Comments on: “Church and State” (guest posted by Rauan Klassnik)

By: Guest

Guest — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:51:00 +0000

Wow. I guess I’ve just been so busy raising my children and being the executive functioning body (which is already not my strong suit) to a house full of off-the-charts-gifted people who can’t put perishables in the fridge or find their own socks, that I missed out on all the excitement two years ago. Is it too late now for me to get in on the action?
Well, how’s this for a sob story: I recently submitted a poem I have been working on for about 5 years to a journal that was offering an editor’s prize. Guess who the guest editor is? Matthew Dickman. I didn’t do my homework beforehand, I just read the journal’s mission statement, which said something about discovering diverse voices, and I was schmoozed into thinking it might be worth my ten bucks to give it a shot. Well, then I got curious and I looked up Matthew Dickman’s poetry on-line, and came across a piece (yes, intentionally refraining from using the term, poem) entitled “V.” Well, aside from the fact that I am admittedly the world’s biggest prude, I took deep offense at Dickman’s exploitation of stereotypically “Nerdy” references in his inauthentic, ill-informed pretense at caring about what type of communication might actually appeal to another human being (ie, the girl with the t-shirt), that is, after he was finished “getting himself over” (as Schiavo so aptly described it), which actually only served the purpose of giving him what he thought was a viable excuse to write the terms “cock ring” and something about the “shadow of an anus” within the construct of something he tried to pass off as a poem. Yes, in addition to being a spiritually-disillusioned forty-something, I am also, admittedly, the queen of the run-on-sentence, and not trying to hide my penchant for commas, either, but… I also happen to be the parent of a delightful, high-functioning autistic child, who at the tender age of 13 is a million times more a MAN than Dickman. I highly resent that Dickman tried to weasel his way into an archetype and embody something that he knows absolutely nothing about, for no other reason than to engage in a sex-fest with himself and attempt to appear charming to teenagers while doing so. (I also highly resent that he got paid for it without being drawn up on prostitution charges). What I can assure you is #1. that no WOMAN I know would see it as anything but repulsive, and #2. that I know for a fact that for at least one young man I am aware of who is genuinely fascinated by and informed about the physical properties of space that cause light to bend (though he is too young to appreciate the nerdy appeal of Star Trek, and would probably find it to be tedious and/or rife with contradictions), the Physics, itself, is plenty exciting, and finding another person with whom he could share his abounding observations and discoveries about the laws of nature (more than once…) would be a dream come true, and #3. I do not doubt for a nanosecond that the FURTHEST thing from his mind is a cock ring. The most disconcerting thing of all, though, is that I’m pretty sure I now know all anyone needs to know about this Joe who is five years and apparently light-years my junior in experience, and HE will be judging the merits of something I wrote… Yuck. But it’s my own fault…
So, to weigh in about the topic at hand two years after the fact: I appreciate Schiavo’s careful, thoughtful criticism of Dickman (and especially got a chuckle from the allusion to the extent of Dickman’s world-view and the authority he draws upon to call himself “American” being right on par with that of Sarah Palin), but I imagine that the building of his (Schiavo’s) soap-box alone would have taken more spare time than I have in a given month… If I had the kind of time it takes to craft a manifesto, let’s just say I’d be spending it in other ways.
That being said, Rauan Klassnik’s criticism of the criticism (does that make it a meta-criticism?) was also astute to an extent, but I ask, also, to what end? It is two years later, and Dickman is judging a poetry contest for a distinguished journal… And while I agree with Schiavo that we should be suspect of anyone who would place Dickman in the same exalted camp as Whitman (or even compare their styles or breadth or depth of insight in any way whatsoever), I also appreciate Klassnik’s warmer and fuzzier approach to criticism, in general, that who’s to say that “poets” (term used loosely, in Dickman’s case) are not allowed to do whatever it might be that gets them off, and, if it lands on paper, call it poetry? But is negatively criticizing negative criticism any more wholesome or useful an endeavor that just plain old negative criticism, in terms of convincing the brain-washed and/or stupid masses to stop equating provocative with good, refreshing or new? Dickman has nothing in common with Whitman, because only being capable of writing about yourself and pretending like that’s not really what you’re doing is not at all the same thing as writing a “Song of Myself” that recognizes above all else that it cannot BE anything without an OTHER who is willing AND able to be the trace, form, documentation of, and justification for the author’s very existence. Simply put, Whitman is vastly more creative than Dickman in expressing his hunger for validation and conquest (sexually and otherwise). When he is through with ravishing you, you don’t leave feeling cheap or cheated. Whitman is an artist.

