Elaborate poetry video--filmmaking good, poem not so.

Giving credit to David and Daniel Holechek for classy, professional filmmaking.  Otherwise, staying silent.

Mindy Nettifee shares her GLITTER IN THE BLOOD with other poets.

Somehow, in spite of a distinguished career as a page-and-stage dynamo, former LBC/OC powerhouse Mindy Nettifee is still referred to as a "rising" poet--such are the ways of modern poetry communities.

For those who may be interested, Mindy has a writing-poetry-better-tips book (from Write Bloody) called GLITTER IN THE BLOOD.

Here's the purchase link: http://www.amazon.com/Glitter-Blood-Manifesto-Better-Writing/dp/1938912012/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354777282&sr=1-2&keywords=mindy+nettifee

Here's the blurb from Amazon.com:

You do not want to write good poems. You want to write great poems. You want to write poems that challenge, inspire and awe. You want to write poems that forever alter your audience, that forever alter yourself. Those poems take guts. Glitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto to Better, Braver Writing will put you in constant contact with your guts. Pushcart prize nominated and highly accomplished performance poet Mindy Nettifee is not going to lead you step-by-step up a how-to staircase. With this collection of essays, prompts and exercises, Mindy is giving you the wrench you need to open up the blood and let it flow into your writing.

 

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The art of full disclosure when writing poetry book reviews.

First, I'll start with a full disclosure of my own: I once had a book published by Lummox Press and was included in an anthology of its Little Red Books series.

G. Murray Thomas, who reviews books for Poetix.net (alongside Eric Morago), knows the proprietor of Lummox and has toured with him in recent months. 

But Murray routinely reviews poetry volumes published by Lummox and even more routinely fails to offer any kind of full disclosure.  This modus operandi has also occurred with books from Write Bloody.  There, the ethical conundrum gets a bit stickier because Derrick Brown's Long Beach-based small press recently offered up the NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS anthology, based on the NEXT....poetry magazine edited by....G. Murray Thomas.

Once again, I'm aware that a certain segment of the SoCal poetry community views itself as small enough where friends write reviews of each other's books and few people don't care to see this as any kind of an issue.

And I'll give Murray the benefit of the doubt and guess he does his best to be objective when writing reviews of Lummox and Write Bloody offerings.

But, if the poetry community in SoCal wants to trumpet its idealness more convincingly, then it should avoid too many occurrences of even the appearance of conflict of interest.

UPDATE 6/5/12: Heard from Murray privately (sent him comminique via Facebook); essentially, his response is that "most people" know he knows people from local presses and that he's not interested in full disclosure.  Case closed.

NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS: not a review but an observation.

I will keep my promise not to write a specific review of the G. Murray Thomas/Derrick Brown NEXT magazine compilation NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS.

But, here's an observation from reading some of its content:
There are articles/letters from several LA/OC community veterans in the book.  And I've either irritated or created extreme fits of pique in some of those vets; some of that has come from questioning the way things get done/people get rewarded in the community, while other times I've been scourged for talking to Poetry Royalty as if they were mere mortals who need to be looked at eye-to-eye instead of from a bowing-peasant perspective. 

It's definitely worth it to be more enlightened as to past history and to know that a lot of today's poetry community issues existed in a seems-like-long-ago time when the Internet was relatively primitive and readings were abundant.

And, unfortunately, it's clear from diving into the book that a lot of the "if we don't like you and/or what you write, we'll smash into you like an atomic-powered ram" ethos of certain community vets was also ever-present fifteen-to-eighteen years ago.  After all, they see themselves as fighting (and also working) hard to get their eminence in the community--and they see it as normal to take up the shield and the sword to beat back professional challenges and notions of dissent from damn-fool younger people who must be made to know that so-and-so is THEE greatest host/poet in the city, etc..

As Woody Allen said in a different context (about mainstream Show Business) in CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, "It's more than dog eat dog.  It's dog doesn't return other dog's phone calls."

Nothing further to add--except to recommend that SoCal poets buy a copy, read the book and form their own opinion(s).

Explaining SoCal poetry to outsiders Part 3: Why new book NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS will be a Big Event to many.

Recent Twitter posts of mine--


Got my copy of NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS via Amazon today. Won't review it [as promised in a previous blog post here], but will say that it's a victory lap for G. Murray Thomas.



G. Murray, still-titan of Long Beach/OC Poetry, edited NEXT magazine, which NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS is a compilation of.



