Erin Lyndal Martin’s Response to the Anonymous Letter Addressed to Sandra Simonds in Response to Her Open Letter to The Poetry Foundation
Dear Buzz Poet,
This is an open letter in response to your letter addressing Sandra Simonds’ open letter to the Poetry Foundation.
One basic fact missing from your letter is that you seem to forget that poetry is work: “The difference between poets and the general public is that some of us, like you, Sandra, are fortunate enough to have an audience and a platform to reach them. In today’s rocky economic climate, one governed by debt and political deficit, I do not think it is in the best interest of your audience or the poetry community to model such irresponsible behavior in asking for a financial handout from the Poetry Foundation to support the poets you hold in such romanticized esteem.” Simonds has an audience and platform, mostly from within the literary community, because she has worked hard to build those connections through her work and social networking. Much of the work associated with poetry is thankless and unpaid; Simonds’ audience includes many of her peers who face her same financial reality. They may put in hours editing literary magazines that don’t make a profit, or they may write countless unpaid book reviews in an attempt to garner support and audiences for other poets. They publicize and promote poetry. Is it, indeed, a “handout” when one is asking to receive support from a foundation for forwarding the same work as that foundation? The Poetry Foundation’s website says that they are “committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.” Is Simonds, who writes, teaches, and reviews contemporary poetry not furthering the same agenda?
One question that lingers for many poets who founder without the support of the Poetry Foundation or similar arts organizations is what those organizations do with their money if not support poets. In President John Barr’s 2011 Year-in-Review letter posted on the foundation’s website (no similar letter for 2012 seems to be available), Barr is directly evasive: “Not all of the ‘hard metal’ that nurtures and contains the poetic energy at the Foundation is visible to the naked eye. The strategic plan, the annual forty-page operating budget, managing the endowment.” So why not make it visible to the naked eye? Why not publish the budget or the strategic plan? And why is the latest Audited Financial Statement READ MORE >
Call for Submissions: “Poetry Sucks!”
I was asked to pass this along, so, here it is! Good luck.
Call For Submissions
The upcoming Third Man Books anthology to be titled Poetry Sucks! An Anthology of Poetry, Music, and All Sorts of Bad Language is accepting submissions.
Third Man Records co-founders Jack White and Ben Swank originally conceived the record label to house, produce, and distribute Jack’s music projects. However, they have always intended to broaden the endeavor’s scope. TMR now features many music artists other than Jack and has taken on new projects such as distributing the legendary Sun and Paramount record labels. Film is another avenue TMR has begun to explore. And not surprising to many, Jack and Ben happen to be language lovers.
Who Wears a David Foster Wallace Shirt?
I’m hesitant to discuss Wallace post-suicide because there’s a holiness that somehow feels dry-humped when he’s discussed online. I approached The Pale King with this kind of hesitation and also with large amounts of excitement, anxiety, and eventually, shame. I didn’t feel right reading that book. In many ways, I wish it didn’t exist, even though it’s brilliant in set piece after set piece. There’s been more books since, and each have appeared in a skin-crawling “wait-we-have-more” fashion. It’s not that the books themselves are new – most are old essays, obscure interviews, a graduation speech, and even, an undergrad thesis. It’s the kind of thing capitalism rots and succeeds at – mask it as honoring the work and publishing it for the fans, cash in.
5 Points: POOR ME I HATE ME PUNISH ME COME TO MY FUNERAL—- (by Grant Maierhofer and Kil)
“He saw her standing near the creek, near the road, near the stoplight. A stoplight looks bright red when your eyes haven’t seen sun for months. A stoplight looks like your best friend when the wind hovers low and the night springs up like some old widow slashing wounds throughout your flesh. You wait for some quickness, some instance of recognition, and nothing comes. Nothing.”
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1) POOR ME I HATE ME PUNISH ME COME TO MY FUNERAL (PMIHMPMCTMF) is a collaboration of poems and images brilliantly paired by Grant Maierhofer and the artist Kil. Hard copies are available through EDEN CHAPBOOKS. Or you can check it all out on-line here.
2) These poems were (and are) a revelation for me. The only comparison that comes to mind is that I experienced something similar when, many years ago, I first encountered the prose poems of Max Jacob and Jean Follain in a 3-poet book titled “Dreaming The Miracle.” Maierhofer’s poems here in PMIHMPMCTMF glow wisely in the way Follian’s do. They also have, like Follain’s best efforts, a kind of sacred Sepia feel. They are, in short, quite wonderful.
3)) I’m all for religious bashing and I’m often guilty of being crude (badly crude) about it. Maierhofer though is extremely effective, wise, restrained and kind of off-handed about it. But, it’s sledgehammer wise and sledgehammer off-handed: “A perfect world if not for churches. If not for those hulking black tombs READ MORE >
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October 21st, 2013 / 6:11 pm
October 21st, 2013 / 6:11 pm
TWOCLOSEWORDS: REFUSAL / REFUSAL
(It’s very common in horses.)
Refusal –
I was going to write Resistance / Resistance, but then I thought, No, every refusal has a fuse in it. A charge in the middle of every one of its bodies.
Refusal*-
(In a room with a Berryman forehead overlooking it)
A figure is questioned. This is the third time the figure has exhibited a writing like this, that goes on like this, that exhausts many of the other figures in the room with a Berryman forehead overlooking it. Is it sustainable? Is it excessive?
