POET HEAL THYSELF by
RD Armstrong
Living with
con-artists, liars and thieves
Some years ago, it came
to my attention that a poet from back east,
who was famous for his tales of mayhem
during and after the Viet Nam war (where he
claimed he was disfigured while he served as
a Navy Seal), was lying about his whole war
experience. It’s even doubtful that he
served at all. Yet his books (which were
published by the thousands by a reputable
press operated by Henry Rollins) are often
cited as true chronicles of that horrible
time. Apparently he had a vivid
imagination.
Then, last year, a poet
of modest success here in the kingdom known
as the small press (or more accurately, the
alternative small press), staged his own
death. This guy couldn’t get enough play
from the drek (my opinion) that he called
poetry, so he decided to pull a fast one,
letting it be known that he had finally
succumbed to his demons and taken his own
life. When he was found out (and he was
found out because he announced that
he was still alive), a shockwave of disgust
and anger rocked those of us who gave a
damn…imagine, a poet operating with impaired
judgment and an ego the size of Penn
Station! Shocking, indeed. This was a
bitter pill to swallow for all the editors
who’d been busy fitting this guy for a halo
and a pair of wings. Naturally they were
pissed off for being tricked as well. No
surprise there. Nobody likes to be fooled.
Now there’s a "poet"
who claims to be Algerian poet, Amari Hamadene*, who is
submitting work around The Web that he has
plagiarized from other poets whose work has
been published on reputable websites, such
as Pedestal Magazine. What has become of
our little poetry heaven? Yes, it’s a
deceitful world, but not in our ‘house’ –
say it isn’t so!
Well friends, it is
so! And it’s a damned shame, too. But,
let’s get serious for a moment. How can we
be surprised by any of this? After all,
isn’t it high time that we (I speak as an
editor as well as some poet with an opinion)
accepted some of our responsibility in all
this? I mean, these jerks wouldn’t be able
to get away with this if it weren’t for the
editors who supposedly know the difference
between the good stuff and crap, publishing
their puerile and pusillanimous drek…all in
the name of artistic freedom, or free
speech, or some other jingoistic nonsense.
Yes, it’s shocking when you hear of some guy
over in North Africa cashing in on some
“local” poet’s skills and notoriety. This
certainly isn’t the first time this has
happened (I recall a friend of mine up in
Oakland telling me how a certain famous poet
plagiarized the first half of a poem he had
written about 9/11 and there was nothing my
friend could do about it, since the famous
poet had so many ‘connections’) and I doubt
it will be the last.
But I wonder, haven’t
we encouraged this kind of behavior in our
quest for a “pure” form of expression.
Wasn’t that the ideal for poetry on the
Internet? A place where one could post
their poems for the “entire” world to see,
unfettered by politics, risk or salability?
Where poets with no reputation or formal
training could find a forum for their
particular voice? I know that, that is why
I was drawn to the Web in the first place,
for the promise of free expression (just as
long as you didn’t violate the code of
ethics of the web-hosts) in an atmosphere of
anything goes.
Since we live in a time
corruption (which is nothing new when you
examine the path of history), it’s easy to
understand the dichotomy between those who
seek a purer forum for expression and those
who just want to muck everything up. It’s
the old battle between good and evil being
played out on the (supposedly) sacred
grounds of poetry and we can only watch with
horror and/or delight. The crazy antics of
these players are entertaining and
diversionary, distracting us from the fact
that the whole theater is about to collapse
under the weight of its own pretense: that
poetry should be a level playing field for
everyone. Well, it’s not. Nor should it
be. It’s as complicated a terrain as the
people who travel through it. Let’s face
it, poets are just as screwed up as everyone
else. Sure we might express ourselves a
little better, but basically we’re all
cursed and there’s no way to get around
that. Perhaps that’s why we strive towards
perfection in our chosen craft.
There’s nothing wrong
with trying to improve oneself, and I wish
more people/poets would make the effort; but
thinking that the problem is just a few
individuals, a few rotten apples, one might
say, is to be extremely naïve. The problem,
as I see it, is that we are continuously
tempted to take the easy route. It’s a hard
life for most of us, and the temptations are
many. It’s hard to keep your eyes on the
prize, when you’re not really sure what that
prize is.