NEXT was a chronicle of slam/performance and page poetry both in SoCal and elsewhere. Lasted a few years until 1998.



Essentially, NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS is Murray and Write Bloody's Derrick Brown's manifesto that the magazine was Important and....

...that its brief life was not in vain.

Why I won't review NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS

http://www.amazon.com/News-Clips-Ego-Trips-Companion/dp/1935904450/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332659088&sr=1-1

In our poetry community, there's the occupational hazard of poets reviewing their friends' books on websites or on sites like Amazon. In the case of the NEXT magazine (founded by G. Murray Thomas) anthology NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS , I'll recuse myself. I respect a lot of things Murray and Derrick Brown (Write Bloody publisher) have done professionally, but carry some personal and professional animosity towards them I can't put aside. Also, there's the fact of my entering the SoCal scene in the last months of NEXT's existence (fact: my introduction to the scene came from acquiring a copy at a record store on Balboa Peninsula in March of 1998), so my direct/secondhand knowledge of the pre-98 era is limited at best. And, as I have learned, it's useless to write about other people's books (even if I have favorable things to say) because I'll be thought of as someone tearing the community down and/or being destructively envious towards people of near-universal popularity--perhaps leading to more negativity and rude community in-jokes at my expense. So, all I'll do is await my copy in the mail, read it in solitude and let Murray's friends be the ones to proclaim NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS' reputation as a seminal document of SoCal page/slam/performance poetry history.

Derrick Brown performs "Victory Explosions"

As the great philosopher Boz Scaggs once sang, "What can I say?"
 
I'll just say this: if you're a poet in LA/Long Beach/Orange County and you aspire to acceptance from certain sects,
it doesn't hurt to love Derrick Brown without reservations.

The slippery slope of no-open-mike poetry readings if they become a trend in LA/LBC/OC.

Reprinting this tidbit from Sander Roscoe Wolff's interview with Derrick Brown re the Lightbulb Mouth Radio Hour's resurrection (highlighting by me):
I asked him why he decided to abandon the open mic segment.

[DERRICK BROWN]"The audience didn't like it, but the poets did. As a writer and promoter, the audience is master [a comment that G. Murray Thomas--also a titan of LBC--has duplicated in the past]. But now we have a contact button on our site so any writer can request to join one of our 'found object' battles. The themes change monthly. Instead of one author for 20 minutes, each contestant competes to get a 7-10 minute feature slot that night, 50 bucks, and all the found objects. Only one can win. The audience decides."

In the late 90s and the first half of the 2000s, when there was an abundance of readings, it wasn't all that bad when certain poetry hosts did no-open-allowed showcases on occasion.

Nowadays, you can ingratiate yourself with certain SoCal literati by badmouthing the oh-so-uneven quality of open mikes at poetry readings.  And you may well increase popularity by doing this.

But I hate to see a resurgence of the bite-sized invited guest reader trend.  Larry Jaffe, during his 2002 venture into hosting a sedate literary poetry reading at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park, did this--though Larry didn't make people jump like dogs eager to be fed by asking them to compete in a "found object" battle.

Perhaps Derrick Brown thinks he's being semi-generous by giving poets/writers a "request to join" option and presenting them $50 if they meet his win-the-crowd-like-a-slam-gladiator standards.

I'm just worried that, in an environment of rising gas prices and diminishing venue attendance (not to forget fewer extant venues), that literati of both the page and stage may get the idea to kill open mikes in greater quantities--thinking that it's a sure way to woo more nonpoet audience members to "community" and showcase readings.

LBC's Derrick Brown brings Lightbulb Mouth reading back from the dead.

http://www.lbpost.com/life/sander

Noticing that Derrick Brown killed the open mic segment.

From the one time I attended at the previous location (Basement Lounge) in June 2010, the open mic (which inspired me to walk out early) was essentially cronies like Eitan Kadosh making in-jokes with other cronies.  The one exception was an elderly man who took open mic seriously and actually got up to engage in the (apparently not audience-pleasing enough for Derrick) arcane act of reading poetry.

Josh Wilker's critique of THE BAD NEWS BEARS IN BREAKING TRAINING--a passage reminding me of current SoCal poetry politics.

Soft Skull Press has been publishing a series of small books known as Deep Focus: A Novel Approach to Cinema where Name Authors write eloquently on what they consider to be seminal films.

