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Seek & Destroy Essays: Title/Subject/Author
1) Americancer/Harold Bloom/Dan Schneider In 1973 Yale University professor, literary poobah & would-be vates Harold Bloom foisted a monumentally bold & silly book (both bold in its silliness & silly in its boldness!) into the public literary realm. Titled The Anxiety Of Influence: A Theory Of Poetry it posited some rather manifest, & trite, observations garbed in pseudo-Freudian mumbo-jumbo- much like most of Bloom’s simplistic Manichaean thought & writing. Although these observations had some truth, they were true to very limited areas & small degrees....
Denuding the Yutz from Yale!
2) Arc/Robert Bly/Dan Schneider The genesis for this essay occurred about a month ago when my wife & I were browsing books in Brad Zellar’s Rag & Bone bookshop in Minneapolis. I had bought a used book of poetry & Zellar insisted on giving me a book gratis. When I saw it I graciously declined his beneficence but Zellar was so insistent he would not let me leave....
Battling poetry's Harlequin of Hate.
3) Quis/P&W/Dan Schneider When people ask me why I have such a dim view of contemporary American verse I will, at times, avoid the obvious retort, “Because the overwhelming number of published poets & books are awful.” When that occurs I usually speak of the unspoken “other poets”- y’know, the kind in Cosmoetica’s Hall Of Shame....
Takin' it to Da Man!
4) The Case/James Emanuel/Dan Schneider In the annals of American poetry it is difficult to conceive of a more neglected great poet than James A. Emanuel. Born in 1921, I believe in Detroit, he has spent most of the last 2 decades apparently living in Paris, France. Words like believe & apparently are used because the truth of the matter is the man is almost a cipher- in American Poetry, in Black-American poetry, & on the Web....
His time is COMING!
5) P & T/Jeffers & Metrics/Dan Schneider What if someone actually said to you that all music was composed of just 2 notes? Or if someone claimed that there were just 2 colors in creation? Now, ponder if such a thing were true. Imagine the clunkiness & mechanicality of such music. Think of the visual arts devoid of not just color, but sepia tones, & even shades of gray. To suggest such things to a musician or painter or photographer would most likely engender- if not outright laughter- some strange looks, indeed....
The sleeping GIANT!
6) Poetry Workshops/Expose/Briggs Seekins In May of 1995 I accepted a three-year University Fellowship from Syracuse University, to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. I was a combat veteran of the Gulf War and I had used the Army College Fund to earn a BA in Philosophy. I was a working class kid who had resolved to avoid working for as long as possible. And now, for the next three years, I would be paid a little over ten thousand dollars a year to write poetry....
An Insider speaks!
7) Magalogs/Rain Taxi/Dan Schneider A while back I received an essay from a former poetic Academic Insider named Briggs Seekins- it was called The Poetry Workshop and its Discontents. It was an expose of the incestuous world of workshops & MFA writing programs. While it recapitulated alot of what I have said for many years it did strike a chord with a number of readers of Cosmoetica. But the most cogent critique contained was Seekins’ denuding the rather obvious....
Whipping Eric 'Oreo Boy' Lorberer & Minnesota's #1 disseminator of bad literata!
8) Shakespeare-Stevens/Greatness/Dan Schneider Let me propose that 1 can learn far more from a study of the near-great in human endeavors than from the great. This may, initially, strike many as odd because logic would seem to dictate that the better 1 is at something the more it has to offer the layety in terms of insights into its subject matter & its creation. Au contraire! Well, at least at such a high level. When 1 speaks of the difference between lower level activities- say between the bad & passable or the good & very good- commonsense holds true. 1 does 99% of the time learn more from a better endeavor (in this case art or poetry). Yet there the learning opportunity comes from both the strengths & weaknesses of the poem....
The modern surpassing.
9) BR Myers/APC/Dan Schneider I have often repeated the statement that as bad as American Poetry has been in the last 3 decades or so, American Poetry Criticism [note that I don’t even touch editorship!] has been worse. I hereby revoke that sentiment. American Poetry Criticism [APC] has NEVER been good- unlike American Poetry, itself. Now I long knew such fiends as the New Critics had their limitations, but at least they would show negativity....
