So many of the comments on Brown's blog are of the "this is a horror story" variety. No it ain't. Getting fucking shot because you write poetry is a horror story. This is a boring soap opera.

The only benefit, I see, of controversies about poetry contests is that they (might) force us to examine what we really mean by fairness and equity. Brown’s blog aside (and this is neither to endorse or dismiss her complaints) I don’t see the point of 1) worrying about the unfairness of poetry contests or 2) thinking that if they were ever fair they would be just.

Such a compassionate take, Michael, as always.

I'd be mightily impressed if anyone could point to a single instance in which I failed to express compassion when the situation merited it.

I just realized I used to know Stacey, so I'm not going to weigh in on this again. I wish her the best of luck & happiness.

Ms. Brown's updated blog announces that her book will in fact be published by C&R Press.

I would love to hear Tony Hoagland weigh in on the matter.

Hi, Mr. Nichols, and thanks for posting about this. But I need to clarify something: in the statement from the press, Wynne did not say it was because I didn't meet the contractual obligations. They backed off that claim very quickly because it was false. According to the contract, which was rendered void and can be disclosed, all I had to do before the book came out was give them the text, an author photo, and a bio. Obviously, I did all of those things, so they quickly switched the claim and made it about my attitude. It's an important distinction because they did not have legal cause to break the contract.

Thank you.
Stacey Lynn Brown

Turning publication into a contest seems to me to signal the death of an art form. The mystery is how and why so many have embraced this as the status quo.

> Turning publication into a contest seems to me to signal the death
> of an art form. The mystery is how and why so many have embraced
> this as the status quo.

Hi, Sina. Poets have always chased the laurels, yes/no/maybe?

(Comments comparing support for the arts in Canada and the US deleted.)

I keep hoping more poetry presses will use open submissions (perhaps with a purchase of one of their books) instead of a contest model.

Jordan,
Yes, they chase, and it is nice to be awarded prizes and have one's work acknowledged. Quite another matter to have publication turned into a lottery though isn't it? And yes, we are fortunate in Canada to have funding for our poetry--tho with an elephant such as the US sitting next to us (even if it is downhill) we need that extra support. One does need to support small presses, and poetry publication is indeed a labor of love, but why not simply a reading fee? Or is that just not sexy enough?

Yrs from the northern reaches of the imagination.

"The sordid ghost of Foetry.com...."

Let me get this straight—and I hope I'm not misreading you: Foetry unmasked the craven manipulation of the contest system by Jorie Graham and others, and it's Foetry that was "sordid"? If that's what you mean then I would say your ethical compass is cracked. I suspect it is, because you link to Ashbery's Some Trees as an example of a good book of poetry that saw print because of nepotism. (This is news to me: maybe you'd care to elaborate.) Surely the fact that good poetry has been published because of nepotism is no defense of nepotism, nor is it a defense of the emotional and financial fraud perpetrated on the "losers" of such a "contest."

Of course, the roots of this fraud go deeper than contests, which after all are simply an expression of two distressing and conflicting forces: the indifference of the vast majority of Americans to poetry, and the lucrative system of writing programs whose administrators must be able to pretend that publication is possible for the thousands of poets it produces each year. Contests produce "winners"—i.e., poets who approval-stamp makes their work slightly more marketable—and feed the illusion poets seem to need that a large and appreciative audience awaits them.

Contests also provide useful fodder for one's vita, which can help land a job within the writing program System itself. We now have a whole generation of poets teaching other poets only a few years younger than themselves. And what will most of these student poets do? Graduate, of course, and begin teaching other slightly younger poets. Clearly this Rube Goldberg machine can't chug along forever.

I am not saying that writing programs are evil (I teach writing myself on occasion and was energized and inspired early on by the terrific University of British Columbia writing program), or that they damage poets or poetry. Nor am I arguing against contests per se. What I am arguing is that poets need to ask themselves if spending a lifetime in the bubble of the System is good for them or their work. And the denizens of the System need to ask themselves if there isn't some connection between the American indifference to poetry and kind of poetry the System validates and rewards.