Chicago-based author Josh Wilker chose the semi-forgotten THE BAD NEWS BEARS IN BREAKING TRAINING, the quickly-thrown-together 1977 sequel to Michael Ritchie and Bill Lancaster's classic 1976 original. (Needless to say, Ritchie and Lancaster--as well as original stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O'Neal--didn't return for the second film.)

Wilker, who was nine when he saw BREAKING TRAINING, does a fair amount of rhapsodizing about his own boyhood, along with some side detours into philosophizing about a 1970s he was too young to completely experience.

For those who remember BREAKING TRAINING, the hapless Bears play a more professional Little League team in the Houston Astrodome in the small window of time between an Astros double-header.
The powers that be want to halt the children's game early in order for the grown-ups to begin playing their second match of the day.  Both teams are shooed off the field by baseball officials--except for the perpetually idealistic Tanner (Chris Barnes), who stands his ground and refuses to leave.

Wilker talks about Jimmy Carter's much-mocked "malaise" speech from the summer of 1979 and its plea for "common interest and the restoration of American values" over what was already the looming spectre of Reagan-era self-interest and "I want more than you'll ever have."

Here's my favorite passage of Wilker's in the book:
I keep coming back to refuse disconnection, and I keep coming back to refuse the end.  And now we come to the climax of the movie.  Not the ultimately negligible, if structurally necessary, moment when Carmen scores the winning run, but the part that actually precedes that false climax, the part that begins when all seems to be lost, when the team is told, right in the middle of an early inning, that the game is over.  There are initial groans and protests about this, but they are all impotent, even Mike Leak [William Devane as the estranged father of Jackie Earle Haley's Kelly Leak] giving up after arguing for a while with the ump.  Everybody has given up and accepted the end, with one exception.

Tanner's still out there, standing alone.

[fast-forward through a passage about Watergate and Richard Nixon's resignation revealing "a system driven by corporate interests and not by the will of the people, contrary to the nation's dream of democracy."]

"Where's everybody going?" Tanner asks.  "We're not finished!"

Two men in suits advance toward him.  They are not evil.  They are not stand-ins for Nixon.  They are, in a way, worse.  They are functionaries, apologetic but assertive, pointing to their watches and invoking the god that rules the country, money.  The game is a commercial-driven diversion between the commercial-driven diversions of the first and second games of a doubleheader.  The important thing turns out to be the commercials.  They, and what they sell, and the corporations that rake in the profits, rule.  Everyone else has to get in line.  I'm sorry, the men in suits explain, but that's just the way it is.  And they advance toward Tanner to remove the last dissenter from the field.

Now re-read Wilker's words above--substituting "poetry", "MFA degrees", "prestige", "coffeehouse poets [imagine it being said with a sneer]", "creative writing programs", "journal-entry writing", etc. etc. when you feel it necessary.

Trust me, you'll see a synchronicity.

Recent Mindy Nettifee online radio interview.

In the interest of offering a sort of "equal time"--here's an interview with Mindy Nettifee
on the BreakThru Radio show WRITER'S BLOCK:
Here's a clip of the show: http://snd.sc/j0vb9s


Here's a link to the entire program: http://bit.ly/ksYf7B

G. Murray Thomas reviews a poetry anthology from the publisher of his upcoming NEXT magazine anthology.

Since the poetry community in SoCal is small enough that a lot of people know a lot of other people, these grey areas sometimes occur: http://poetix.net/reviews.htm

G. Murray Thomas' leadup to the NEXT magazine anthology.

Nostalgia for dead poetry venues, plus a subliminal plug for Murray's NEXT magazine anthology to be published later this year by Derrick Brown's Write Bloody publishing.

http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/05/01/from-the-%E2%80%9Cnext-%E2%80%A6-magazine%E2%80%9D-files/

Here's to the Culture-Shaping Commandos!

I've begun reading the DON'T BLAME THE UGLY MUG anthology--and am busy in absorbing each poem on its own merits (Rick Lupert and Eric Lawson's contributions stand out in a good way at this unfinished point in the journey).

But, unfortunately, I'm a bit troubled by the Victor Infante introduction.