Much ado about nothin'.
10) 4 Poets/APC/Dan Schneider Too often American Poetry Criticism [APC] gets ripped for being too insular in protecting the Academics [largely Dead White Males- DWMs] while savaging ‘Outsiders’ [read: ethnic minorities, plebeians, gays, & others of those nasty ilks], even though the very true weaknesses of the 'Outsiders’ are mirrored in the Academics. I, too, have ripped on both sides in essays. But the far more difficult game to bring down is that represented by the Academics....
Still waitin' on Clayton- rather, his rebuttal!
11) Didactic Poetry/A Brief/Esther Cameron Among the extinctions of the twentieth century must be counted several genres of poetry. Fortunately, genres may be easier to revive than animal species. I would like to put in a word for a revival of didactic poetry....
Worry, worry, worry....
12) Beating Horses/Randall Jarrell/Dan Schneider [Apologies to readers who have read parts 1 & 2 of this essay series & are saying, ‘When are we actually gonna get to APC itself?’ Well, here it is- unvarnished. Parts 1 & 2 were merely ramparts. On to APC!] Randall Jarrell was a good poet. Sometimes he was a very good poet, but never a great poet. Sometimes he was a bad poet, but overall he was good- a solid poet with a handful of memorable poems. But Randall Jarrell [RJ] is far more well known as a poetry critic....
Reality sets in.
13) Bullshit/Fraudulent Poetries/Dan Schneider Perhaps there is no sillier vocation out there than artistic theorizing. This is not a slap at theorists in general because science would be stuck in neutral without theory- it is a fundament of the whole scientific method. That artists have tried to graft this process for their own means is yet another blatant example of how oh-so-insecure artists long to ‘legitimize’ their endeavors with the jargon of other, more palpable, fields. & the silliest of all artistic theories has to be those associated with literature, if for no other reason than literature is the most abstract of the arts....
Sometimes, it's too easy.
14) Hoaxes/APR/Dan Schneider (+Addendum: Kent Johnson Speaks) Originally I was going to do a simple essay on the 7-8/96 issue of the American Poetry Review. In that essay a special pullout section- ‘Doubled Flowering: From the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada’- of the magazine (often dubbed ‘the People magazine of Poetry’) included a number of pieces of doggerel by a Japanese poet who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Right away I rolled my eyes....
Cosmo exclusive- I force a hoaxer's self-exposure.
15) Carolyn Kizer/Tits/Dan Schneider A while back I ran across poet/critic Carolyn Kizer’s essay book Proses in a used bookstore & bought it. While not a particularly good poet, she is- more importantly- not a particularly bad poet (see poems below). Her poems generally attempt wit & occasionally succeed. She is a feminist, but not of the ‘tack those testicles to the wall’ persuasion. I’d only read a couple of her essays in mags or online so my impression of her was as sort of a female version of James Merrill- white, dilettante, but not as talented a poet as he was....
She really is more than a nice set of knockers! OK, I'm lying!
16) Donald Hall/All Fisked Up/Dan Schneider In many of my essays I have lambasted both bad poetry & bad criticism of poetry. My last target was the lightweight vapidity of Carolyn Kizer’s essays. However, compared to my next target Ms. Kizer is a genius of unrelenting depths. I have assailed this man’s atrocious poetry before....
Night of the Dying Live.
17) Césaire/Eshleman/Art Durkee (+Contretemps: Eshleman-Durkee) If the purpose of an edition of a work is to entice you to dive deeply into the rest of a writer’s oeuvre, then this edition of Aimé Césaire’s “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land” (1939) succeeds admirably. After being asked to review the Notebook, and having read it through, I was pulled into an in-depth study of Césaire’s other work, not against my will, that absorbed me for weeks before I was able to come back to the Notebook and review it in context. The Notebook is a work that deserves to be read....
Art reviews. Clayton whines. Dan defends.
