[New-Poetry] Re: In need of praise?

[James Cervantes]

Aha!  So you're implying that sales, and the reading and reviewing of books
of poetry have fallen in inverse proportion to the metastasizing of
Amalgamated Writing Programs?  I think you have a panel, Hal.


- Enlightened

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> Praise? Hey, if Walt could do it himself, so can you!Why wait for others
> to do your dirty work? Blurb up
> a storm. Review yourself and snatch up the best parts.
>
> And here's something to get your energy up. It might
> even stop your sniffles.
>
> Hal
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Amalgamated Writing Programs Announces Morally Repugnant
> Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit<http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog/#01-2-4-08pm>
>
>
> *
>  <http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html>*Publishing The Unpublishable
>
> Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith <http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub.html>
>
> has just published
> *Three Works <http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_028_Bernstein.pdf>*
> an e-pamphlet
>         <http://www.ubu.com/ubu/unpub/Unpub_028_Bernstein.pdf>*
>
> the last of the three works is this one:
> *
> *Amalgamated Writing Programs Announces
> Morally Repugnant Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit*
>
> *by Mike Freakman*
>
> New York, Dec. 22, 2007 – Darien Credenza, the Executive Muckamuck of
> Amalgamated Writing Programs, announced that a Morally Repugnant
> Poets-and-Theorists Exhibit will be held at the organization's annual
> congress in New York. The exhibit is the first of what is planned as a
> series of didactic displays at Amalgamated's popular annual gatherings.
>
> Credenza told AHP2 News that the exhibit would emphasize that Amalgamated
> was a nonpartisan service organization. "Yes we have no ideology. We only
> have craft. That is why we need not only to repudiate literary theorists and
> cultural critics but also the poets who have been brainwashed by them into
> spouting their Un-Amalgamated dogma."
>
> Credenza announced that the centerpiece of the exhibit would be a graphic
> display naming names of poets who engage in Un-Amalgamated activities such
> as criticizing the major poetry awards. Such a critical attitude, he said,
> reflects "'the demagoguery of a tone-deaf poetics; and, I feel, it's morally
> repugnant.'" Moreover, he added, such poets "'ooze with condescension,
> unless you talk their kind of talk,'" noting these poets were not worthy of
> his condescension, only his condemnation.
>
> Credenza warned of the danger of MLA-card-carrying literary theorists and
> cultural critics infiltrating creative writing programs through the morally
> repugnant poets. "'Literary theorists and cultural critics are parasites
> with peculiar habits of breeding. … They would tell you that accuracy in
> writing is a naïve delusion. At the expense of storytellers and poets,
> theorists sustain a parasitic lifestyle.'"
>
> "'These theorists often subject poems to gruesome interrogations in order
> to reveal—not what the authors intended to say—but what the writers failed
> to say,'" Credenza complained. "'As if our poets were mere conduits through
> which capitalism, patriarchy, religion, and prejudices of all kinds exercise
> their power.'"
>
> "It's up to Amalgamated to determine what the correct meaning of approved
> works are," Credenza said. "Anything else would lead to anarchy. Good poems
> have no hidden agendas. Good poems are neither for or against capitalism,
> patriarchy, or religion unless they clearly state that they are in the first
> stanza of the poem and logically develop the thesis through a combination of
> lucid images and narrative development."
>
> "'A few theorists and poets would have you believe that just raising such
> questions makes you an anti-intellectual meathead in complicity with the
> powers of postcolonial oppression. It's an age-old game of partisan politics
> to pretend that your party has a monopoly on virtue,'" said Credenza. "Only
> an organization such as Amalgamated Writing Programs, which is above the
> fray, and rejects demagoguery, has an authentic claim to virtue."
>
> Prominently featured at the Degenerate Books exhibit will be works by
> "'Wittgenstein, Marx, Foucault, hooks, Fanon, Lacan, Spivak, Lyotard,
> Kristeva, Poulet, Butler, and Gertrude Stein.'"
>
> "In Amalgamated workshops we discourage the discussion of ideas or
> philosophy or politics. That is the only way you preserve freedom of
> thought." Credenza noted that Amalgamated creative writing classes focused
> on how to write cover letters for submissions to literary magazine and the
> perils of multiple submissions.
>
> "My rule of thumb is that if a work of poetry challenges my understanding
> or beliefs, then it is morally repugnant," explained Credenza. "Poets should
> be like bees. They need to work in swarms. And Amalgamated is the mother
> bee. So watch out: those that buzz off are going to get stung. 'The queen's
> seductions are multifarious and deadly—far from chaste.'"
>
> "The morally repugnant poets have turned away from the hive, seduced by
> the theorists and cultural critics into writing poems that I can't
> understand," Credenza said, explaining that their poems are "'misguided
> missiles of a self-immolating government intent upon eradicating the small
> minority of the general reading public with an avid interest in
> literature.'"
>
> Because of their refusal to write the Amalgamated Way, they are "'the
> greatest pretenders'" and "'hypocrites,'" he added. "'They have tortured our
> poor mother tongue. And perhaps their abuse has contributed to the decline
> of the English major and audiences for literature.'"
>
> "That's the reason for Amalgamated's E-Z-Po initiative," he said. "E-Z-Po
> is designed to woo back disaffected readers with poems of 'simple
> representation and puritanical accuracy.'" The target audience, he said, is
> the vast public for reality TV and amateur pop singing competitions.
>
> "Of course, Amalgamated Writing Programs welcome all views," Credenza
> emphasized.
>
> "But some views are more equal than others."
>
> *Editor's Note:
> Double-quoted passages, and apiary imagery, are taken from "Advice for
> Graduating MFA Students in Writing: The Words & the Bees" by D.W. Fenza,
> Executive Director of the Associated Writing Programs, published in the
> official publication of AWP, The Writer's Chronicle, May/Summer 2006 (Vol.
> 38, No. 6).*
>
>
> ====
>
>
>  "All quotations are out of context,
>  including this one."
> --Anon.
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> halvard at earthlink.net
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20080323/422fe9e3/attachment.html