Despite saying some kind (and accurate) words about Steve and Ben's stewardship, it's Victor's tendency to let his occasionally gushing, perhaps occasionally inadvertently condescending Arbiter of Taste flag fly:
"...where some of the brightest stars in poetry today have popped their heads in to read"
"....why so many heavyweights of various poetic stripes are willing to travel to the outskirts of a mid-sized SoCal town to read"
"a little homey community reading" (note for all who read this: "community reading" is poetry code for "tolerant of amateurs")
and here's the passage (highlighted by me) that tells you all you want to know about Victor Infante and his ethos that poetry belongs to Navy Seals of letters, and that baby blue Marines deserve the washout they get:
"And that's the secret to running a reading, and indeed to poetry in general.  It's hard, exhausting work--frustrating often and grueling always--but then you get those moments when someone who's never read a poem in public before brings a jaded poetry audience [!] to tears. or when a kid who's been reading for a couple months pops up with something that matches anything the heavyweights have to offer, and suddenly, it's magic."

Safe to say it's the kind of passage written by a human being now used to routine acceptance from publishers/literary journals.

Actually, the combat-unit of literary elites trope isn't something I made up myself.  Richard Beban, in the midst of a scolding seven-page letter [!] to me, used that same metaphor--listing poets by their last names: Lupert, Constantine, Arroyo etc. etc.

The reason I'm writing this post has nothing to do with envy: a lot of poets who have survived over the thirteen years I've been involved with SoCal poetry deserve accolades for their work on page/stage.

Instead, it's to make a comment on the post-2003 SoCal poetry environment where people such as (I'll list them by last names) Beban, Thomas, Infante, Brown, Alvarado determine who makes it into the lifeboats in an apparent expression of concern that if poetry culture isn't given the proper shaping for quality (and to discourage and weed out "amateurs"), the potential listening public could choose "wrong."

Therefore, you have a lot of people wielding brooms who are secretly frightened of being swept into obscurity by the brooms of others.

It's In The Way That You Use It--The Derrick Brown situation and local poetry..

A few days ago, I wrote a blog entry about Derrick Brown mentioning a FORBES magazine article about him in his official bio (which was used in a Beyond Baroque flyer listing); the post was a bit dubious about the value of a FORBES mention due to its ownership by a more-big-capitalist-than-most-people-are-aware Bono. 

I sent the blog entry to his Write Bloody e-mail and got a short, profane text-message sort of response; this was highly likely since I wasn't thrilled with what I perceived to be an overly for-cool-kids-only ambience last summer at the portion of a Lightbulb Mouth reading I attended in Long Beach (and I wrote about it).

In a perfect world, perhaps Derrick could have written whole sentences and paragraphs about why he disliked my post (defending the FORBES piece, among other things).  He didn't.  Instead, he opted for the Frank Sinatra/Russell Crowe way of striking down an annoying pest with a very heavy hand.

Here's an irony about the whole thing: I think Write Bloody has great graphic design and well-presented product (at least Derrick got books into the Borders chain before their current financial difficulties) and am pleased that Derrick champions people like Mindy Nettifee and Buddy Wakefield.  I became interested in the Write Bloody imprint a few years ago when Derrick was in Tennessee and word went out amongst the poetry community that he was ill and needed money from book sales; I bought several books--anthologies and individual authors' volumes--at that time.

But, as I've learned from the poetry community, if you say both nice and less-than-laudatory things about certain poets, they tend to only listen to the latter and then yell their heads off. 

In a way, I'm still amazed by the way some of our ostensibly-progressive poetry community leaders (which sometimes resort to a rigid form of groupthink) tend to react/overreact to contrary opinions (be it about a magazine article or even certain cliques which tend to feature the same poets over and over--something I was kicked in the shins for mentioning way back in 2003).

To close, certain poets (especially the entrepreneurs) need to be less translucent-skinned and start banishing the phrase YOU CAN'T SAY THAT! from their public and private vocabularies.

It will make for a healthier, more welcoming environment for all.

Derrick Brown: Cotton In The Air

Just to give you a visual and verbal example of someone I've been writing about.

Coda: Regarding the poetic world as seen uniformly by Victor Infante, Derrick Brown and others.

For the sake of inclusion, here's a link to Victor Infante's public rifle-butting of me--as included on my Facebook page/wall: http://www.facebook.com/#!/note.php?note_id=10150115147426192

And now, I'll go ahead and mention some inconsistencies/behavioral quirks shared by the good, think-alike people that Victor namechecks:
1. I've been told in the past that it's not good to self-publish.  This doesn't stop Rick Lupert from putting out his own books under the Ain't Got No Press moniker (mitigating factor: Rick occasionally does anthologies like the recommended-by-me POETS HAGGADAH).