18) Vamps/Frank O'Hara/Dan Schneider Ever read a poem or poet that just misses being excellent or great? Yet, despite such propinquity to the ineffable the poem may not even be that good? If so, you probably have read (or should read) the poems of Frank O’Hara, for he defined this near-miss quality- if not embodied it. In my youth, I really thought very little of his poems. His poor enjambment, occasional veers into cliché, & self-indulgence were the work of a very sloppy poet....
There's this bizarre little site called www.frankohara.com that calls Cosmo a bizarre little site- & thinks this piece attacks their hero. It's called R-E-A-D-I-N-G. What a world we live in!
19) As A Poet/Declamations/Dan Schneider As a poet, the most annoying, & ridiculous phrase someone can utter to you is: ‘As a poet, how do you feel about _____?’ The reason for the frustration is because people rarely make the distinction between the reality of The Poet as profession/avocation & the fiction of The Poet as The Person. It's as if being a poet meant you thought the same thoughts as every other poet & could speak at large for the craft on any subject. Simply put, poetry is a vocation, not a vantage point....
You KNOW the people I mean!
20) Zines/Editors Suck!/Tim Scannell It is a waste of time and energy for editors, opinion-folk, poets and prose writers to rail against mainstream publishers, mass-market zines, academic journals, and the itsy cliques of MFA nudge ‘n’ wink scribblers. Mainstream publishers should NOT take pity on or patronize the thousands of alternate zine and small press chapbook publishers roundabout. The mission of mainstream publishers is, first, to make money....
Tim, again, revelations galore....
21) Confessions/A Pox/Tim Scannell 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....
The shot heard around Peoria!
22) Tweaking/Editing & Criticism/Tim Scannell I stopped publishing my own zine, MUSE OF FIRE, 130 issues (400 poets/4,000 poems), for the same reason I left teaching after 21 years: the work was done. And I’ve slowed my writing of poetry, too, for the same reason (800 poems published…, 200 of my favorite collected in HER NINE YAKKING DAUGHTERS): the work was done. But I did not stop writing....
Is that a threat, Tim?
23) National Poetry Month/Ugh!/Jough Dempsey April is "National Poetry Month" - but what can be gained from the Academy of American Poets' work? Since April 1996, hundreds of American booksellers, publishers, poets, organizations, schools, and institutions have been attempting to sell more books of poetry by dull, unoriginal, "positive" and "uplifting" poets, theoretically under the auspices of bringing the obviously marginalized art form to the masses.....
Guess what famous reference to a month follows?
24) The Doggerelists/Praise/Dan Schneider Poetry critics suck. I’ve said it before & will- fill in the blank. Even the few critics that are OK are just that. Conrad Aiken was a good solid critic. But he doesn’t push his ideas or assessments far enough. He would make a good point & then drop it. But he was not GREAT at it. In fact there are few essays by published poetry critics that I would even say approach greatness....
Truth, justice, & all that!
25) Sharon Olds/Cunts/Dan Schneider Jessica Schneider: ‘So, Don, what do you think of Sharon Olds?’ Don Moss: ‘Ugh, I’m so sick & tired of that woman’s orifices!’ -from the Great Quotes of Don Moss, Volume 3, Quote # 1378 Thus, another Destroy essay conceived & now wending its way out of the vaginal cavity. Let me be blunt- Sharon Olds is a very bad poet....
The legs open. Hear the echo- echo- echo- echo....
26) Mary Oliver/Why?/Jough Dempsey Admittedly, I'm predisposed to disliking "nature poems." Maybe it's because many are facile, easy to write, and make the kinds of observations only an idiot needs spelled out in poetry. It's not that a good nature poem can't be written - it's just that so many poets have written poor ones....
Jough- aka 'Junk'- takes on the premier nature poet(aster) of the age.
27) Masculinity/Poems/Dan Schneider Between the twin buffooneries of emasculating feminazism (think guru Andrea Dworkin) & bubbleheaded Campbellian masculoonism (think guru Robert Bly) lie the truer forms of femininity & masculinity- &, NO, I don’t mean the Marilyn Monrovian nor Rambovian extremes either! The feminine has been most thoroughly dealt with....
This is a penis, this is a....