Lest Canadians be too pleased about their arts funding, note that big cuts are on the way.

. . . Ms. Brown posted many responses on her blog,

but she didn't run mine regarding his honor Judge Hoagland . . .

(see it on my blog) . . .

"kerfuffles"?

Whatever Foetry's "sordid" effect was, at least it got rid

of [censored] and [libel],

so it did some good . . .

Joseph, both Ashbery & O'Hara were friendly w/ Auden, who selected the volume for the prize. Ashbery says that Auden learned thru a mutual friend that both poets had submitted their manuscripts & asked them thru this friend to send them over. Before learning that the two poets had entered the contest, Auden had declared that no book deserved to win the prize that year -- so presumably he at least glanced thru Some Trees without thinking it worthy of publication, before he knew who had written it. I think Travis's point isn't that fixed contests are OK but that it's pretty naive to think they've ever been fair. It reminds me of the liberal outrage after the 2004 election, when reports of fishy doings in Ohio began to appear. Wow, corruption in the American electoral system? Shocking!

"...you link to Ashbery's Some Trees as an example of a good book of poetry that saw print because of nepotism. (This is news to me: maybe you'd care to elaborate.)"

What happened was that Auden didn't like any manuscripts in the contest, so he asked Ashbery and O'Hara--both of whom he knew personally--for theirs, which hadn't gotten through the initial screening process. That's my understanding anyway.

Doodle,
Yes, we are always fighting to save our funding. That's part of our job description.

One can never get too comfortable.

That's probably a good thing.

these kerfuffs occur because poetry is the least-funded of all the arts . . .

ideally of course, since those in all the other arts derive

(steal/plagiarize) all their ideas from poets,

then all their profits should be

garnished taxed tithed sequestered

to pay for all poetry publications—

Or, yes, the compassionate Matt is correct about the book's not making it thru the screening process.

As for "The System": "The world avenges itself on those who would lose it by skipping over the due process of elimination, from whatever altruistic motive, by incrusting itself so thoroughly in these efforts at self-renewal that no amount of wriggling can dislodge its positive or negative image from all that is contemplated of present potentialities or the great sane simplifications to come."

Sina--But why is a reading fee better than a contest fee? Daisy

Daisy,
A reading fee isn't entering into a lottery...it's supporting a press for the service it's offering, which is reading through manuscripts. Not sure what other options there are, surely there are more.

One hears of people entering contests year after year, ten years and more I have heard, rather than have something published without the contest stamp.

Happy weekend all.

Joseph,

Though I do think the Foetry.com business was a sordid kerfuffle--often intentionally so--I also think it did some good at first. The contest system needed scrutiny, and perhaps the only way to get people to take the problems seriously was through agitation. After it's initial splash though, it seemed to me that it became a repository for poetry snark, gossip, and innuendo. Entertaining as all of that was, it became a parody of itself and little more than a distraction. From what, I'm not totally sure.

Travis

Sina--
But suppose a press already knows who they want to publish and uses the reading fees from over-the-transom submitters to fund the publication? Isn't it pretty much the same thing as the press that knows who they want to win the contest and charges fees to enter anyway? I mean that if someone wants to run things dishonestly, they're going to run it dishonestly, whatever they call their fees. And if not, not. Seems like it's possibly even more of a lottery, only without the cash prize. I mean, I agree, there's no reason for people to stick only with the contest system, but it seems like the main reason to submit outside the contest system is to expand your chances of winning the lottery.
Best,
Daisy

>> Not sure what other options there are, surely there are more. One hears of people entering contests year after year, ten years and more I have heard, rather than have something published without the contest stamp.

Did an angel speak? Are we really having this conversation? Here are just a few of the dozens of terrific younger poets writing in English one could name who have published very good books of poetry without winning (or even entering) a single contest: Lisa Jarnot, Jennifer Moxley, William Fuller, Tom Pickard, Michael O'Brien, Lisa Robertson, Doug Powell, Chicu Reddy, Anselm Berrigan....

