The Stupid Fucking “Tourist-Castle” Poem
The Tourist-Castle Poet Takes it !! (phase 1 of proposed torture)
I hate, I hate, I hate, I just fucking hate the stupid fucking Tourist-Castle poem.
Yes, I’ve just had it with this retarded, anemic variety of the Tourist poem. Almost all Tourist or Travel poems suck. But this one’s got super-human suction lips!
This poem is where some jackoff tourist (I borrow the word jackoff from Ted Berrigan talking about Irish Jackoffs trying to be radio waves at a St. Patrick’s Day parade), sits at a cafe or a park by a castle. Feels a glow. At peace. The most wonderful beautiful feeling ever. Like someone discovering the magic of sex. But worse! And then just has to write it down. In their notebook. Or, worse, on a napkin. Blah, blah.
These scourge poems invariably are titled something like:
“Lines Written at the Cafe Twimbledon across from the Castle Twimbledon, Twimbledon, Scotland, March 4, 2004” ……..(and if the poem WAS written on a napkin that makes it into the title too!
These poems are inevitable. Drop a novice poet in a foreign country and he’ll find a castle in two fucking seconds and the poem will be written, effortlessly, magically, on the spot (O Scourge!) and foisted on to some adoring public in some shitass review full of beautiful glowing Tourist-Castle poems. I’m just waiting for a review called The Tourist-Castle Review so I can bomb their fucking cars and offices.
Berrigan liked to beat people up. He liked Michaux for this same reason. I invoke you both now gentlemen: your fists and your swords and your delicate medieval torture instruments. And let’s push these fucking tourist poets down into the basements of the castles they so glowingly and sickeningly sang about. And let’s rack them and sack them and quarter them and make them eat thousands and thousands of Tourist-Castle Poems. And let’s suck the bowels from their asses with contraptions built especially for the purpose. Or, for lack of availability or simply for variety, a starving street rat.
Mean Week: On Beer
I don’t like beer.
Paul Haggis Deservedly Mean to Scientology Because Scientology Undeservedly Mean to Gays, Everybody Else
From Paul Haggis’s public resignation letter from the Church of Scientology. Via Gawker, who have the whole letter.
The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.
I joined the Church of Scientology thirty-five years ago. During my twenties and early thirties I studied and received a great deal of counseling. While I have not been an active member for many years, I found much of what I learned to be very helpful, and I still apply it in my daily life. I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally. I saw the organization – with all its warts, growing pains and problems – as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for underdogs.
But I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what to think. You had allowed our name to be allied with the worst elements of the Christian Right. In order to contain a potential “PR flap” you allowed our sponsorship of Proposition 8 to stand. Despite all the church’s words about promoting freedom and human rights, its name is now in the public record alongside those who promote bigotry and intolerance, homophobia and fear.
The fact that the Mormon Church drew all the fire, that no one noticed, doesn’t matter. I noticed. And I felt sick. I wondered how the church could, in good conscience, through the action of a few and then the inaction of its leadership, support a bill that strips a group of its civil rights.
Rants of the Rejected
Bradley Sands of Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens just tweeted this link to an old letter he received from a disgruntled, rejected author in 2008. It seemed like a useful thing to repost for Mean Week. Here’s the beginning (wtf?):
Dear Bradley,
Where are my stories? What did I do wrong to deserve such a cold shoulder during The Mark Chapman Generation, Twin Towers, “Malvo”, academic massacre, Amish massacre, etc? Is that it, then, Bradley, you’re just going to leave me dangling? Ok, if that’s the way you feel. I’ve never seen 1 magazine in 40 years of doing this live more than a few years after being treated so shitty as you have treated me.
Any fun rants out there? Either ones you’ve received from authors or ones you’ve sent to editors?
Conversation with Crispin Best re: Tao Lin
I solicited Crispin Best for a >500 line chat re: Tao Lin for his grassroots promotional campaign. Tao, please contact Crispin for his mailing address and send him SFAA. Please give HTMLGIANT, a supporter of your literature, a 100-line discount to ship over seas (UK) to Crispin. Thanks. (Caveat: if you are easily irritated by Tao or me, or by this campaign, please do not click on more.)
Roxane Gay—
Writer M.J. Nicholls complains about magazines who don’t accept everything “good” that comes their way. He’s finished with magazines like decomP and elimae because they send form rejections. With regard to PANK he says:
I DON’T SEE WHY the site publishes LESS than it RECIEVES. Surely the basic rules of SUPPLY and DEMAND apply here? If a slue of challenging and interesting work is offered – publish it. Give the reader a CHOICE. Stop setting your own agenda and being so FUCKING FUSSY.
I shall… leave it at that.
158
This was the first time I had heard about my great stupidity. And I was quite surprised, as it had not occurred to me. But certainly it did account for many things. And it always followed a pummeling, when the world blurred into gray edges and my ears throbbed and darted inside. I would wander without destination often, in the wake of beatings. I would believe I was a floating shadow riding on puffs of air, my toes barely skimming the ground.
-from My Happy Life by Lydia Millet
Poetry for Poetry Haters: The Northville Review
It is very timely that during Mean Week, The Northville Review‘s Poetry for Poetry Haters issue has gone live. Northville editor Erin Fitzgerald interviewed the issue’s guest editor Whitney Freemesser who explains why she hates poetry.
Why do you hate poetry?
I don’t like frou-frou OH SO DEEP descriptions of things. If something is black, say it is black. Don’t say it’s inky jet ebony.
As people who received a rejection slip for this issue discovered, you do actually like some poetry. The example we gave out was Richard Brautigan’s At the California Institute of Technology. Can you talk a little bit about why you do like this poem, and maybe name some others?
I like it because it’s simple and not overwrought with emotion. We don’t have to listen to lines and lines of the same sentiment repeated thirteen different ways. As for other poems that I like, I like most of Brautigan’s work. Also, there’s a poetry anthology called “Pictures That Storm Inside My Head”, edited by Richard Peck. I like the title poem from that one, though I don’t remember who wrote it.
Do you think that eliminating repetitive and overwrought elements might be the key to getting people to actually like poetry?
Well, it would make ME like poetry a lot more. But I’m not the usual poetry audience. I don’t have the time/energy/patience to listen to it. It’s like listening to my son try to tell a story – it takes him a few tries to get started, so he’ll repeat the same phrase over and over – and I just want to yell “GET TO THE POINT ALREADY!” And then it’ll turn out to be something about Wii Sports Resort or Phineas and Ferb.
Read more of this interview here and enjoy poetry from Ryan Bradley, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Howie Good and Daniel Romo.
Take That, Mean Week!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUm_SPkxuLo
Amy McDaniel—
WORDS THAT SHOULD DIE AMONG OTHERS:
paradigm very salient
zany droll hopefully excited
nonplus risible gender guy
Fernando Pessoa paradigmatic clarity