28) Volta/Poetry As Social Science/Esther Cameron At the turn of a century, a millennium, the expectation arises that something noteworthy will soon happen. Perhaps that expectation increases the likelihood slightly. A century or millennium is a poetic form, like an octave or a canto, at the end of which a volta or new departure may occur. It should thus be possible to put in a word for a major shift in poetics....
Beautiful Dreamer, ladadada....
29) Poetry/Politics/Tim Scannell Politics kills poetry. Reading/writing poetry since 1958, I am increasingly disgusted – not angered -- by the ideological coilings which throttle it: Political Correctness, Affirmative Action, Polyculturalism (and their myriad of academic, legislative, regulatory or bureaucratic garottings we have come to call 'social engineering'). Politics, opportunistic and equivocal from audience to audience, is surely not a hero....
The chihuahua of poetics comes nipping back!
30) New Critics/Redux/Dan Schneider I have been highly critical of contemporary American Poetry Criticism (from the ensconced Dead White Males who litter the byways of Academia to the PC Elitists who snidely condescend to both non-PCEs & DWMs); but the problems with APC go back decades, to the start of the 20th Century. In truth, there was no real poetry criticism in America in the 19th Century....
The Empire Strikes Out!
31) Obits/Consumption/G.W. Purdy An essay by Dr. Jospeh S. Salemi – a widely published poet and a member of the Humanities Department at New York University -- appears in a recent number of the electronic journal Expansive Poetry and Music Online. Its title – “Why Poetry is Dying” – identifies it as the latest in a tradition of such pronouncements. That poetry is dying has been a well known fact for some hundred years....
Gil the Thrill waxes Academic.
32) Online Critics/S.O.S./Dan Schneider (+Addendum: When Hacks Attack!) Most of the focus of my attacks on APC, in this ongoing series of essays, has been directed at the print medium- specifically magazines & books. However, far more outlets for poetry & its criticism now exist in the cyberworld. It is here where I will now turn my attention to the rarely good, mostly bad world of cyber-crit. Here, we see a panoply of voices, from all over & all strata, unrivaled in the print world. Unfortunately, virtually all of them are boobs, illiterates, or money-seeking apparatchiks....
Read the whines at essay's end.
33) On Context/Prose vs. Poetry/Jessica Schneider Recently I have tried my hand at writing prose, although I do not consider myself a prose writer as my primary artistic outlet, as I do with poetry. I have enjoyed writing it, however, and feel that some attempts have been fruitful. Jason Sanford, the fiction editor for the online magazine storySouth, and also a regular attendee of the Uptown Poetry Group, once told me this interesting fact, which in turn helped to inspire this essay. I asked him once to email me a copy of a bad short story submission. With the name deleted, he did. While not an expert on distinguishing a great short story from a very good one, I could tell that the story was terrible....
Jess opines.
34) Willis Barnstone/Sonnets/Dan Schneider It’s easy to let 1’s prejudices get in the way of evaluating art, or anything in life in general. I loathe religion- organized religion, especially. & I have little use for the sort of bleeding heart substitute: faith, spiritism, etc. Yet, there are some religious poets that can write marvelously. Off the top of my head I would, for Christianity, nominate John Donne (better than Shakespeare- yes, he really is!), George Herbert (only at his best), Gerard Manley Hopkins (experimentalist, to boot), & Countee Cullen (the great American religious poet of the last century- yes, forget Thomas Merton or Brother Antoninus, CC was the real deal). Even Jessica Powers (aka Sister Miriam) could make some claims. But, generally religious verse is bathetic & didactic....
Willis- is that a nose hair, or what?
35) Redeeming Clichés/Bruce Ario/Dan Schneider Recently my This Old Poem essay series has been generating quite an Internet buzz. As Cosmoetica is a fairly well-connected site every time I do an essay on a poetic ‘name’ the essay is usually in the 1st 1-5 pages of a Google search. Therefore a lot of the fans of this or that poetaster indignantly decry my dissection of their fave’s tripe. Recently I have been treated to the moronic & childish ravings of an Australian Hayden Carruth fan who steadfastly refused to divulge their name to me....
