Rita Dove

In celebration of National Poetaster Month, below are three cartoons I sketched in 2004, 2006, and 2007.  Academic black-privileged Rita Dove of course did respond to any of the cartoons.  Also, below is an email I sent in 2007.  No response was ever received.  What I dislike about those like Dove, black or white, is how easily they fit into the establishment and how unlikely they'll ever bite the numerous hands feeding them.  For me, a poet should be a raw truth teller, not an academic careerist.  But then again, I guess I'm quite different.  BTW, I decided to post the three cartoons now after receiving an email from the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, which is highlighting Dove and one of her rather typically vacuous statements:  “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”  It aberrantly also highlights ex-president ("It depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.") Bill Clinton's vacuous statement:  "National Poetry Month offers us a welcome opportunity to celebrate not only the unsurpassed body of literature produced by our poets in the past, but also the vitality and diversity of voices reflected in the works of today's American poetry.”  When poetry is backed by hacks, you know damn well that poetry is fucked.  The Cultural Center, whose motto is "All the Arts for All of Us," will not unsurprisingly include my art.  Orwellian at its finest!  Long live the curating (censoring!) cultural apparatchiks!  

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Date:	Tue, 4 Dec 2007 17:41:44 -0800 (PST)
From:	"George Slone" <todslone@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book  Add Mobile Alert
Subject:	Academy censorship... is Rita Dove a knowing partisan?
To:	rr5m@virginia.edu, jobrien@virginia.edu, jep6p@virginia.edu, sdf8x@virginia.edu, jrf2j@virginia.edu, shb7f@virginia.edu, ggc8n@virginia.edu, derrico@virginia.edu

Since I cannot locate Prof. Rita Dove's email on your webpage, I am contacting you, her colleagues, in the hope that maybe one of you might actually be open to communication from an ardent poet critic of the academic/literary established order, of which you all belong.  Please either forward her email or forward this email to her.  Thank you for your attention.  BTW, you might like to subscribe to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit literary journal devoted to critical writing against the machine, as in "let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine" (Thoreau).  Your students would certainly (hopefully!) find it refreshing in its dissident perspective.  

G. Tod Slone, Ed.

The American Dissident

 

Dear Prof. Dove: 

I doubt you'll ever respond, (Prof. Snyder has yet to respond), but I like to cover my bases, so to speak and just found your email this evening.  The Academy of American Poets censored (banned) me from participating on its online forums last July.  My assumption is that you approve of this censorship.  For the details, including the banned transcript, see www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm.  In July, I contacted each staff member of the Academy and have yet to receive a response or apology.  

BTW, you might like to subscribe to The American Dissident.  Your students would likely find it refreshing because of its strong stance against the academic/literary established order, which of course includes you and your poet chancellor friends.  BUT it would take a very strong person to accept such critique.  To date, I've only found two such poet professors, one of whom invited me to speak before one of his English classes ( Endicott College ).  BTW, I have a doctorate and, when employed teach as a professor.  BUT when employed, unlike the bulk of professors in America , I am actively, unabashedly, and courageously vocal, so often find myself unemployed.  

 

Sincerely,

G. Tod Slone, Ed.

The American Dissident

www.theamericandissident.org

1837 Main St.

Concord, Ma 01742

PC and Poetry; Ad Hominem Redux and Orthodoxy

For The American Dissident, Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence, go to http://www.theamericandissident.org/.


Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.
—George Orwell

The above satirical sketch, a proposed Rattle cover, was inspired by a post-card advertisement for Rattle, which I received from Rattle, quite unoriginally featuring, given today's PC grip on the nation's psyche, Afro-American Poets. Perhaps a little more original would have been Multi-Millionaire Afro-American Poets, featuring, for example, Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, and maybe Amiri Baraka. Ah, but that would have countered the prevailing PC orthodoxy.

First, for Tim Green, salaried editor of Rattle, allow me to present myself. I have a doctorate from the Universite de Nantes (France) and have spent much of my adult life teaching college courses in both America and France, sometimes on the tenure track, sometimes off it. Prior to that I did spend a number of years doing other things including welding at a shipyard, monitoring radiation at a sub base, carpentry, bank examining for the FDIC, translating for the 24 Heures du Mans auto race, check proofing for a bank, etc. True, I can’t hold a job. True, I tend to speak where others tend to wear muzzles. True, the others will and have called me names because I tend to speak when they tend to wear muzzles. And since you wondered, I live in Concord, Massachusetts. That’s no secret.