Some of these strike me as the best young English-language poets writing today.

"Lisa Jarnot, Jennifer Moxley, William Fuller, Tom Pickard, Michael O'Brien, Lisa Robertson, Doug Powell, Chicu Reddy, Anselm Berrigan...."

You sure about that? That list? Methinks a few of them have worked the contest system, a bit. And beyond that, and perhaps to an academic such as you this doesn't matter, but how many on that list are striving for, or already have, tenure? Awards matter in that matter. But perhaps more importantly, presenting oneself as a "viable" member of the academic community matters when working the tenure system. So even if none of these poets has ever won a contest (which is not true), or even if none of these poets has ever entered a contest (which is also untrue), they still participate in the privilege of the system that rewards award winners, and I doubt, save perhaps Jarnot, that any of them would turn down an award their publisher entered them into. But enlighten me, M. Robbins, as you seem always prepared with the right way.

The compassionate Matt is on top of things.

As for The System, "All this comes as no surprise, it is even somewhat of a relief, and better than the dire sequel that those precocious moments seemed to promise, cataclysms instead of the ominous hush that now lies over everything. And who is to say whether or not this silence isn't the very one you requested so as to be able to speak? Perhaps it seems ominous only because it is concentrating so intensely on you and what you have to say."

Tell me, o Niemandes Klee, if you know, which of the aforementioned have won the contests. I might, as the bard saith, be wrong. And, yes, I know some of them (because I know some of them) have worked the contest system -- "or even entering" wasn't meant to apply to tout. But as far as I know, these are not winners.

But, yes, they are winners: some of them have won awards other than contests. "They still participate in the privilege of" &c. Absolutely. I am not claiming for them garlands of purity. Nor am I denying the validity or severity of the charges that might be leveled against them! Write up the bill, I will deliver it personally, & ask them for their publishers' cell numbers.

One understands there are those who have won, say, the Whitman who might be, ah, prickly about the subject. Let me say: I have nothing agin the entering & winning of these heroic contests. I only think it self-defeating & sad to imagine they're the only flame in town.

if reading/contest fees essentially cover book production costs, then what we have is a form of self-publishing: poets, collectively, fund their own publication; but those who appear in print do so as individuals.

so why not self-publish directly? obviously, because only certain authorities are deemed capable of vesting a given book with symbolic power: Jorie Graham? Wesleyan UP? Ron Silliman? the subpress collective? all, for some poets, could be the right answer; all could also be the wrong answer. what do you want people to "know" about your book before they open the cover?

if you want to "work" the university system as a poet, you can publish a book with a university press, you can get a PhD, or you can be "worked" by the system as exploited part-time labor (the first two being necessary but not sufficient for those who wish to avoid the third)...

MR, now yr seein' phantoms everywhere. Mine own thoughts on phaux and contests long-standingly summarized here (http://janedark.com/2005/06/almost_geniuses.html). Nor would I ever use a pseud involving that prick Dorn. I do think that "contests" misses the mark as a bogeyman, leaving free for example the welter of wunders who were simply placed by their mentor with a publisher (probably a higher number than dubious contest winners). Or and also, isn't payback the issue? It would be more interesting to have website tracking when poets make positive reviews of others who've blurbed their books, or etc. And are any of these more corrupt(ed) than purists persisting beyond the world of influence via inherited wealth? We can has systemic analysis?

OK, Matt ftw.

Michael and Nick, that’s right: the poetry world is a rotten corpse, through and through. There is no (or hardly any) money in it, even for those (very very few) on top. Or, worse, there is tainted money everywhere, and every poet wants a slice of the award pie, a slice of the tenure pie, a slice of the now-obscenely-wealthy Poetry Foundation pie. Or, just as bad, they want to be virtuous and renounce their slice, and then we’re back to where we began. And this will continue with or without fair contests and, indeed, with or without contests at all. What is the point then of focusing so much attention and energy on 1) following, say, Cordle in obsessing over the fairness of contests or 2) following, say, Silliman in proposing alternatives to contests? Neither option, I insist, means that one is fighting the good fight or pushing for a relative improvement in a fallen world.