& a little boy shall lead them.
36) The Other Kenneth/Patchen/Jessica Schneider Not Kenneth Rexroth, is who I mean. Rexroth, more known to be associated with the Beatnik Movement, along with Ginsberg, Keruoac, Burroughs, et.al., is a very good poet, and at times even great. I have to say that I would rank Rexroth below the other Kenneth, in this case Patchen. Kenneth Patchen is one of those poets who it is hard to believe has little info about him on the web. Sure there are a handful of websites that promote his legacy, but hardly are there any of his marvelous poems to be found, which is really a shame since his Collected contains some of the best lyrical poems ever written. I would easily place Patchen in a league with the other great lyrical poets, that being Countee Cullen, e.e. cummings, and Pablo Neruda....
Jess buffs up a forgotten Master.
37) Adam Dressler/Opening Up A Can Of Whoop-Ass!/Dan Schneider Last year I did an essay on some of the recreants that inhabit the online poetry universe. 1 of them was a sad sack who edits the Web Del Sol website. His name is Adam Dressler & I criticized how poorly this supposed ‘quality’ site was. Naturally, as I always do in the spirit of fair play, I emailed the schlub the article & offered to post his rebuttal. Of course, he refused, even though I had posted his email to me where he stated Cosmoetica had good writing. AD was scared off, however, by the fact that, unlike any of the asskissing NEA grant-begging websites that WDS links to, Cosmoetica routinely takes on & exposes the tactics that are rampant throughout the American- & even worldwide- art scene....
Taking out another phony!
38) FemDogs/Julianna & The Gang/Jessica Schneider There are certain women poets who do not inspire, but rather make me embarrassed to say I’m a poet. The Femme Doggerelist- aka the FemDog- is what has arisen, post- Confessionalist over the past decades since Plath & Sexton’s deaths, even though the FD’s themselves deny being influenced by either. Let’s look at the definition first....
Jess bitch-slaps some bitches!
39) 9/11/Auden & The Twin Towers/Dan Schneider Now, over a year & a ½ after 9/11, some of the nonsense being propagated by the assorted groups who had vested interests in the event, its aftermath, & the laying of blame, or heroism, can be dealt with more straightforwardly. Let’s forget the political, psychical, & spiritual aspects & concentrate on just the poetic responses....
Forget the hype & go with the real!
40) W.D. Snodgrass/De/Composing The Man & His Work/Dan Schneider This essay will deal with W.D. Snodgrass both as a quality poet & as the editor of a somewhat interesting- if flawed- book called De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong. In it WDS takes 101 ‘good poems’ & shows why they are ‘good’ vs. what a ‘lesser’ poet would have written. Unforthckanately (as Popeye would mumble) quite a # of the DC’d poems are better than the mediocre originals. The reason for this is probably because WDS, himself, does not really understand why his good poems worked- & the bad 1s failed. Repeat after me: ‘Greater than transcendence is its recognition.’ I’ll try to posit this basic lack of poetry rudimentarianism as the reason WDS’s later poetry has not been anywhere nearly as successful as the earlier stuff....
The schism & a bridge?
41) PC Elitists/The Dregs/Dan Schneider Faux fascism has hit its zenith in the last decade or so with the rise of ‘Politically Correct’ Elitism’s utter dominance of the literary markets- mostly in fiction, but increasingly in poetry. In fact, anyone who does not claim to have suffered something stands no real shot at getting a book of poetry published. Don’t get me wrong- the old Dead White Male’s good old boys network still hangs on, but for the rest of the emergent good poets out there- it’s a slowly simmering gloaming that awaits....
What grows/between the toes....
42) Robert Hayden/The Bell Tolls/Dan Schneider Robert Hayden is 1 of the most underrated & Neglected Poets of the last century. It seems incredible that this poet, easily the equal of a Pound or Eliot (& in my opinion a better poet than either), should have garnered so little critical attention, especially in the near-quarter century since his death; the time most great poets’ careers get their 1st mouth-to-mouth. Yes, I guess it would be easy to pawn off this neglect on racism....
