D15-TS2
Back to School:
Confessions of a First-Year Reviewer
Copyright
© by Tim Scannell,
3/28/02
I am not at all afraid to fire a shot across the bow: I am, in
fact, determined to do it! The
proverbial ‘straw’ was reading a review, in an alternate zine, which
was a half-page of adjectives – separated by commas – with no
mention whatsoever of the content of the poems or the skills of the poet.
Needless to say, I was hotter and more irate than Mt. St. Helens
– on its best day! How dare
the reviewer (and editor) waste my time!
How dare the plinth of the Western Canon be besmirched by a
‘nothing evaluation’! Do
not be misled by subsequent comments on the alternate zine/small press: I
am a True Believer, thoroughly lauding its excellence over mainstream media’s dross and anomie – film,
zines, books, etc. – much preferring the emotive power and bright
experiment of the az/sp. But
I also have, yes, I am going to say it – standards which will not
be breached!
It is important to stand for individuality and
self-reliance, to be adamantly against the ‘social engineering’ of
government, university or even the tiniest – lunatic – New Age commune
in the hills of Oregon. We
must also be dissatisfied with the present az/sp world, insofar as it
shouts ‘revolution’ or praises the decade of the Sixties, as though
that word and that era converged as some kind of Joseph Campbellian
archetypal bliss.
To derive ‘revolution’ from long hair, drugs, music…wandering
about the countryside…is to be sucked into the most specious,
continuing, ploy of the Liberal Media; into its inane repetitions of TV
programs/print-pages on Vietnam, Woodstock-iana and Kennedy Camelot (the
first supposedly bane, the other two – assuredly – boons).
In fact, Vietnam and the Sixties ‘counterculture-isms’ informed
the shallowest, most socially moronic decade in our nation’s entire
history!
Short shrift for war: no
middle-aged Vietnamese today – still impoverished and enslaved by its
totalitarian regime – applauds our abandonment of a winnable war.
Stateside, an ersatz counterculture oozed a host of self-inflicted
delusions: drugs, sex & rock ‘n’ roll – each and all blatant
lies about individual integrity and responsible interpersonal
relationships. Do remind
yourself of our Chief Administrator today – ‘flower-child Bill –
whose zenith of service to country revolves round a personal conundrum of “What ‘is’ is!”
Yes, during the Sixties, I went to class (CUM: 3.96),
university library, work, and then home to my family; yet also patiently
listened to the ‘racket’ inside the heads of many friends (the
‘racket’ outside on the quad). Tried
to debate each nanosecond-listener toward a reality whose horizon was a
wee bit longer than a media sound-bite, a wee bit more substantive than
the latest ditty from the Beatles or Stones or various Jefferson
Airplane[s]; always querying, in the end: “Isn’t life goddamned hard
enough to live – plain vanilla – without all the illusion/delusion you are
straining to make inferences from? They
said, “No”; I said, “Yes.”
For the Sixties was the birth of societal anomie: no definition, no
category (no guide, anchor); no verity, no value (all a Jello of relativism, all a frenzied, irrational buzz – like the
“feelies” in George Orwell’s 1984).
So many – sadly – just blew away with the wind.
I just plodded on like Caleb Garth in George Eliot’s Middlemarch,
toward short-term aims (poems and articles in local publications); and
long-range goals (poems and articles everywhere).
And so, thirty years along – 1,000 credits in 500 publications
later – I patiently listen to the decades pass, always asking, in the
end, “Why does so much of the az/sp persist in defining its
‘revolutionary’ stance from a defunct trio – all Darlings of the
Liberal Media – Kerouac/Ginsberg/Bukowski (yikes: KGB)!
Now, I am glad Kerouac hated Hippies, but consider, generally, what
this ‘Nairobi Trio’ represented: rootlessness and DUI driving; inane
Orientalism and Death obsession; gutter vomitousness and ‘love’ as
the-biting-off-of-one’s-partner’s clit. Where does the definition of ‘revolution’ swim in such
offal? Where in it is a basis of individual integrity, a stead for
interpersonal relationship – even, merely, a contribution to the plinth
(bedrock) of the Western Canon? Only
a week at your local Carnegie – no, not an actual semester of actual
study at a detested university – would put under one’s belt
Aristotle’s Poetics, the lives of Mnemosyne and her nine yakking daughters; and
the real – continuing – themes in this Bill Gatesian worldwideweb of
mankind: man against nature, man against man, man against the gods, and
man against himself. And I am
in no way against good ol’ Bill: “Go Bill, go…be the first man in
the universe with a trillion dollar personal fortune!”
And even if the az/sp insists on being mesmerized by an inauthentic
Sixties, and its very, very shallow philosophical puddle – then at least
contributor and reviewer can inform discourse, explicate submissions with
a meaningful critical jargon: persona, tone, voice (poetry); fulfillment
of donneé (fiction). These
few terms do not belong to the
graduate school seminar; rather they belong to all speakers of English,
all documented in dictionaries which all editors and writers have on their
desks – at their fingertips – right?
Alas,
after decades of being exposed to the az/sp – 40 years, in fact – I am
beginning to suspect an insensate, foolish, consistency. ‘Outsiders’
refuse enlightenment (though the lexicon is not the property of MFA-ers
and their minions); while ‘insiders’ refuse enlightenment because they
protect a commercial, tenured bivouac.
Even so, both my loyalty and action go to those who are, by
definition, already self-reliant, independent – untax-funded – and
FREE! I am only for our huge
az/sp world and, today, with computers and copy shops – it is the WORLD!
But be warned: it is a world whose practitioners must move
on, hone skills – attack! If
not, it is like fueling one’s workaday behavior by consulting only the
Prophecies of Nostrumdumbass [sic]. No,
that is exactly what “is” is!
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