[Newspoetry] trying again

[prince myshkin]

Hello -- I want this message to be read so I'll try to make it legible.  
(Sorry -- I don't understand why it sometimes comes out covered in goop with 
no margins.)

Jan 7, 2001

While William is being encouraging, I'd like to join in.
 
Bill:  Thank you for your response to me.  I appreciate and was heartened by 
your taking responsibility for the text and clarifying your intentions.  
That solves the problem.
 
Joe:  I never meant to imply that I was upset by everything published and 
not published on the site.  It's easily one of my favorite sites.  And your 
last posting (in response to William) is good to read.
 
Sam:  Try again.
 
And to all the 12-year-olds and "juvenile" people who are probably not 
reading this:  I don't agree that you are under any obligation to respond 
politely and respectfully when your parents say "fneeh" to you.  Let 'em 
have it.
 
That was going to be the end of this email.  Does the term "flame war" seem 
to anyone else out of proportion?
 
 
 
William:  I love critique.  Including withering and unforgiving 
self-critique.  It is the most valuable tool -- it may, in the last 
analysis, be the only tool -- a writer / songwriter / composer / activist / 
person-who-wants-to-improve-the-world has.  It is sometimes exhausting to 
use, and it can be used clumsily -- some of its more clumsy uses seem to be 
results of exhaustion, or of fear of what it might do.  I happen to know 
it's a tool you've used throughout the fifteen years I've known you.  Why 
rob others of it?
 
(I didn't, by the way, consider my initial posting a "critique" so much as a 
"complaint."  I personally write and perform a lot of material which I fully 
expect members of its audience to consider offensive, insensitive, and just 
plain wrong -- and I certainly think they have the right to complain.  Such 
complaining is not always productive, and it definitely isn't the most 
valuable tool anybody has.  It isn't supposed to be.  I do not 
consider complaint or critique competitive -- there's nothing to win.)
 
The letter you wrote to Andy, in which you accuse him of "promot[ing his] 
own aesthetic agenda at the expense of other people's", is itself a strident 
advancement of an aesthetic position, yours -- which is a stridently 
controversial position.  (For example, I can think of very few people who 
would agree with the statement "there is no bad poetry."  You certainly 
haven't always believed that.  Like all controversial statements it raises 
some difficult questions, for example:  if there is no bad poetry, why do 
people "need to practice in order to improve?"  It's not a rhetorical 
question -- I really want to know the answer.) 
 
I mean that as a compliment, though I must admit I feel uncomfortable 
complimenting you right now, partly because your letter implies that you 
won't like the image of yourself as advancing an aesthetic position -- that 
would be competitive!  But it would be easier for me (though you know, I'm 
gonna be okay either way) if you would acknowledge that what you're doing is 
controversial -- and that therefore, people won't like it, even if they have 
nothing wrong with them (for example that they are "unable to take 
[theselves] seriously without putting down other artists"). 
 
People brought together by "a desire to understand and respond immediately 
to the events of the world" stand only to benefit by asking the question:  
"are we meeting this desire?  How?"  On that question, people won't get very 
far when they are told that disagreement, or expression thereof, is 
motivated by something sick (in this case, competition).  If the New York 
Times called you up and complained that you should stop being so competitive 
with other writers by criticizing them in the various ways Newspoetry does, 
I hope you'd feel unrepentant.

 
And as almost everybody reading this knows, I love Andy, and I cringed while 
reading your letter at many of the things you said about him in 
none-too-subtle conditional constructions.  I want to stick up for him.  
Andy didn't compare Newspoetry to the Onion to make himself look good.  (If 
that's what he was trying to do, it evidently didn't work -- which you'd 
think he could have predicted.)  I wish you would respond by saying, for 
example, that you LIKE the Onion (which is the case, I think), or that you 
DON'T think Newspoetry is like the Onion, or even that this issue doesn't 
matter to you, or something -- NOT "you're being competitive, which means 
BAD, by saying that" (that's not only a very difficult assertion to react to 
without proving it true -- it also functions as an official reason why very 
little of what the BAD person originally actually said is referred to in the 
subsequent conversations).
 
If you really think that Andy is a competitive person, at least you should 
give him credit (and me too) for taking so many losing positions.  (And 
you're welcome to say the same to the New York Times if they do call you 
up.)
 
Speaking of which, I did write a letter to the Nation about their poetry 
policy, by the way, a few years ago.  Didn't get far, but that's typical of 
solo campaigns.
 
And thanks for the friendly words about "snowevidence".  I personally think 
it has some problems. 
 
Love,
Rick
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