It takes discipline and
focus to survive this trek. Poetry, being
the bastard step-child of literature,
demands constant attention. It’s not an
easy task, in spite of what many think. It’s
high time that we stop sitting on our hands
and start doing something to legitimize this
craft we call poetry. Maybe there will be a
union effort, or maybe it will fall to
individuals to start the ball rolling, but,
folks, if we’re going to make any headway,
we’ve got to put our house in order.
2005
* I received an
email from Amari Hamadene in which he claims
that his name was used by an unknown person
in the commission of these fraudulent
submissions and that he is the victim of a
hoax. One wonders what the point is
here...why would anyone bother to sign
someone else's name to stolen intellectual
property? But then I suppose, given
the thrust of my essay, anything is
possible.
Here is Mr. Hamadene's
email:
Dear editor,
A few days ago, you published on your
web journal an article untitled Poet heal
thyself by RD Armstrong concerning my
person. Briskly, you go with the rumors in a
squalid crusade without taking time to
consult me, nor also to try to discover
reasonably the truth. Since this date, I was
in contact with a certain person which
informed that I am really accused of
plagiarism and we arrived to the fact that
he considered the case as closed in his
website. But in spite of this, the article
you present as prophetical and which himself
erased from his archives long time ago
continue to be published in your site
without taking in consideration all the
consequences this can have on my person. I
wonder today, what are your real intentions
and wish to receive from your part an
explanation to this?
Under the name of Amari Hamadene, my
name, yes some texts have been published in
many reviews around the globe and are
deleted or in the way to be deleted. Since,
I have been implicated therefore in an
infernal multiple plagiarism story which let
sometimes to many persons the possibility to
give out every hypotheses on my person more
grave than the case of plagiarism itself.
Unfortunately, weeks after the bursting of
this fact, and apparently using only a
simple email address as everybody, and for
reasons that I completely ignore til this
day, my imitator was so clever to throw
doubt on my existence and to completely
isolate me from the international poetry
world. I don’t understand until this day how
can online editors accepts texts from
persons without taking time to informs
themselves about their existence and
consulted them or ask at less to receive a
postal letter from them. My imitator throw
doubt so far that he went to imply other
people who I don't know to be the
instigators of all this hoax. At present, I
find no other explanation to this stunt
except that to humbly ask you to completely
delete my name from the published article
and from your archives. As you are in
democracy you could say everything you want
but please respect the intimacy of any
person. I was surprised that you don't cite
any of the names of the other plagiarists
but just my name.
I will also ask you to be very heedful
because as everyone didn’t receive texts
from me by postal mail with a handwritten
letter from my part explaining my step is
the only responsible for his acts. I ask you
to accept no correspondence in my name by
email and if it possible to post this from
my part on your website.
Counting on your understanding, I pray
you to accept, since it’s my name, all my
apologies for all the inconveniences that it
could have caused you.
cordially
AH
| Pen and Ink drawing by Lummox contributer |
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| Claudio Parentela |
THE
LA POETRY GOOSE KEEPS ON LAYING PLASTIC EGGS
-- THOUGHTS
ON WEST COAST POETRY by Robert Peters
1.
Theodore
Roethke, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, and Charles Bukowski, the consensus has it, are major American poets who hail from the
West Coast. Roethke was, of course, from
Washington. Duncan was a San Franciscan. Snyder lives in northern
California, away from the coast, near the big timberline.
Bukowski was a Los Angelino through and through.
Duncan,
inspired by the Wildean esthetes of the l890's, assumed a velvet cape and embroidered vest, and created poetry influenced
by Villon, Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. He also loved Ezra Pound's, Hilda Doolittle's, and Charles Olson's work, and immersed himself in astrology. His arcane verse requires an attention
similar to that required for Yeats's poetry.
Whenever
Snyder descends from his yurt-life in the Rockies, admirers flock to his readings and celebrate by baking bread from sprouts and molasses in outdoor
ovens and by drinking the manzanita berry tea he encourages them to brew. You are never truly "Californian," I heard him once
say at a bread-love fest, unless you have gathered the berries, steeped the reddish brew, and quaffed deeply. Like
Duncan, Snyder is from the Bay Area where
Telegraph Avenue, UC Berkeley, a poetry renaissance (featuring Michael McClure,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, James Broughton, and Helen Adam, among others), Poetry Flash, and the efforts of the indefatigable
Jack Foley with his KPFA weekly "Cover to Cover Show, have created a climate for poetry unlike anything in Southern California,
where at least, though, we do boast of our Buk.