But just because it makes no difference whether we are appalled by unfair poetry competitions doesn’t mean it makes no difference whether we are appalled by injustice and inequity. In fact, the former makes a fine distraction for poets to overlook the latter.

Michael and Nick, that’s right: the poetry world is a rotten corpse, through and through. There is no (or hardly any) money in it, even for those (very very few) on top. Or, worse, there is tainted money everywhere, and every poet wants a slice of the award pie, a slice of the tenure pie, a slice of the now-obscenely-wealthy Poetry Foundation pie. Or, just as bad, they want to be virtuous and renounce their slice, and then we’re back to where we began. And this will continue with or without fair contests and, indeed, with or without contests at all. What is the point then of focusing so much attention and energy on 1) following, say, Cordle in obsessing over the fairness of contests or 2) following, say, Silliman in proposing alternatives to contests? Neither option, I insist, means that one is fighting the good fight or pushing for a relative improvement in a fallen world.

But just because it makes no difference whether we are appalled by unfair poetry competitions doesn’t mean it makes no difference whether we are appalled by injustice and inequity. In fact, the former makes a fine distraction for poets to overlook the latter.

Boyd: Agreed. But I still want my slice. Look into my slice for me. Please. No, really.

Jane: Sorry! But it's yr own damn fault for being so many phantoms.

Put me down for systemisch anurlysize. We await ur instrucsions.

Daisy,
I suppose so, sure, all things can be tampered with. But as the woman who won and had her book revoked realized, she had no idea who was she giving her manuscript to and why when she entered and won. What does one support when one buys into that model? And buying in continues to give the contest model weight and meaning to be sure--more contests every day. If one thinks of poetry as a conversation, the contest model seems less relevant. Do you want to have a conversation, to dialogue in poetry, or win a prize?

As someone pointed out, there are many who don't take that route to publication. It seems what those poets have in common is a belief in poetry and publication as community and conversation.

It's complicated, yes? It needs to be interrogated.

Speaking of phantoms: it appears I was shadowed by myself. And a figure that resembles me in the fantasia wants to recommend that everyone read Jane’s fine comments on the phaullabaloo, especially this bit: “In short, the shocking revelations that phauxetry achieved via a close inspection of the territory are exactly what anyone who isn’t severely mentally deficient could determine by taking the measure of free market capitalism.”

That, to me, seems right on. That is, in fact, the beast foetry heralded as Bigfoot. And surely having a website tracking when poets make positive reviews of others who have blurbed their books, or etc. would not be a meaningful or interesting place to begin either. No kind of watchdog website whatsoever would make any sort of difference. If the problem is the free market, you’re not going to shame it into a corner. And without a doubt it is the problem.

Josh Clover said:

>Nor would I ever use a pseud involving that prick Dorn.

Nor would you probably say something like that, I'd wager (knowing what was best for your posty-avant theoretical fanny), if Dorn was still alive and kicking...

Kent

"the problem" is that the funding for the arts

in this country is being misappropriated:

the other arts are getting most of the

money, and poetry is getting the least . . .

my solution (sit-ins, pickets, boycotts and all the other forms of protest

used by underclasses to gain their rightful share)

(see my blog for further fulmination)

may not work

but i don't see any practical ideas from anybody here

for how to fix this shameful inequity . . .

climb down from your theory clouds and come up

with some dollars and cents schemes . . .

. . . don't know if you'll run my previous comment . . .

the date of the "fulmination" entry mentioned is August 27 on my blog———

i'm appending it below, but it's probably too long and too splenetic to reprint here:

How I Created and Then Published My Collaborative Chapbook with My Own Micropress and Made All My Chapbook Dreams Come True

is the headline of a long post today in the blog of young poet Reb Livingston (google "Home-Schooled by a cackling jackal")——

I should admire and applaud her efforts,

but I'm sorry to say I think private individual projects like hers are largely shortsighted and misguided:

one might say they treat the symptoms, not the disease.

