society (the establishment) likes to ignore that fact. In essence, I write because writing helps me deflect from the reality that death is indeed waiting around the corner to annihilate me and everything I’ve ever written. Society depends on death denial and the rule of insanity.   

        The Center has a definite stench of elitism, which reflects that of writing and art in general.  Its 2023 conference, for example, takes place at “The Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis.”  Self-glorification seems to have become its m.o., as in “our distinguished faculty,” “acclaimed authors teachers,” and “vibrant, nationally recognized literary organization.” A thinking individual would, of course, wonder who made the “distinguished” and “acclaimed” designations and why. Twelve Conference “faculty” designates and three “agents” have been chosen to teach the courses.

     As for the monetary aspect of the Center, pages 17 and 18 of its brochure inform that to attend, the cost is $80; and to listen to Klinkenborg, the cost is an additional $30. The writing courses are as high as $170 (for three sessions).  For a one-hour manuscript evaluation by a chosen “mentor,” the cost is an additional $150. The Center is financed partially, if not largely, by public tax dollars via the Mass Cultural Council and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.  The Cape Cod 5 Cents Savings Bank is also a funder.  A few of the course titles that stand out, at least for me, include “Selling More Books on Amazon,” “Query Killers,” “Agent Panel,” and “Poetic Form:  Thinking inside the Box.” The last one seems to sadly incarnate poets and writers today.  As for “Tone in Poetry,” another course, I wrote the following poem a decade ago.  Do you think the Center would like it?  Do you think it would like me to read it at the Conference and discuss the need for real criticism and debate in the field of writing?  Well, I sent this essay to the Center.  No response was ever received… 

The Tone Is the Message Is the Tone

I like what you’re saying but

you’ve got the wrong tone,

wrote an editor, then

another and another and another.

Grab a flap of flab from the belly literati,

twist and tug, twist and pull, 

bring forth hesitant, repressed indignation.

If you want to increase your congregation,

replied yet another… tin soldier 

of the vast ocean army of invincibility,

you’ve got to smoothen out 

the wrinkles in your voice.

Speak rude truth, and rage, rage 

through the dying light of the establishment,

and educe ineluctably 

the buried anger of crushed individuality.

I’d like to publish some of your work, 

wrote another tin man, though

disguised in mask of freethinker. 

You make some very interesting points, 

but I don’t think our niche of readers 

would appreciate your peculiar bluntness.

With the ax, fall revenues,

with the sword, tumble advertising dollars,

with the shotgun, shrink subscribers,

with the right tone, wane truth and justice,

with the pen of thin skin, butchery behind charade.

I’d like to see more of you in our publication,

wrote another editor,

but your discourse needs to be more civil.

It even makes me feel a bit uncomfortable,

so I could imagine our audience might also feel that way.

Kill the voice and the word be sameness

Kill the discrepancy and business be usual

Kill the messenger and the message be no longer

I think what you need is to add a little humor,

wrote a friend, 

to get more people on your bandwagon, then

you could turn the blade on your laughing readers.

Ever humorless, though, and angry, raucous and uncivil,

fed with the fodder of consistency on how to build a constituency, 

I still choose the coffin of anonymity…