Weeks ago, I had a private back-and-forth exchange with a L.A. poetry majordomo.
Among other things, he finger-wagged me in the manner of cluck-cluck, tut-tut, "this will go down on your Permanent Record" in hopes of making me painfully and shamefully aware (he hopes) of the lasting consequences of offering uncensored commentary on poetry affairs here.
He mentioned someone who allegedly has never read any of my poetry--but looked at this blog and made the conclusion that I'm a bitter person.
Moving away from this facile characterization of me, I'd like to say that there are nice-and-genuinely-talented people in the L.A./OC poetry communities who manage to finish first; in fact, I posted something about one of them (now raising money so she and her backing band can afford their trip to perform in the UK's Glastonbury Music Festival) a few entries back.
Unfortunately, there are a greater number of poets who engage themselves in more typical poetry-community behavior of plotting, scheming, gloating, banning, dissing rivals/perceived inferiors-in-public-and-private and anonymously creating hate-Terry sites--and these are the people I tend to focus on when writing blog posts.
It's not so much bitterness as the mere recognition (and chronicling) of dubious human nature as it often manifests itself in the pursuit of literary recognition.
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