Second, thanks for manifesting the courage to post criticism of Rattle and you on your site: http://timothy-green.org/blog/2009/06/a-real-caricature. My experience indicates most literary editors would not manifest similar courage and openness to vigorous debate, democracy’s cornerstone. Agni’s editor recently told me he would not. And I told him that was the crux of the problem. If you want proof of that, just ask, though I will soon be doing a blog entry on that exchange.

ALL of what you write on your blog is ad hominem-type empty rhetoric. Even the title of it is thinly-veiled ad hominem: “A Real Caricature.” If only somehow someday you might actually discover that has been your modus operandi, you could make a giant leap forward intellectually. You manage in that rather long blog entry to produce not one cogent argument against any arguments I put forth anywhere, including in the satirical sketch on Rattle. You rely on name calling and “we” or “the general consensus.” BTW, what is your educational background? How did your teachers and/or professors fail to educate you in the importance of logical argumentation, as opposed to facile ad hominem (name calling) and herd mentality, as in “the general concensus”?

As previously mentioned, ad hominem does seem to have become a rather common modus operandi adopted by educated people today, that is, when their particular orthodoxies are questioned and challenged. Orthodoxy by nature must run counter to truth. The PC orthodoxy (e.g., the diversity mantra) you seem to espouse runs counter to truth. It is not at all difficult to find fault with any orthodoxy. My satirical sketch on Rattle questions and challenges the PC orthodoxy. Since you did not seem to understand it, I’ll briefly explain it: You and Rattle lack the courage to expose the failings of that orthodoxy, the failings in its logic. In other words, if it’s fine to do an issue on black poets, then why is it NOT fine to do an issue on white poets, using the words WHITE POETS? I thought that would be quite simple, that anyone could understand it… and even agree with it. But logic always fails with the orthodox.

You call me “tertiary character, “crated dog” with “ineffectual yapping,” and on and on and on. Did you take a course on cutesy ad hominem metaphorical combinations in college? Is that what they’re teaching today? Try raising yourself above such facile, childish rhetoric. It’s nothing but base name calling. It’s shooting the messenger in an effort to dismiss his message or messages. Try thinking instead! It is far too easy to fall into the ad hominem mind trap, which is why I make a conscious effort to try to avoid it. And I’m first to admit that I’m not always successful in that endeavor. However, never have I written an essay so utterly replete with ad hominem as your blog entry! Sadly, parents today do not seem to be teaching their children that “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me.” Instead, they’ve been teaching them to lack spine and cry “offensive!” regarding anything they do not like. This is PC-encouraged behavior. It is your behavior. For more on ad hominem and for more names I’ve been called, see www.theamericandissident.org/AdHominem.htm. Henry Miller, whom I’m sure you admire, wrote “He [man] has invented a complete catalogue of vile and scabrous epithets which he is ever ready to sling at those who think and act differently, that is, think and act as he himself would like to, if he had the courage.”

Do open your mind and take a look at the war PC orthodoxy, your orthodoxy, is currently waging on college campuses across the nation against the First Amendment and vigorous debate. See thefire.org. The evidence is there for you to examine. No ad hominem. Just evidence. BTW and fortunately, the PC orthodoxy has been losing that battle in the nation’s courts of law.

It is sad that you would dismiss vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy, as a mere “catch phrase.” It is sad because you’ve gone through the entire educational process in America only to end up with that scornful idea of democracy in your head. Why is Megan, whoever she might be, so fearful and/or disdainful of discussion (i.e., vigorous debate, democracy’s cornerstone)? What is the point of debating with someone who agrees with ones opinions? None at all. We need to debate with those possessing different opinions. Even CNN and Fox know that. Wake up, Megan, or is it too late?

Regarding your “general concensus” comment, Tim, did you have statistics to support it? Far too many educated persons think that if the “general concensus” is what they speak, they are therefore right. But in effect, that is simply a manifestation of the herd mentality. For you, I cite Henrik Ibsen, “The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent man must wage war.”

BTW, I cite well-known authors, now and then, here and there, who share my ideas because more often than not those like you will generally never belittle via ad hominem well-known authors.