Bukowski
lived and wrote in Los Angeles, sharing his life with a vast array of whores, touts, vagrants, and winos. Just before his death,
the American literary world recognized his genius and originality. Hitherto they had dismissed him as formless, too enamored
of four-letter words and obsessed with sleaze, and too accessible (you could read and, presumably, enjoy a Bukowski poem without
ever having taken a college lit course). Moreover, he was a boozer and might turn mean, not at all the friendly poet-lush
say that John Logan, James Dickey, and James Wright were. In the late 60's, when Herbert Schueller, a
Detroit friend, gave me a copy of Crucifix in a Death's
Hand, my poetry world changed. I junked my imitations of Dylan Thomas, Yeats, and Cummings and began to write (and publish)
poems inspired by Bukowski. To share my enthusiasm, when I
sought to invite him to UC Irvine for a reading--I felt our MFA students should hear him, I was overruled by colleagues Charles
Wright and James McMichael. The latter vowed in so many words that CB would never set foot on campus. Vexed, I managed an
end-run and hosted Bukowski as the centerpiece for a course sponsored by the University Extension, a course featuring living
poets. The auditorium was filled.
2.
Despite
Bukowski's presence in Southern California, why have Los Angeles and
Orange
Counties remained so dismal for poetry? Obviously,
San
Francisco has the advantage of a compressed area where poets thrive.
In Berkeley, hippie coffee shops and bookstores near the UC Berkeley campus, encourage comradeship among poets. In northern
California, there's nothing like the
L A and Orange County sprawl that isolates poets. In the south, efforts to establish poet communities have been rare. Clayton Esheleman before
leaving Los Angeles for Ypsilanti encouraged a poet scene. Holly Prado and Harry Northup, through the Cahuenga Press, bring poets together socially and
are a nurturing force. Beyond Baroque, in
Venice, under the stewardship of Fred Dewey, has workshops and readings. Nevertheless, distances required
to reach most venues are usually over crowded freeways. Though I am on the board of the Red Hen Press, Palmdale, I have yet
to face the drive from
Orange County to their meetings. As I age, I am increasingly paranoid. Since extra minutes, even seconds, spent driving, enhances
your not getting home alive, it's best not to venture forth in the first place. I haven't driven to
Los Angeles in more than a year and have
no immediate plans for going there.
Southern California, unlike
Berkeley, lacks a nurturing environment for writers. Though
UCLA has poets Stephen Yensur and Jascha Kessler, it is conservative, with little space and honor given to controversial younger
poets. USC is similar, though David St. John and Carol Muske make gestures towards community from within academe and the Los
Angeles Times. Muske with her monthly column in that paper's "Book Review" section has an opportunity to invigorate poetry.
She has the latitude and vision to make it happen. UC Irvine seldom encourages experimental voices. Michael Ryan and James
McMichael apparently run a tight ship, and select fledgling poets for their Writing Program from similar programs elsewhere.
As a former campus poet myself (UCI) I am very aware that these writers are self-censors. To receive tenure they must be non-controversial,
so that senior professors of English, voting on security of employment, grant tenure to non-threatening types. Let's face it, campus poets nearly always wear, and love, their metaphoric straight jackets, their sinecures.
This
thwarting of individual talent by academe is sadly further corrupted by the proximity of
Hollywood, and by the enormous wealth
scriptwriters can make. No matter how pure a poet's motives, there's always that Hollywood golden carrot on a string dangling before his eyes. If he
can write a single screenplay (just buy a How-To manual, or take an Extension writing course), he'll forget poetry as a commitment
for the promise of bucks and even fame. The fiction prevails that just as almost anybody can write a novel, it's even easier
to write a script--you don't need all those descriptive passages. Just invent
a story with lots of sex and violence. You do though need an ear for dialogue--but script doctors can handle that for you. Style is one of those necessities, like air and water, that turns up once you scribble
your story down, or so the gilded goose would have us hopefuls believe.
Robert Peters has been active in the Small Press since the early sixties. He's had a number of books
published and his reviews appear regularly in Small Press Review, among others.
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