'Tis about time....
43) Karen Volkman/Poster Child For What?/Dan Schneider A few months back the Academy Of American Poets mailed me the latest winning book of the James Laughlin Award- an award named after a bad poet who was a noted insider in publishing (founder of the New Directions imprint), & is supposedly an award for the best 2nd book of poetry printed in that calendar year- this being the 2002 version. The 3 team judges panel consisted of no-name Mary Jo Bang & no-talent doggerelists Daniel Hall & Campbell McGrath....
Does it ever end?
44) Web Del Sol/The Embarrassment/Dan Schneider A week ago I got a call from my friend, Jason Sanford, a fictionist/poet & editor of the online quarterly storySouth. Jason’s contributed poems & a handful of esays for both Cosmoetica & the Omniversica radio show. He’s usually a pretty level-headed guy, but this time he was fuming over a couple of essays written by 3 twits who write for the online literary rag Web Del Sol. Over the last couple of years I’ve written 2 unflattering essays on WDS & its cowardly idiot savant of an editor....
C'mon let's go- its the Archie Show!
45) Helen Vendler/Poetry's Queen V/Dan Schneider Helen Vendler is a plague- correction, a symptom of a plague. No, she’s not as noxious & patently yearning for approbation as is Harold Bloom, but she is a manifestation of most of what’s wrong with criticism today. On the + side, she at least can be occasionally negative in her assessments of poets & poems, & she is not a wannabe poet herself- therefore she is not practiced at the fellatric pleasures....
The Queen: ever straining to be unintelligible!
46) Lucille Clifton/The Could'a'been/Jessica Schneider One might think it ‘racist’ for me to compare the two poets I mentioned, together. After all, they’re both black and female, so they must have lots in common, right? Hardly. One of the most annoying things in my discovery of bad poets is when they show to actually have had some potential once, but then squandered it away. Lucille Clifton is one of these....
Selling out- for profit?
47) Weldon Kees/Still Struggling/Dan Schneider The world of Poetry is filled with suicides: take your pick of the Romantics, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, John Berryman- just to name a few of the better known, & better, poets. It’s also been filled with its share of wackos- from Goethe’s sorcery, Blake’s visions, Millay’s sex addiction to Moore’s general eccentricities, Jeffers’ hermitry, Ginsberg’s pedophilia, & on. But in the cranny between both of these extremes lies a now almost forgotten poet named Weldon Kees....
The bees' knees?
48) Kate Benedict & Beau Sia/Plea To Read/Dan Schneider Rare is it that I get the chance to be positive in essays on poetry so I am happy, I tell you. That grimace is just a twinge. Let me tell you of 2 small books of poetry that are actually worth a read. The 1st is a Custom Words book by Kate Benedict called Here From Away. It’s not a perfect book, but noticeably better than most of the tripe that beckons remaindering after the 1st Edition....
Sittin' in a tree....
49) Poetry Now/A Review/Dan Schneider If you are a lover of poetry these days you know that it’s not a good time for your love. The greatest flowering of poetry in world history- in terms of diversity, depth, & breadth- occurred in the United States roughly between the years 1910 & 1970. During that 60 year period there were more great poems being published & more great poets writing than anywhere or anywhen else....
The turning....
50) Nikki Giovanni/Shut That Piehole!/Dan Schneider On Sunday, 2/8/04, I tuned in to C-Span’s Booknotes program. The guest author was poetaster Nikki Giovanni. I’d seen NG read her poems before but never had I seen her in an extended interview. After viewing that show I won’t ever need to see another NG interview. The woman came across as someone who lives on another planet....
Calling Bellevue!
51) Lynn Crosbie/The Potential/Dan Schneider A few years ago I came across 2 books of poetry that were very good. This is, in & of itself, a rarity in the world of poetry so usually suffused in doggerel. The books were by Canadian poet Lynn Crosbie. The 2 books were Miss Pamela’s Mercy (1992) & VillainElle (1994)- both by Coach House Press in Canada. Both books trod much of the same territory that British poet Jeremy Reed does....
Confessive or Regressive?