What you state regarding my alleged “false accusations” is really nothing short of outright prevarication. Shame on you! You clearly know that those “accusations” were two simple errors, not purposefully made at all, which I did rectify and for which you thanked me. If you want proof of that assertion, let me know, since I’ve saved all of our correspondence. Again, rather than challenging any of the ideas presented in that Best American Poetry review of mine, which you evidently liked at the time, but didn’t have the courage to publish in the print journal, you seek to divert attention from them. It is amazing that you would include this link www.theamericandissident.org/Reviews-Rattle.htm, as if it were somehow evidence against me. Yet it serves as clear evidence against you, and you cannot even see it. Wow. “Huffy” you call me. You can’t resist, can you? It’s built into your mind. How sad. Try refuting this blog comment w/o resorting to any ad hominem-type rhetoric. Go on. Just see if you can do it. I bet you can’t… because you wouldn’t have anything to say.

You state I state that “The poetry world is run by a bunch of academic/PC gatekeepers, too comfortable in their cushy jobs to be willing to rock the boat. There’s a small kernel of truth to it…” In effect, that’s basically right, though not in my words. The poetry world has become largely co-opted by the bourgeois mentality of proper taste and aesthetics. Why are all, or almost all, of the Academy of American Poets chancellors tenured professors living the bourgeois dream of job security and monetary comfort? My arguments must be pretty damn potent to get someone like you to actually admit to a miniscule “kernel of truth” in them! Thank you for the admission. Then you ad more ad hominem, more name calling (e.g., “love-child of Chatty-Cathy and the Energizer Bunny”).

What matters to me, and evidently not to you, is not the color of the poet’s skin, or the poet’s nationality, or the poet’s sexual orientation, but rather whether or not the poet actually has the guts to stand up as an individual and speak truth to power, as opposed to sitting as a herd member of a protected species kissing power’s ass. For you, just call it Afro-American, and it must inevitably be good.

Finally, you stated “In any event, I do appreciate debate, and your vigor -- although from what I gather you probably want to debate that, haha...” And you are right that I would debate that because this has not been a debate of ideas at all. The only thing you’ve offered is vacuous name calling. In that sense, you behave as a child. I’m sort of surprised.

Poets & Writers

 

The following counter-editorial was written in 2020.  

I, Poet Apostate

A Critique of a Sad, Highly Predictable Editorial

In lockstep is the evident modus operandi of Poets & Writers magazine.  If in lockstep, you might get published/promoted/publicized in that periodical.  Out of lockstep, like me, and you will likely be blacklisted by it.  As an obvious arm of the academic/literary establishment, Poets & Writers encourages groupthink, certainly not individualthink!  

“Poets & Writers Stands in Solidarity With the Black Community," the editorial in question, is an unoriginal echo of those afflicted with white-guilt and successfully indoctrinated in the black good/white bad narrative.  Was George Floyd really a heroic figure, who had cleaned up his criminal past to lead an honorable present?  For a factual analysis regarding the BLM martyr meme, examine www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/candace-owens-video-i-do-not-support-george-floyd-frontpagemagcom/.  

Elliot Figman, Executive Director, and Amy Berkower, President of the Board of Directors, both white, wrote the vapid, virtue-signaling editorial.  Regarding the title of the editorial, did they discuss whether or not to use “take a knee” instead of “stand in”?  Clearly, they and their magazine serve one purpose:  the monetization—cooptation and castration—of poetry and writing.  In essence, they and their magazine serve as an ideologically-driven Pravda for the poetry and writing industry.  They are not courageous individuals; they are cowardly conformists.  Is that what poets and writers should be today?  Apparently so.  Poets and writers must think CAREER, not bold TRUTH-TELLING—the two can never go together.  To do that, they must conform to the reigning ideology in much the same way that poet Gorky, who praised the gulags, had done in the former Soviet Union.  

In their editorial, the authors, unoriginally, call for “an end to systemic racism.”  But is there really “systemic racism” in America today, or is that simply a mindless talking point of the indoctrinated?  Has not Affirmative Action accorded blacks privilege over whites?  Why is the accusation of “systemic racism” rarely, if ever at all, supported with factual evidence and statistics?  Are inconvenient facts and statistics now simply (simple-mindedly) dismissed as right-wing, Nazi, racist, white nationalist talking points?  ALL the evidence should be examined, not just evidence that supports the narrative!  “The Truth about Interracial Violent Crime” and "The Truth About Police Violence and Race" present some rather inconvenient (i.e., against the narrative) statistics.  