2. I am not supposed to criticize Amber Tamblyn's poetry books (apparently because she's smart, hip and successful)--but it's okay for, say, G. Murray Thomas to use his review column on Poetix.net to knock Billy Collins' recent BALLISTICS.  Yes, Murray thought Collins' work in BALLISTICS was subpar.  But it was hard not to smell the jealousy on Murray's part--Oh, why oh why doesn't my print-on-demand volume COWS ON THE FREEWAY get at least one-tenth the attention Billy Collins does?

3. I'm certainly not supposed to criticize anyone who "hasn't done anything" to me.  By that logic, if Victor Infante was an HBO executive, he'd be telling Bill Maher to stop being "mean" on REAL TIME.

And, of course, if I say anything about the self-described wonderful people of LA/LBC/OC that is not wonderful, then I'm blessed with accusations of mental illness and--in one ugly case--a false accusation that I might be a wife-beater.

I'm just puzzled that all these self-described wonderful-and-successful poets of LA/LBC/OC are so insecure that they feel the need to take me so deadly-serious that they engage in shut-him-up-no-matter-what-it-takes reactions rather than having some sense of nuanced thought and perspective about their actual place and impact in both the real and literary worlds.

Some fallout from the previous post re Derrick Brown and FORBES.

I'm not printing it here, but Victor Infante ex-of-OC and-current-New England-poetry dynamo, gave me a roasting for forwarding the link to my last post to his blog.

It didn't help that I expressed a contrarian opinion of Derrick Brown and referred to Victor (who has benefited professionally from his association with Derrick's Write Bloody mini-empire) as an "enabler."

The essence of the criricism was that I'm an awful person who criticizes successful people, brings failure upon myself--and suffers from mental difficulties as well.

Specifically responding to Victor's allegation that I criticize successful people (who, in his mindset, have done nothing to me):
I have no problem with people who are winners.  I do have problems with people who win ugly.

And it seems to me that Victor, Derrick and most of the people in their circle fit into the latter category.

What do poet/publisher Derrick Brown and U2's Bono have in common?

Just noticed this on a Beyond Baroque e-flyer, taken from a future reading that Derrick Brown of the LBC is taking part in (highlighting by me):
DERRICK BROWN, former paratrooper for the 82nd Airborne, gondolier, magician, and fired weatherman dedicated to bringing American poetry into rock and roll status. He is president of Write Bloody Publishing, the first indie press to be reviewed with favor by Forbes Magazine.


I'm not sure the above is that much of an honor.

It's not household knowledge, but do some digging (Rock critic Dave Marsh's ROCK N RAP CONFIDENTIAL newsletter/website at http://rockrap.com/ is an excellent place to start) and you'll find out how semi-idealist plutocrat Bono of U2 came to be an integral part of Forbes Magazine.

In any event, the old phrase about "rendering unto Caesar" comes to mind--to say the least.

UPDATE: I sent the above post to Derrick Brown and this is a portion of his response:
"you bitter friendless witless talentless turd"

Safe to say that Bono, even faced with criticism, would have handled this somewhat better.

UPDATE #2: Here's a link to the Forbes article, which mainly looks favorably on Brown's money-generation as a road-warrior performance poet: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0622/lifestyle-poetry-slams-derrick-brown-poetic-license.html

My humbling continues: LBC poetry icon Mindy Nettifee teaches me that actions have consequences by unfriending me on Facebook.

Crying soft tears today; Long Beach-based, Orange County-blessed poet Mindy Nettifee unfriended me from Facebook.

It probably didn't help when I wrote a poem last year called I'LL BE YOUR DEAD MAN FOR THE EVENING (look it up in the archives here) that was an account of how uncomfortable I felt during the portion of one Lightbulb Mouth (a now-dead reading/"show") event I attended in Long Beach last June.  Mindy and Derrick Brown (Write Bloody small press publishing majordomo) were the engines driving Lightbulb Mouth.

And it probably didn't help even more when I wrote her backchannel at a later time and made the mistake of criticizing a Long Beach Icon she holds dear to this day.

But I can understand.  If you're Mindy Nettifee and you've accomplished quite a lot locally and nationwide as a poet and promoter, you're not going to want to hear from someone who, by stark contrast, can seem like a sorehead and a loser who just doesn't know how to be nice to nice people.

So the moral I've living with is that of the time-honored cliche: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

In the LA/OC poetry communities, you can quadruple that.