New Poem: LITTLE STEVIE KEEPS ORDER AS THE HOUSE BURNS DOWN

 no politics either way

 no causes no sir no ma’am 

 just poetry on my Meta site

 and absolutely no posts or e-mail

 irritating me about Meta embracing Trump

 and my being on a Meta site ignoring all of this 

Facebook commenter on Donald Trump's appeal.

From commenter Ryan Hartman re a Facebook post by Patton Oswalt on the likelihood of a Donald Trump fade after last night's GOP debate:

Trump has one dangerous weapon in that he is unapologetic. And that appeals to a lot of people. This idea that the individual is greater than the whole nowadays is terrifying. Where you can't say or do anything because one person somewhere might take offense.

When did personal offense become the worst thing in the world?

Well he doesn't give half a shit. And he spews insane garbage, but he's ballsy enough not to care who complains about it. It's probably the one thing that you have to tip your hat towards.

Still, he was only ever a bear on a unicycle. The media reported on him because he's saying crazy shit. The volume of shit escalated the volume of reporting, and all of the sudden we turned around and thought he was popular just because he was always on the news - but he was popular in the way a 10 car pile up is popular.

Sure, we all stop and look at it, but it doesn't mean we liked it.

Can Facebook be used without feelings of envy and sadness?

Just saw this article:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/for-a-happier-life-give-up-facebook-study/ar-CCbI8E?ocid=spartandhp

And here's a key passage:
"Instead of focusing on what we actually need, we have an unfortunate tendency to focus on what other people have," the authors of the [Happiness Research Institute] study wrote.

Randi Zuckerberg has her George Plimpton moment on Broadway.

Explaining the post title: George Plimpton of PARIS REVIEW fame had a lucrative sideline of being a "professional amateur" as football/baseball player/trapeze artist/bit-part movie actor and turning it into books and TV specials; one of the books (PAPER LION) became a movie in 1968, best known today as the breakout vehicle for Alan Alda, who played the reel version of Plimpton.

Now, let's go to Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.  She's on Broadway in the still-running stage version of ROCK OF AGES--offering insight into her new sideline, plus reacting in a tsk-tsk cluck-cluck way at the little people who aren't comfortable with San Francisco becoming a high-cost-of-living techie haven:
Your part of the plot is arguably a bit anti-capitalist, certainly anti-big money development. You even call the folks you're rallying "comrades." Does that strike you at all as a bit ironic, considering you and your family's own business success? Does part of your plot line ring true to your own life experience?

When I was developing the part, I actually found myself reading a lot about and calling upon the current struggles in San Francisco — the income disparity, the gentrification of the city with so much incoming tech wealth, the large homeless population. And that's what I drew upon to create my character. She's fighting to preserve L.A.'s Sunset Strip in the '80s.  But in my mind, she could easily be protesting in San Francisco today. I'm not saying that I agree with her personally. Some of her antics are completely over the top, ridiculous, and seemingly pointless — much like people throwing rocks at the Google shuttle buses in San Francisco today, causing destruction and harm to innocent people just to make a point. But in researching this role, it definitely made me see a new side of the story and forced me to put myself in the shoes of someone who loves their city and sees it changing into something completely foreign, right before their eyes. Change is really hard, and I admire her courage and fearlessness in standing up for what she believes — but at some point, we all need to realize that nothing stays exactly the same forever.

Here's the rest of the interview:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/03/qa-randi-zuckerberg-on-her-broadway-debut.html

Why is poet-to-poet cruelty still considered acceptable, tolerable behavior?

It's not been a good past few days.  I've been sick and my television viewing has been loaded with either grim Oedipal conflict/capitulation (last night's excellent episode of BOARDWALK EMPIRE) or painful, wanting someone to be X rather than the Y he/she is (today's GENERAL HOSPITAL).