“These killings come during a pandemic that disproportionately afflicts communities of color,” state the authors.  Again, no statistics needed when in lockstep with the narrative.  The authors do not even address precisely how the virus is somehow in cahoots with “systemic racism.”  Are black rioters and looters not social distancing, while somehow white rioters and looters are?  Many possible reasons likely exist if indeed blacks are afflicted more than whites.  Proclaiming “systemic racism” does not explain everything, and yet for those making the proclamation somehow it does, especially in the Age of Ideology, which has evidently replaced the Age of Reason.  

“That members of these same communities [i.e., POC communities] are disproportionately risking their lives as essential workers only adds to the outrage,” argue the authors again without an iota of statistical support to back the assertion!  Perhaps we have now also entered the Age of Groupthink Writing.  “At Poets & Writers, we are reflecting on how to respond to these injustices. This begins with the acknowledgement that, although we have a diverse staff, most of our leaders and Board members are white,” state the authors.  But why should the right skin color be more important  than courageous truth telling, black or white-skinned?  Rare truth-tellers, black or white-skinned, who question and challenge those of the in-lockstep herd, are far more interested in speaking the “rude truth” than holding on to their writing careers.  “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions,” declared Ralph Waldo Emerson.  “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.”  Well, clearly Poets & Writers is one of those “dead institutions” and definitely “capitulates to badges and names”!  

“Our silence [regarding alleged racism] has compromised our mission,” state the authors.  “We serve writers because they help us understand ourselves and our times, deepen our capacity for empathy, and imagine a better future.”  And yet the writers they tend to publish serve them and their writing industry.  “A better future”?  A future of what?  More groupthink?  More groupchant?  More in lockstep?  More white-shaming and more black victimization?  Sounds like a nightmare!  

“To accomplish our mission, we must heighten our understanding of the unique struggles that Black writers face in the publishing industry and literary world due to racism and implicit bias,” argue the authors.  And yet always there are black-skinned writers featured in Poets & Writers magazine.  Never are there counter-narrative rude truth-telling writers!  How does that constitute “unique struggles” by black writers “in the publishing industry and literary world”?  America has had black poet laureates, black prize-winning writers, and black university writing professor racists.  Cite laureates Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, Robert Hayden, Joy Harjo, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, etc.   But then there’s the confession: “most of our leaders and Board members are white.”

So, why then haven’t the two white authors, Figman and Berkower, volunteered to step down, so that two black-skinned people, competent or incompetent (“What difference does it make?”), can take their places?  Money!  

“Poets & Writers is committed to becoming an anti-racist organization that models the principles of equity and inclusion,” contend the two authors.  Sadly, equity in today’s PC-Orwellian world means inequity, while inclusion means exclusion.  Certainly, I have been excluded from commenting by the P&W equity and inclusion censors!  Ah, but I am white, therefore insignificant in the new age of skin-color is more important than anything else.  Nevertheless, I, poet apostate, dare choose TRUTH over career, TRUTH over skin-color predilection, and TRUTH over publication in Poets & Writers magazine.  Now, would the latter publish this counter op-ed as an opportunity for debate?  Will it even respond to it?  The likelihood of that is close to nil… and that in a nutshell is the crux of the P&W problem, not a paucity of correct skin color on its Board of Directors…

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From: George Slone

Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 7:09 PM

To: elliot@pw.org <elliot@pw.org>; aberkower@writershouse.com <aberkower@writershouse.com>

Cc: editor@pw.org <editor@pw.org>

Subject: Your astonishing editorial

 

To Executive Director Elliot Figman and President of the Board of Directors Amy Berkower, as well as Editor in Chief Kevin Larimer, Senior Editor Melissa Faliveno, Assoc. Ed. Dana Isokawa, Poets & Writers Inc.:  

Below is my counter-essay vis-a-vis your astonishing editorial.  Please publish it in the next issue of Poets & Writers.  If not, then I shall try other literary brick walls.  Please do let me know of your decision.  Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely, 

G. Tod Slone (PhD—Université 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

NO RESPONSE!

Frank Bidart

Open Letter to Poetry Professor Frank Bidart

Why the Need for Hullabaloo in the Poetry Milieu?