By: Jim Blake

Jim Blake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:46:45 +0000

Don’t kid yourself Rauan. Michael does not care about the Dickman’s work. Jealous yes, like a school boy who didn’t win. The rantings I do not think even qualify as a literary review. If you want to read real reviews try the Boston Review or someplace where they know what they are talking about and not just whining. Or what established poets have said about Dickman’s work. Schiavo is boring at best and seems to have the emotional stability of a 12 year old.

By: Jim Blake

Jim Blake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:46:00 +0000

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:52:57 +0000

I know I’m entering the conversation a bit late here, but I just had to add my two cents regarding the final section of your post. You describe Hillman as “using [her] position of poet and [her] opportunity on stage behind a microphone to foist [political action in opposition to the Iraq War]“, and you call this choice “just irresponsible.” I have to disagree with you here, especially with your use of the word irresponsible. What would be irresponsible would be to ignore an opportunity to call attention to a tragic situation and urge those gathered to act out against it. When any of us has an opportunity to speak out against pain and suffering in an attempt to affect change, we should take it. It is absolutely our responsibility to take advantage of our freedom speech in order to better our world and its people. To let cowardice–or the fear that an audience might find the experience irritating–keep us from doing so, is the truly irresponsible choice.

You go on to explain that you “don’t want, when [you're] at a poetry reading, to be lobbied about any of [these worthy causes]. I agree that it can be an unpleasant experience to hear politically motivated speech at an event or venue where it is unexpected. But I also believe that this has mostly to do with our own shame and cowardice: we don’t want to be reminded that outside the pleasant circle of a poetry reading, there are bad things happening and that we have a hand in them. We are also sometimes even embarrassed for the poet and her bald sincerity. This makes us uncomfortable as well. I think I understand why you left Hillman’s pleas for action to go and watch pool being played in the other room–I would have undoubtedly had the same instinct. However, I urge you to fight it next time.

By: Kate

Kate — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:52:00 +0000

By: Judith Fitzgerald

Judith Fitzgerald — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:29:32 +0000

Once poetry’s makers charge into the political (or gender or school or movement) bull-ring, it no longer merits the name, “poetry.” Let’s call a spade a shovel and heap upon it the same kind of id-fit snit-fits on display in the above-cited works or, IOW, let us bravely say what such specious agendas engender: Propaganda.

On its own ostensibly persuasive terms, propaganda already proliferates in the twenty-worst century without the need for such messengers to co-opt the medium for questionable messages of mass deception (and, the causes for this atrocity, myriad as myth itself, in no way mitigate nor justifiy the unjustifiable). A poem fails when either form or content eradicates half its essential balancing act, its raison d’etre, so to speak.

Thanks for bringing this to readers’ attention; perhaps you’ve prevented one poet from committing yet another glerror in the name of “poetry,” in the name of what Eliot, damned near a century ago, affirmed: “The rest is not our business.”

That’s the melodramarama sop-op egregiosity; sadly, that conscription happens so much too often it’s now taken as part of the art’s “status quota” given. Dregma, dulliciously driven. Quel fromage. (Send in the clone drones.)
–
In Other Words:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/Booksblog/

By: Judith Fitzgerald

Judith Fitzgerald — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:29:00 +0000

By: amy lawless

amy lawless — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:56:43 +0000

That’s IT. I’m writing a review of this review.

By: amy lawless

amy lawless — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:56:00 +0000

That’s IT. I’m writing a review of this review.

By: Glenn Ingersoll

Glenn Ingersoll — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:17:07 +0000

I was amused, Rauan, to see that you most disliked the paragraph that I most disliked. I quoted much of it in my own response to Michael Schiavo’s review, appending an “Oh!” Coinkydentally, when I read that statement by Schiavo on the right way to address America, I was (& still am) working on a long poem addressed to America (“O America, you bullshit artist!”) that is doing what it wants — and whether it wants to “retrieve from ourselves the greatness of our nation or to point out its horrifying transgressions and correct them” is something I haven’t yet figured out, but it does seem unlikely.

Still, good for Schiavo, stirring up some excitement. I had an argument at my book blog, Dare I Read, with the author of a book. I hadn’t known, writing my blog post, that I was writing to the author, but he must have had a google alert for his name — and there he was! I learned some interesting things from the author, yet we didn’t see eye to eye. I get very few comments on my blogs. Sometimes half the people who show up to read are people I’ve mentioned; then, I suspect, they never come back.