[Newspoetry] Rick, Netiquette, etc. &c.

[Sam Markewich 2]

Rick and Andy,
	If I were to try again, as Rick tells me to do, the only thing I would
do differently is to write shorter and complete sentences.  Yet, Andy, I
really wasn't able to give it that much thought, which is also the case
with the construction of many of the things I send to newspoetry.  The
reason for this is that I, like so many of the American people, have to
work from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed (and don't get
enough rest) between being employed over forty hours a week and being a
responsible parent to an eight-year old, who needs a lot of my undivided
love and attention.
	What's most angering about all of your correspondences on these matters
is that you expect me to do various and sundry impossible things.  Two
of these are: 1. Try again to respond to Rick. (That's impossible
because I already did a great job, even with my incomplete and run-on
sentences, and it's not my problem if that greatness wasn't observed. 
Therefore, you might try again yourself Rick by meditating on what I
wrote for the rest of your life or until you get it and decide to learn
how to interact with people humanely and with emotional insight into
yourself.); 2. Find the time to care about Andy's message with much
interest when its bottom line is that those of us who write for
newspoetry should either be rich, white university professor/student
types with all of the time in the world to devote to our writing and our
political savvy (often in part because we're patriarchally detached from
relationships, ourselves and our household, familial and secretarial
responsibilities at the same time that we give lip service to feminist
critiques [and, no, I'm not saying that this is the case necessarily
with you, Andy.  It is, according to his ex-wife, a feminist, the case
with George Lakoff.]) or stop writing in any public forum. (Between
working A LOT for pay, being a stepfather to a child whose biological
father sends zero child support and being an egalitarian partner to my
partner in household and emotinal matters, I'm very happy thank you that
I have an opportunity to belong to Newspoetry and thus be connected to
many friends and some strangers in some way related to art and
community, even if much of the time what I write on Newspoetry isn't
exactly art because I don't have time to make it thus.  It's just about
the only time I'll have to be involved in a community art and activist
project until Timothy is 16 years old and I've paid off all of the debt
I've gone into to be able to support him, and it means far, far more to
me than would it for me to exhaust myself by spending 9 hours writing a
poem that Roland Barthes, Adorno and Brecht would love every time I
wanted to submit something to Newspoetry [in case you'd feel better
knowing that I'm capable you can look at, for example, "Freedom's Just
Another Loss for Nothing Left to Words" or "Soft Manhood Threatens
Re-Elected Mayor of San Francisco".]).
	Even with the fact of my physical and emotional exhaustion from doing
traditionally un-American things like being a good, present father, and
co-parent/partner, I make sure to keep thinking and keep researching the
politics, the news and their smelly underbelly, and being a part of
Newspoetry is one of the main reasons I do that.  Maybe some day in
eight years when me being arrested wouldn't interfere substantially with
Timothy's (my son's) well-being I'll be able to create other forms of
protest, in writing and on the streets as well, ones that even
middle-class French, German, English and San-Diego-based literary
theorists would approve of .  For now, this is all I'm resonably capable
of, and if you expect more from me, then I simply cannot see that you
care a damn about eradicating the routes of oppression, since you'd then
be expecting me to work more hours than there are in a day and a night
and ignore my responsibilities to my son, my partner and my overall
well-being in order to satisfy your political-literary criteria for
revolutionary work.  I will be forever in love with William for starting
Newspoetry, and with Joe for keeping it going.  I will not even remotely
sympathise with critiques that are so far removed from the realities of
contemporary American political-economic oppression as to further it in
the name of something revolutionary.    
	I'm really tired of this conversation, I agree with William and Joe
(both their public forum and private forum emails), I trust that you,
Rick, and you, Andy, believe that what you've written over the course of
this conversation is important, both personally and politically, yet, I
don't trust that it actually is, at least not for the reasons the two of
you think it is.

Uz,
Sam