It is truly amazing that few, very few if any, intellectuals question the literary prizes and wonder what might be the biases of the faceless judges awarding them.  In the world of establishment literature, just that thought alone constitutes blasphemy and makes this essay unpublishable.  Raise the thought and be prepared for full ostracizing.  When it comes to the literary prizes, journalists and literati are an open-wide-and-swallow groupthink mentality.  “Finally a comic novel gets a Pulitzer Prize.  It’s about time,” noted the Washington Post; “If we valued black art, Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer would have been for literature,” praised the Guardian; “Wellesley College professor wins prize for poetry,” stated the Boston Globe. 

Poet Charles Bukowski, one of the few known poets who dared criticize the poetry establishment, 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.”  

So, Professor Frank Bidart, do you think your Wellesley College poetry students can understand the implications inherent in that statement?  In fact, are you yourself capable of understanding them?  And why didn’t Bukowski ever win the Pulitzer Prize?  The key to independent thinking is literary dissection, certainly not literary hullabaloo.  In his Boston Globe piece, Martin Finucane echoed that you, the new Pulitzer Prize-winner for poetry, are “one of America’s most respected poets."   But what does that mean?  Was there a vote?  If so, who got to vote and who didn’t?  Who is doing the “respecting” and what does “respected” by the establishment really imply?  Moreover, can one be respected if one questions and challenges the “respecters”?  Likely not!  And that is the crux. 

Privileged poets get to anoint other privileged poets, who get to distribute the prizes, who get to dish out the grants, who decide who shall be published or invited to speak, who determines who gets tenure and who doesn’t, and most importantly who shall be ostracized, silenced, and censored.  They form the poetry establishment (i.e., the “respecters”), which normally consists of well-to-do privileged academic poets with bourgeois lifestyles.  They have real faces, some of which can be examined on the Academy of American Poets website.  How does one get to be one of those privileged poets?  Evidently, as mentioned, the road to privileged “poetdom” does not normally consist of questioning and challenging privileged poets.  On the contrary, it normally consists of praising those poets and their poetry.  Open wide and swallow is the requisite modus operandi of those wishing to join the gang.  Journalists in general share that modus operandi.  Just examine the diverse poetry reviews they publish in the New Yorker, New York Times, Poets & Writers, and Washington Post, for example.  They tend inevitably not to be critiques, but rather hagiographies. 

Regarding your Pulitzer-anointed book of poetry, the Globe article notes that Pulitzer administrator Dana Canedy declared it was “a volume of unyielding ambition and remarkable scope that mixes long, dramatic poems with short elliptical lyrics, building on classical mythology and reinventing forms of desire that defy societal norms.”  Canedy’s remark is in essence a flurry of highbrow vacuity with a touch of contradiction, for to be anointed, one can do anything but “defy societal norms,” unless of course those “norms” are left undefined.  What precisely have you done to defy them?   No examples are provided; no examples are demanded.  Is a lifetime career in the ivory tower a defiance? 

The principle “societal norm,” of course, constitutes, above all else:  thou shalt not criticize the academic/literary established order—its icons, its chancellors, its prizes, its literary journals, and its organizations.  You, of course, have bowed to that norm.  Your very career has depended on congealed genuflection.  The careers of aspiring poets, some of your students perhaps, depend on congealed genuflection.  

Today, poetry for the established order has come to mean anything but hardcore criticism of that order.  That has become the norm—the only real norm existent in poetry.  Break it and be prepared for full ostracizing, banning, and censorship.   The poetry establishment has no backbone.  And one can only make that discovery when one actually tests its waters, as I have done for the past three decades.   Categorical dismissal by banning, ostracizing, censorship, and ad hominem inevitably form part of those murky waters.   That has certainly been my experience.  Is the establishment open to criticism?  Certainly not!  In fact, I’d be amazingly surprised if The Wellesley News student newspaper would deign to publish this open letter. 

“I’m certainly very pleased,” you noted in that Globe article.  “When you start out as a poet, you’re very aware of older poets who have won the Pulitzer, and it very often happens that the poets I most admire won it in their old age, Wallace Stevens, for example. And I’m 78 now. So it’s very pleasing to have won before I climb into the ground.”  Well, when I started out, I didn’t give a damn about poets who won the Pulitzer… and still don’t.  Poets who win the Pulitzer are generally sellouts— highbrow bourgeois word spinners and slingers, far, far from risk-taking rude-truth tellers.   And on that note, how not to think of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” in particular, “I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges [e.g., Pulitzer Prize] 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.” 

