…….Should Publishers Pull Gregory Sherl’s Books ??…….
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On February 4th Kevin Sampsell made the following announcement on Future Tense’s Facebook page:
In light of recent of recent allegations of abuse, we’ve decided to remove Gregory Sherl’s book, Monogamy Songs, from our catalog. We hope that all people involved can heal and find peace.
Future Tense was not, though, the first press to remove a Gregory Sherl title from its catalog. The day before KMA Sullivan had announced on YesYes Books’ Facebook page:
In light of the allegations of abuse that have unfolded over the last few days and my beliefs surrounding these allegations, I have decided to pull Gregory Sherl’s book Heavy Petting from the YesYes Books catalog. I commend the women who have come forward. My sincerest hope is that everyone involved receive the support they need.
I’ve thought about this quite a bit in the last week (and discussed it with a few people I met with during my recent trip to Oakland and San Francisco) and while I agree with and would like to echo the last part of each of these announcements (“We hope that all people involved can heal and find peace” and “My sincerest hope is that everyone involved receive the support they need”) I’d like to think that If I was in a similar position I would NOT remove the book from my catalog.
This is to say that regardless of the allegations, or my beliefs surrounding them, I think the right thing would be to continue to make the book available to those who might want to purchase it. I feel where Future Tense and YesYes are coming from in this difficult, emotionally-charged situation– but for me the book is the book and If I thought it was good enough to publish then I’d like to think I would stand by it still (even if doing so made me wince).
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On a related note The Oregon Trail Is The Oregon Trail, by Gregory Sherl, is still available from Write Bloody Publishing.
A Controversial Fundraiser
There is a fundraiser to help Gregory Sherl fight his OCD by contributing towards the costs of an inpatient treatment program.
There is also a statement from Kat Dixon in which she accuses Sherl of “constant physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.”
Andrew Keating, publisher of Cobalt Press, wrote the following on Facebook a little earlier this evening:
When I first saw Gregory Sherl’s bullshit fundraiser, I was conflicted. I want the dude to get help, but I also think that he should be forced into hardship for the terrible things he’s done to people. Recovery from the type of behavior that Sherl has been accustomed to getting away with should not be easy, and he should not be permitted to exploit our good nature, especially when it is good-natured people that he has so terribly exploited and abused in the past.
Yes, I am aware that this fundraiser is tied to an affliction that he is categorizing as OCD; however, I’m not about to assume that a man beating on his wife because she couldn’t get a stain out of his shirt is a simple matter of an obsessive need for cleanliness.
Thanks to Kat Dixon for so plainly reminding us that we should not be supporting those who abuse or take advantage of women.
3 monday micro-reviews
Like it was her Place by Kim Chinquee (Mud Luscious Press). The cover is a muted blue of soapstone clay. Kim Chinquee is a high-caliber writer of flash fiction. Many writers do not hold their own voice. She holds her own voice. Concern for verisimilitude, deterministic tone—this leads to this to this, narrator observing bemused or watchful or somehow self is outside of self, or narrating quietly, distance, a feel of floating, well, you know her voice, you have read Kim Chinquee I hope by now, by gods, by help yourself buy or find yourself to her words. Like it was her Place a floating “she” visits house of former ______, of former self, of former lover/hater/friend:
She was passing through now.
She wasn’t ready to go up yet, to his bedroom.
The key still worked.
XBOX 360 Instruction Manual: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2009. The cover is the glossy of lips. Tiger Woods in his green Friday shirt, in follow-though of an iron shot. It is all 2009 and a Band-aid on his finger from a broken hand mirror. His mind is a fluttering caddy-book of sticky pages, baby diapers, golden trophies, and ghost phones. Like many of us, I am self-disgusted by the allure of Tiger Woods while at the same thankful I learned the finer points of Ambien sex through media reports of his unraveling personal life. The XBOX manual is a helpful mix of images, charts, and technical jargon, but then often an unexpected glimpse of word-play:
IN THE BAG: Be as funky or smooth as you want to be by choosing your swing and purchasing animations.
or
Loft.
Gregory Sherl Poem
The Oregon Trail is a Chinese Restaurant on Christmas Eve
From Independence it’s a shit ton of miles
to the Kansas River crossing.
Child #1, Christopher, has a broken leg.
Christopher is sad he has a broken leg.
He’s like Shit, my leg hurts something awful.
He’s like Shit shit shit.
We ford the river but the river’s too deep.
We ford the river & you’re like Why
the fuck are we fording the river?
The oxen can’t breathe. The oxen can’t
breathe under water. They’re chewing
their tongues off trying to breathe.
Wendy, child #2, her face is a waterfall.
Christopher is vomiting from a fever.
He’s vomiting all over Wendy’s grave.
On the seventh day God rested.
Christopher has died of dysentery.
Gregory Sherl’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Gargoyle, Columbia Poetry Review, NOÖ Journal, and PANK. He currently lives in Virginia and blogs at http://gregorysherl.blogspot.com/.
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