The problem is systemic, and should be attacked on a systemic level——

poetry is the least-funded of the arts,

and that underfunding occurs in a culture/society

which of course underfunds all the arts to some degree,

but poetry suffers the worse——

in today's NYTimes Arts section, extensive reports appear on the New York City Opera and the MTV Video Awards etc, in other words the important arts are covered in depth and detail,

whereas as usual not a word about poetry or poetry news (Cider Press brouhaha, anyone?)——

page B2, below the fold:
"Guggenheim to receive $1 Million Award"——
"The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced that it has been selected for a $1 million special award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for its coming exhibition 'The Third Mind: American Artists contemplate Asia . . .' at the Guggenheim Museum" . . .

Livingston in a recent post estimated the amount paid by USA poets (USAPOs for short) to enter book contests is yearly one million dollars . . .

USAPOs whine complain about paying these fees to little-press publishers . . . the publishers whine complain about having to charge these fees in order to pay for the cost of printing the books . . . it's a vicious circle-jerk where no one gets off . . .

and nobody in USAPO it seems gets frustrated enough to actually attack the root problem,

which is the normative underfunding of poetry by the cultural powers and dominions . . .

The foundations and institutions have the money, but they're not giving it to poetry——

that's the basic cause. And USAPO won't do anything to change that——

they won't unite and fight for their due.

They won't picket the Guggenheim Museum/Foundation (or the NEH) in protest, they won't urge a boycott of this exhibit, they won't plaster this event with leaflets demanding equal funding for poetry——

which incidently I'm only mentioning because it's in today's paper, it's only an illustration, an example of so many other misappropriations——

Yes, misappropriation, because this million bucks should be the million bucks Livingston speaks of——

this million (and so much more) should be going to USAPO——

but hey, USAPOs don't want that money, really, do they, they want to live via the old virtues of self-reliance,

look at Livingston for example——

she's not a lazybum welfare-queen waiting for a handout from the government, she's not sitting on her duff waiting for a topdown endowment,

no, she's doing it the good-old-fashioned American way,

the "small business model," the "mom-and-pop shop" that made this country great,

she's doing it solo, she's being an entrepreneur . . . and how apt the title of her blog:

"home-schooled" . . . home-schooling: yes, that's the philosophy advocated by the Christian Conservatives that lead this nation,

isn't it? (check next week's Republican convention for further extollments of this ideal.)—

As opposed to public enterprise, collective economy . . . ?

*
as I say above, I'm plucking the Guggie exhibit out of today's paper and using it as an example

(check tomorrow's paper for more news about the nonfunding-of-poetry: it's a daily feature)——

and ditto I'm using Reb Livingston as an example plucked out, for which I apologize——

and I hope she won't be offended when I say I think that that million dollars now going to the museum

should instead be going to her

and to other young poets like her——

*
PS.

and to those of you saying, What good is picketing the Guggie going to do——

see the opening of this exhibit, our Borgias there in their Medici masks,

in their pride,

and that's where you have to hit them, in their pride——

because their pose is to be patrons of the arts,

they self-esteem themselves on how highminded how elite that patronage proves they are——

it's part of their PR—

but now a picketline of poets screams curses at them,

a gauntlet of poets hurls leaflets and posters and gets handcuffed mass-arrested

for disturbing the hauteur of smug Maecenas——

for puncturing that complacent aura of Kultur——

and if you reply, Well that won't work, that will just make them hate poets——

really? Hey, they already hate you, in case you didn't notice——

or did you imagine their policy of having poetry be the worst-funded of all the arts

is because they love you best of all the arts,

is that your ironic theory?——

Attacking them with protests at the museum or the concert hall or the opera house,

lying down in those aisles and galleries with passive resistance nonviolent refusal to move (we shall not be moved)——

no, that may not work——

but what you're doing now, does that work?——

sucking up to them, petitioning them, filling out their insipid applications, is that effective——

is that getting poetry funded at the level it deserves——?

Instead of kissing their asses, start kicking them——

they'll never love you, but maybe you can make them fear you——

and if they fear you, they'll fund you ——

maybe.