Perhaps you are teaching, via your own example, the very opposite of what Emerson had stated: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.”  In other words, for conformity the world whips you with its pleasure.  Students of poetry should be taught to question the prizes—who are the faceless judges according them, what are their biases—and prize winners, not simply open wide and swallow in celebration!   

Finally, in 2013, I posted on my blogsite a cartoon I’d sketched on you, as well as an email written to the Academy of American Poets to which you served as one of its high-and-mighty chancellors.  Sometime later, you posted a comment.  Well, I just noticed it yesterday:  “I'm bewildered. When did I ‘favor the censoring of a fellow poet’? When did I favor censoring anybody, except those yelling fire in a crowded theater when there's no fire? I'm not without sin, but I don't recognize the incident or occasion or situation you're talking about. Your criticism would cut deeper if I knew what you're talking about.” 

And so, when did you favor the censoring of a fellow poet, me, for example?  The answer to that question oddly appeared right below the posted cartoon in that email:  “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 groupthink, 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?”  

Why didn’t you, chancellor at the time, stand up to protest the censorship (removal) of my comments from the Academy of American Poets website and the prohibiting of my further commenting on its site?  By remaining silent, you sided with and continue to side with the censors.  Is that so difficult to comprehend?  Apparently, it was and still is… for you.  In fact, do you expose your students to the critical viewpoints of those exterior to the poetry establishment like those published in The American Dissident, for example?  If not, why not?  Your college librarian won’t even respond to a request that he or she consider subscribing.  

Please note that this “Open Letter” was sent to your English Department colleagues at Wellesley in the hope that might help instigate you or one of them to respond.  It has been my long experience dealing with academics and other literati, which has led me to conclude they detest outside criticism and vigorous debate.  Groupthink echo is not vigorous debate.  Careerism, not rude-truth telling, tends overwhelmingly to be their and your m.o.  Diversity is hardly a strength with that in mind.  I’ve also sent it to student editors Jane Vaughan and Alexandria Otero of The Wellesley News, though doubt wholeheartedly they will possess the independence and courage to publish it.  In conclusion, I wrote the following in 2008 and sent it to the Chancellors, you included.  You, of course, never responded.  To this day, as far as I am aware, I am still prohibited from commenting on the Academy of American Poets website…  

Open Letter to the Honorable Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets*

Only three of you have deigned to respond to my concerns of the censorship effected by the Academy of American Poets last July, though not one of you has proven eager to engage in vigorous debate with that regard.  As an American citizen, I therefore consider all of you far more reprehensible, than honorable.  Your blacklisting me as poeta non grata is shameful, to say the least.  By the way, your responses, names, and email addresses have all been incorporated into the updated webpage created to denounce the censorship approved by you (see http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/academy_american_poets.html). Please do examine it.  In fact, why not have your students examine it?!  After all, don’t you publicly consider their interests more important than yours?      

In case you are still unaware, vigorous debate is the cornerstone of democracy. Why, one must ask, is it not also the cornerstone of the publicly-funded Academy of American Poets?  And why do all of you shun it like the plague?  After all, almost all of you are or were tenured professors.  What on earth, one must wonder, are you or were you teaching your students:  sycophancy, censorship, political correctitude, speech codes, the benefits of McCarthy-like inquisitions?  Well, tenure tends to destroy minds; it doesn’t free them.  

Finally, prize-winning poets like all of you are perhaps known for your ability to spin an ingenious line of poetry, but certainly you are hardly at all known for the courage to act alone and against the grain of the established-order milieu awarding the prizes.  And that is precisely why you are not great and will never be great.  And that is why you will never be held in high esteem by any independently thinking human being.  Sadly, you’ve all become cogs in the machine.  “Let your life be a counterfriction to stop the machine,” had written Thoreau.  Well, that’s who I am, a counterfriction…

Sincerely,

G. Tod Slone, Ed.

The American Dissident, a 501 c3 nonprofit literary journal providing 

a forum for vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy

www.theamericandissident.org

1837 Main St.

Concord, MA 01742

……………………………

*Frank Bidart (Wellesley College), Lyn Hejinian (University of California at Berkeley), Sharon Olds (New York University's Graduate Creative Writing Program), Kay Ryan (New York’s Central Park Zoo), Gerald Stern (University of Iowa Writers' Workshop), C. K. Williams (Princeton University), Rita Dove (University of Virginia), Galway Kinnell (New York University), Carl Phillips (Washington University at St. Louis), Gary Snyder (University of California at Davis), James Tate (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), Robert Hass (University of California at Berkeley, Nathaniel Mackey (University of California at Santa Cruz), Robert Pinsky (Boston University), Susan Stewart (Princeton University), and Ellen Bryant Voigt (Warren Wilson College)

NB:  As expected, not one English professor, including Bidart, and neither of the student editors deigned to respond to this open letter.