One of the other figures is questioned. What was it like, reading the writing the figure has exhibited? It was an experience, the other figure replies.
A figure is questioned. How many more experiences will they have to go through? Is it productive?
The figure replies. The figure wants to figure a female trickster, to re-figure a deflated Baubo (the original dry nurse we know from Romeo & Juliet, night demon, goddess, servant, bearded lady) for the crowded that has gathered.
This is the figure of Baubo.
Alexandra Naughton Has Kidnapped POETRY (Played By Herself) & Sent A Ransom Note To The Poetry Foundation
POETRY is Mine!
Andrew Durbin: Ari Spool for Mayor of New York
If you’re like me and you don’t vote, you probably don’t do it out of dissatisfaction with our current democratic process (though there’s that, duh), you probably do it because you’re lazy, a fact a little at odds with your interest in radical politics. Those lines, those leavers… all those opportunities for fraud (outside the fraud of the entire financial system that makes it possible in the first place), I just can’t. I don’t think not voting is radical; I think it’s a simple disapproval of the way things are done and, really, a real distaste for a line that doesn’t end in free pizza. I’m the ambivalent non-voter. I’d like to see Big Change, but not Barack Obama’s brand (more like the, um, Communist–or Commonist–brand). I’m voting for Ari Spool because I’m a Commonist, really, and I think Ari is too, because common to us all is a kind of ambivalence that really sets her apart from the rest of the field, a plucky, aggressive little group that includes Bill de Blasio whom, of course, I kind of like. I like his wife more, but she’s not running for mayor. Lhota, de Blasio: they just want to win too much. It’s a bad look, face it. They want to live in a mansion and get cozy with all the people that make the rest of us lose our lunch. I’m voting for Ari because I don’t think Ari cares about Business, Big or otherwise, I think Ari cares about art. I’m voting for Ari Spool because I want more art and you should too. Art in the streets, art in your apartment. Art should replace money. Art should be everywhere, right? I also think Ari’s election night party, whether she wins or loses, will be better than de Blasio or Lhota’s combined. See you there?
The Bus by Paul Kirchner
The Bus ran monthly in Heavy Metal from 1978 to 1985.
Imgur has hosted as a bunch of strips. Below are two.
The Bus rules.
TWOCLOSEWORDS: HAUNTING / HUNTING
(A scene from Les Maîtres Fous (The Mad Masters), a film by Jean Rouch)
Haunting –
My left eye is fucked. It isn’t the first time. I’ve mentioned its swollen episodes everywhere: in poems, on the phone.
Because I think it’s hysterical. Because I really can’t get over it.
LOLOLOLOL. A POET. WITH A SENSITIVE. EYEBALL. FUCK ALL THAT.
Lately, there are tiny, irritated dots that have been piling up in the corner. My roommate gives me clay and DMSO, which is HORSE LINIMENT. She dabs it on for me. The eye’s anger ebbs and flows.
I like that my own body keeps haunting me from this particular room, always from this left eye, trying to get me to deal with or acknowledge some part / stress deposit of myself that I’ve neglected / buried. Your own body interrupts you. It unexpectedly cuts you off. I feel more than slightly disembodied when I look at it in the mirror, when I touch it. Ghosts are red.
Writing That Makes You Feel Like You’re Being Groomed
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When John Ebersole reads work he terms “Grocery Store Poetry” (GSP – which includes also, for John, Linda Pastan, Billy Collins and, most immediately, present-day Thomas Lux) he says “I also get the sick feeling like I’m being groomed.” This quote comes from a little Q and A I recently did with John because when I read his review of the new Thomas Lux book (you can read it here on HTMLGIANT) I was struck by (hello, Paul Cunningham) how upset, how disturbed John seemed to be. And this reminded me of how I feel when I read certain people. Disturbed. And sometimes, for sure also, like I’m being groomed. (shiver, shiver).
This is particularly the case when I read Whitman and experience not just the great POETRY but also the feeling of a clammy arm slipping around me over and over in a cheap movie theater, of a pale tongue in my ear, of a breathy voice trying to massage my entire being into submission. Nice, easy and compliant. And that’s creepy, yeah. And creepy, also, to think (and know) that while I’m reading Whitman and experiencing the tremendous virtuosity of imagination and spirit that a part of him’s masturbating in the row behind me.
But, you know what, it’s ok, because it’s Whitman and I accept the fact that he’s grooming me. That he wants and needs me to surrender to his voice, his work, his divine right (yeah, he thought he was a new Jesus for America). But, for Christ’s Sake, we’re talking now about writing like late-career Thomas Lux!
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Rauan: I believe you’re suggesting that “Grocery Store Poetry” written by Lux, Pastan, Collins, etc, isn’t attractive and vital because even though the world’s always been in turmoil “the way we apprehend that turmoil has changed and changed dramatically.” And you’re suggesting then I think that we need more a riskier, stronger sort of poetry (a poetry of derangement?) because “globalization and the relentless whiplashes of information rearrange us.” Your thoughts on this please?
“Wttgenstein once wrote” — don’t worry, we’re just fucking kidding
John: Wittgenstein once wrote – I’m fucking kidding. I’m less READ MORE >
Behind the Scenes & Mean & Random / Comments Off on Writing That Makes You Feel Like You’re Being Groomed
October 12th, 2013 / 1:12 pm
October 12th, 2013 / 1:12 pm