And watching all of these people taking/dealing out pain reminded me of my great primal hurt in poetry; just like Jimmy Stewart being shot through the hand in THE MAN FROM LARAMIE or Scar frightening Simba out of his homeland in THE LION KING, I had this happen to me for the temerity of (admittedly within a contentious discussion on another topic) asking a poet about if he ever read a chapbook of mine I sent him years earlier:
"I DO remember your chapbook. I still have it, in the piles of several hundred that I dutifully carried with me cross-country when I moved. Terry, it was dull. Very dull. Not bad, but there was little of interest going on there. I don't recall if I had read it yet when I saw you in Redondo, but even if I had, I doubt I would have said much. What was I supposed to say? "Sorry, it bored me to tears." But as I recall, it took me awhile to get around to it, because, even now, I get a ton of chapbooks very month. I've not thrown one away, and I try to read them all, but no, I can't review them, and I really had nothing consequential to say about it, for good or bad. As to my "wisdom would be something of value," Whatever. I don't recall volunteering to be your mentor, and while I've taught poetry in high schools and colleges, I don't recall you being in any of my classes. The sad fact is, Terry, I thought you were a nice guy,and always tried to be friendly to you, but no, I didn't care much for your writing. Would you have preferred that I said that? I can't see what good that would have done. It's not like I walked out of the room when you were on the microphone. Maybe you've gotten better, I don't know."

Tonight, as I write this post, I still feel residual raw nerves over the fact that a lot of people in the poetry community I've dealt with over the past thirteen years believe the writer of the above is an all-around great guy, a quarterback for Art and the kind of friend that certain Facebook friends would dump me over in a microsecond if they had to choose between me and him (and, believe me, I'm not asking that.).

And there are times that, in spite of whatever I've accomplished in poetry or tried to help others accomplish, I can't ever forget someone who was nice to me and my wife Valarie (even thought enough of him at the time to see him in Redondo Beach, referred to above) later feeling the necessity to pull out a rhetorical shiv to ensure that I'd be a poet that not only wouldn't "survive", but wouldn't "survive" over him.

What I've learned from over a year-and-a-half of being on Facebook.

A simple list in no particular order:
1. Facebook is great for reconnecting with people you've lost touch with over the decades.
Results can be wonderful--or sometimes quite bittersweet.
2. Some people friend others on Facebook for sincere reasons; others do it to rack
up their numbers-of-friends (just like in real life).  Glad that Mark Zuckerberg hasn't thought
of Frequent Friending Benefits quite yet.
3. If you had only a slight acquaintanceship with certain people in the normal world, it won't be
any different after you've friended them on Facebook.  Be prepared to post something to someone's wall/page and receive no response whatsoever (exception: when you're posting something complimentary about them).
4. Facebook is something I highly recommend for finding groups for just about anything one may be interested in.
5. As film critic/writer Karina Longworth said in a highly readable article in the recent issue of L.A. WEEKLY, Facebook is a place where your data is given to corporate advertisers to harvest.  Be aware of that when joining so you can control what you choose to share.
6. One person posting links can be another person's "spam."  I found that out (rather bluntly) earlier this year when I was unfriended by an Orange County poet.  But the other person could have easily skipped over the links he didn't want to read.
7. As with the real world, you won't please all the people all the time on Facebook.  Don't stress out
over it.

Neal Gabler on the TV fantasy of "we'll always be there for you" friendship.

Commentary: The social networks - latimes.com

This passage by Mr. Gabler is particularly resonant:
One feels a little churlish pointing out how phony most of this intimacy is. After all, these shows, even one as observant as "Modern Family," aren't about realism. They aren't about the genuine emotional underpinnings of friendship or family, and they certainly aren't about the rough course that almost every relationship, be it with a friend or family member, takes — the inevitable squabbles, the sometimes long and even permanent ruptures, the obtuseness, the selfishness, the reprioritization, the expectations of reciprocity, the drifting apart, the agonizing sense of loneliness even within the flock. These shows are pure wish fulfillment. They offer us friends and family at one's beck and call but without any of the hassles. It is friendship as we want it to be.

Facebook: Now I'm part of America's Town Square.

For awhile, I've been reluctant to be part of Facebook (a site that combines the homepage appeal of MySpace and the messaging of Twitter--which I joined about a month ago).

But now I've joined and feel happy, but a little overwhelmed.

One thing I've noticed is that quite a few people from all phases of my life are members. And I hope to re-establish contact with some of them.