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From: George Slone

Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2018 7:44 AM

To: thewellesleynews@gmail.com

Cc: fbidart@wellesley.edu; kbrogan@wellesley.edu; wcain@wellesley.edu; mcezaire@wellesley.edu; dchiasso@wellesley.edu; pfisher@wellesley.edu; ogonzalez@wellesley.edu; ahickey@wellesley.edu; ylee@wellesley.edu; klynch@wellesley.edu; smeyer@wellesley.edu; jnoggle@wellesley.edu; tpeltaso@wellesley.edu; lrodensk@wellesley.edu; lrosenwald@wellesley.edu; msabin@wellesley.edu; vshetley@wellesley.edu; yko@wellesley.edu; msides@wellesley.edu

Subject: Open Letter to Frank Bidart

To Co-Editors-in-Chief Jane Vaughan and Alexandria Otero, The Wellesley News, Student Newspaper of Wellesley College:
Please publish the following “Open Letter,” regarding one of your professors, Frank Bidart.  Of course, I am a realist and would be surprised if you decide to publish it, let alone respond to this email.  Why?  Well, evidently colleges have become training facilities, as opposed to educational ones that reflect democracy’s principles, freedom of speech and vigorous debate.  Also, I did contact your paper in 2013, regarding another issue, and never received a response.  In any case, thank you for your hopeful attention.

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

From: George Slone

Sent: Friday, April 27, 2018 7:10 AM

To: tcushman@wellesley.edu; csowa@wellesley.edu

Cc: thewellesleynews@gmail.com; fbidart@wellesley.edu; kbrogan@wellesley.edu; wcain@wellesley.edu; mcezaire@wellesley.edu; dchiasso@wellesley.edu; pfisher@wellesley.edu; ogonzalez@wellesley.edu; ahickey@wellesley.edu; ylee@wellesley.edu; klynch@wellesley.edu; smeyer@wellesley.edu; jnoggle@wellesley.edu; tpeltaso@wellesley.edu; lrodensk@wellesley.edu; lrosenwald@wellesley.edu; msabin@wellesley.edu; vshetley@wellesley.edu; yko@wellesley.edu; msides@wellesley.edu

Subject: Testing the murky waters of democracy at Wellesley College

To Thomas Cushman, Director, and Caryn Sowa, Program Manager, the Wellesley College Freedom Project,

Please distribute this email to the other Freedom Project members.  It might or might not be of interest to you that in vain I contacted the Wellesley News student editors on several occasions.  No response was their freedom response.  Also, in vain I contacted the English professors, offering a highly critical essay on one of them, Pulitzer poet Frank Bidart.  No response was their freedom response.   Is silence the new vigorous debate at Wellesley?  Will no response be the Freedom Project response?  On yet another occasion, I contacted an English professor, Dan Chiasson, who did respond by essentially calling me a racist and threatening to contact campus police.  

Can professors really be so fragile at Wellesley College?  And if so, what does that teach their students?  Well, it teaches them that feelings trump freedom of speech and vigorous debate, cornerstones of democracy!  Moreover, Prof. Chiasson requested I cease contacting him and anyone else connected to the college.  So, here I disobey that request by contacting you.  Please do not send your Campus Police down to Cape Cod to put me in handcuffs for my various speech crimes!  

For the email (and cartoons) I sent to Prof. Chiasson, as well as his rather troubling email response, please do examine http://wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2018/04/dan-chiasson.html.  Also, below you can read the essay I sent to the English professors, as well as my correspondence.  Do you think the items might warrant imprisonment?  It is true that my "tone" might not be in-line with expected academic "tone," but from my perspective the tone is the message is the tone.  Besides, I never make threats and have no criminal record of violence whatsoever.  Hopefully, you will not agree with Prof. Chiasson, regarding the Campus Police…

[No response was ever received.]