*
I say unto the Guggenheim Museum:

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poets.

*

Sounds like we need a state publishing house and a Writers' Union.

Mr. Nichols,

Please! I'm not a poet. Where'd you get that?

And though I like the Foetry Years suggestion, I actually prefer Foetry! Get it? Faux-etry!

Mr. Knott,

It would be an honor to use your [censored] and [libel] comment as a blurb for my forthcoming memoir.

Well, as for me, I just self-publish. Always have. I have four books now and people actually buy them.

Here are some of my 'non-contest' colleagues:

Alexander Pope
William Blake
Walt Whitman
E. E. Cummings
Ezra Pound
T.S. Eliot
Edgar Allan Poe
Robert Bly
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Robinson Jeffers
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Percy Bysshe Shelly
Robert Service
Carl Sandburg

Not to mention,

R. Kipling
H. D. Thoreau
W. E. B. DuBois
W. Cather
T. Hardy
N. Hawthorne
E. Hemingway
V. Woolf
O. Wilde
D. H. Lawrence

Jeez! Go figure.

People who read poetry make poets great, not publishers.

Sorry, Alan. My mistake. And please, no more Mr. Nichols! That's my cousin's name.

Also, none of the writers Gary mentions had Facebook accounts. Nor, to my knowledge, did any of them take Zoloft or enjoy The Sopranos.

It's Alan Cordle's wife who's the poet - Kathleen Halme.

Sina--The contest system should be interrogated, of course!

Stacy Lynn--congratulations on your book getting picked up elsewhere; I'm glad there's a happy ending to this story.

Best to all,
Daisy

I'd said to Josh Clover, in response to his somewhat sophomoric insult of Ed Dorn:

>Nor would you probably say something like that, I'd wager (knowing what was best for your posty-avant theoretical fanny), if Dorn was still alive and kicking...

I actually have nothing against Josh's, or anyone's, employment of theory, so I withdraw the "theoretical" adjective, with apologies.

Much better just to say "knowing what was best for your posty-avanty fanny."

Kent

Kent, who doesn't seem to know my name but wishes for some familiarity, has a curious measure of the "somewhat sophomoric" — perhaps the word arouses in him a youthful feeling. Be that as it may, Ed Dorn remains the dude whose journal awarded Steve Abbott the "AIDS Award for Poetic Idiocy"; Steve died of AIDS a few years later. As Kevin Killian wrote, far more eloquently than I could:

I write on behalf of one on whom a beaker of poisoned blood was
poured by the talented staff artists on "Rolling Stock," one who on his
deathbed still strove to understand the motives behind this attack, one who
tried to forgive, one who tried so hard to forgive it broke my heart. He
is no longer alive, but I am, and why shouldn't I say exactly what I feel?

Kent, you can choose your own suitably mature adjective for that prick Ed Dorn, and ascribe it to whichever sphere or intellectual tradition intrigues you.

Kent, you know you my dawg, but Dorn was a particularly vicious bastard. I was at CU during his last years. He was a coked-up misogynistic narcissist, & good riddance to him. (I think some of Slinger is pretty great though.)

A little more "coked-up misogynistic narcissi[sm]" might help keep whining over poetry contests and career platforms to a minimum. But Michael, if you were at CU during Dorn's "last years," it was probably the chemo and not the coke making it seem as though he were treating you like a man-bitch.

"Jane," here, here: keep kicking against it....

Dale

Joshua (sorry to have gotten your name wrong, there),

Who said Dorn, a great poet, was a nice guy? Do you think I endorse his abhorrent statements about AIDS (which he didn't hold at end of life, by the way)?