52) Quincy Troupe/The Shame/Dan Schneider 1 of the silliest aspects of the Political Correctness movement of the last couple of decades has been the egregious notion that truth has some all-powerful role in art. ‘Art is truth’ is the catchphrase. Yet, even as silly as that notion is (& I’ve disemboweled it many a time) an even worse corollary is the idea that artists must be ‘truthtellers’ in order to be good artists....
PC Elitists still just do not GET it!
53) Bob Grumman/On Another Planet/Dan Schneider Have you ever met a mumbler? By that I mean not just someone who mumbles, but someone who mumbles constantly & deludedly to themselves? Growing up in New York City mumblers were those odd folk- usually schizophrenic- who lived in their own world & spoke to demons no 1 else could see. Of course, in earlier days they were not called mentally ill, but possessed or seers. There is great debate about what the provenance of such is, even if mental illness even exists, what with- in these days of autism, ADHD, & a 1000 other phony so-called mental ills. My surmise is that often such people come about creating their own little worlds after failing in the real world- it’s easier to be a god in Narnia than in Flushing or Peoria....
Kindness, not scorn. Please?
54) Foetry.com/The Controversy/Dan Schneider A few months ago I was emailed by George Dickerson, who requested that I perhaps review his Selected Poems. I told him that while I thought the book, overall, was good, & his poems better, by a long shot, than most of the enjambed prose that is published & wins awards these days that I would not do so. My reason was that over the last couple years I’ve developed a relationship with him- well, more of a penpalsmanship. Therefore it would seem highly unethical of me to review his book of poetry....
Behind the curtain....?
55) American Poetry Review/A Review/Dan Schneider In the last few decades that have seen the Lowest Common Denominator (LCD) elbow its way into virtually every facet of American, if not global, existence the field of poetry has hardly been immune. Long before the Internet made every doggerelist who could afford a connection and a website delude themselves into thinking they could edit a zine....
Wherefore APR?
56) Thylias Moss/An Appreciation/Dan Schneider Thylias Moss is a rarity in contemporary literature- she is a black female poet who is not an absurdly political Leftist, not is she a PC Elitist, nor is she a Black Power remnant. Think of Maya Angelou, Audré Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, and even Gwendolyn Brooks before her death, and the sort of poetry that will come to mind is manifest- bitter rants, banal greeting card verse, or chic quasi-lesbianism. Instead, TM takes a highly successful and radical approach to poetry- she writes it well....
Better'n most!
57) Jeff Clark/Music And Suicide/Dan Schneider One of the greatest sins of contemporary published poetry (note the second modifier of the noun) is a lack of fun, most notably a lack of humor. On further thought, I should state that the lack is of intended humor, because the unwitting self-parody of many poets is rife, as is that of their publishers, most especially in the blurbs the books they publish furnish. For example, I contribute annually to The Academy Of American Poets not so much because I believe in the organization, nor have any illusions that it’s doing anything remotely positive....
A bullet is too easy for his crimes!
58) American Poet/A Review/Dan Schneider One of the benefits of contributing to the Academy Of American Poets is that not only do you get an award winning book of poetry, but you get an annual subscription to the quarterly magazine published by it, American Poet. Well, perhaps benefit is too strong a term. You do get the magazine, but its purpose is a mystery. Poets & Writers certainly is a bad magazine, insofar as the writing of the articles, and the writers highlighted within, but it, at least, provides a service of open calls for publications as well as which talentless brownnoser got which award for what relationship in the past....
The Mafia Of American Letters.
59) Best American Poetry, 2007/A Joke?/G. Tod Slone Apparently, Steven Brill doesn’t know academics and poets very well, at least regarding “arrogance” and “lack of accountability.” The Best American Poetry, a series anthology edited by David Lehman, illustrates the point. It is perhaps the most embarrassing annual literary anthology in America today for its arrogant flaunting of being the “best.” Oddly, it backs its assertion with a statement by the gossipy-celebrity People magazine: “A year’s worth of the very best!”....
The shit that is swallowed.
S&D Essays: Positive & Negative Poetry Criticism With A Purpose!