I'm talking about the silly sanctimonious smear language, which takes one down a slippery road, indeed. Want to score some more "prick" points and show how really righteous you are? Williams snidely cheered the bombing of Hiroshima; Stein was a Vichy sympathizer; Spicer was an anti-Semite (also hooray for half of radical Modernism); Neruda (along with all kinds of hallowed poets) was a hard-core Stalinist (aided Siqueiros in first plot on Trotsky); Villon was a murderer and scumbag; Olson a misogynist coke-head and drunk; Rimbaud an arms merchant and slave trader; Whitman a champion of the Indian wars and the conquest of Mexico; Baraka an anti-Semite; Zukofsky a misogynist philanderer (forced Niedecker into aborting their child); Allen Ginsberg a defender of pedophilia; Pound, Eliot, Yeats, well, forget it; Stevens a racist; Brecht a misogynist, Stalinist hack; Marinetti a fascist; Sexton an abusive drunk; Wilmot a perverted creep, Spencer an unapologetic promoter of genocide; Jeffers a fascist sympathizer; Larkin a racist, misogynist jerk; Millay a narcissistic, manipulative drunk; Badiou (one of your heroes, I believe) an apologist for the Cultural Revolution; Popa a Serb nationalist avant la lettre; Burroughs a pederast and nihilist; Kerouac a cheerleader for the bombing of Indochina; and etc. etc. (Let's not get into the avant's sacred cows from the other arts!).

This is all old, tired stuff. Talk about it, yes; criticize, yes. But avoid the sophomoric self-righteous language.

Kent

To be sure, Dorn’s “award” for Steve Abbott was monstrous. That needs to be clear, and it can never be too clear. Just as obviously, using it as a measure of his poetry or, it may be, anything more than his chance of being a posthumous presidential candidate is misguided. I was tempted to say something earlier, but I was sure that Kent was more than capable of response. Perhaps Kent’s most incisive observation is that “Spicer was an anti-Semite (also hooray for half of radical Modernism)” etc. To put it differently, when can we has systemic analysis?

Yes, Kent, many people have been unpleasant. Some of them poets. One of them Ed Dorn, a prick ("a man regarded as stupid, unpleasant, or contemptible"). Nothing you've said changes that. Don't know what you're talking about. But if it makes you feel more grownup to say "homophobe" or "gaybasher," neato. Done with this. By all means continue, though. Good comedy.

Thom Gunn was a fan of the TV show Friends...

(what is Badiou doing in that catalog?)

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Clover was talking about poetry when he called Dorn a prick. He was talking about online pseudonyms, and how he wouldn't use one associated with someone he thinks was not a nice person. What's the big deal? Besides, Kent, since you named all those other people's faults, do you deny the prickness of Dorn?

Chelsey Minnis, Preface 1 from Bad Bad:
"The poet I worship is Edward Dorn, because I adore his disgust."

--Daisy

Some suggested reading on Dorn:

Special issue of the Chicago Review, *Edward Dorn: American Heretic*, from a couple years back.

(from web page) This triple issue features a long overdue 250-page section on the late Edward Dorn, entitled EDWARD DORN, AMERICAN HERETIC, which includes:

late poems by Dorn
correspondence with Jones (Baraka), Raworth, and others
an interview
transcript of a 1977 poetry workshop
Jennifer Dunbar Dorn on ROLLING STOCK
Alastair Johnston on Zephyrus Image
Dale Smith on THE SHOSHONEANS
David Southern on Dorn's correspondence
Keith Tuma on Dorn's late poetry
John Wright on interviewing Dorn

Kent

Sorry, meant to provide URL for that Dorn issue:

http://humanities.uchicago.edu/orgs/review/index_4934_501.shtml

Well, FYI and to get back to the topic of Travis Nichols post above:

Bookforum website links today to this interview on Foetry in Left Curve magazine:

http://www.leftcurve.org/LC30WebPages/Foetry.html

Kent

the house slaves squabbling with the field slaves,

name-calling and casting ass-persion———

Would it be casting aspersion on foetry's persons to say that they all sound a little like Ron Paul supporters?

on the other hand, it's no wonder poets won't unite

and fight their common enemies,

when they have so much fun attacking each other——

Who/What/Where are our common enemies?

Bill Knott is right. I have a Modest Proposal here:

http://joanhoulihan.blogspot.com/2008/09/modest-proposal-for-poetry.html

oh for pete's sake