Showing posts with label NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS. Show all posts
Saturday, October 13, 2012
NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS poetry panel--Part 8
Only two more portions to go after this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvsOkAD3CNE&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvsOkAD3CNE&feature=plcp
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS panel Part 6
Jumping forward to Part 6 of the evening. Discussion of venues past including
Tom Ianniello's famed Iguana Cafe and Exile Books and Music in the San Fernando Valley.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
An open letter to poet/musician Matthew Mars aka Matthew Niblock.
Dear Matthew, A famous quote attributed to you is "I hate bad art.". Recently on the Facebook wall of G. Murray Thomas (poet and NEXT... founder), you made a remark about how my poetry doesn't qualify (in your assumed opinion). Though we don't really know each other, I've seen a couple of your features (one in Laguna Beach, one in Hollywood) during the period when you were most active in L.A. poetry. I know a little of your work, and you have talent--but I'm curious as to whether or not you've read enough of my poems between 1998 and this year for you to pass an open-and-shut verdict on my work. Really, I don't care if you don't like me personally. But I'm offering you the opportunity to use this blog's comment section to tell me (and other readers) exactly what you think about my poetry. And please offer quotations of lines/verses where necessary. Awaiting your response--which will stand without any further reply from me. Sincerely, Terry McCarty
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Recycled poetry observations from 2009--with updated thoughts.
I just looked at some old blog posts and stumbled across the one from early in 2009 where I took exception to a review that G. Murray Thomas wrote on Poetix.net of my chapbook "yellow tree red sky"--and in retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised about some of his negativity since a few months earlier, I wrote a post discussing a not-positive Murray review of North Hollywood poet/host Radomir Luza's then-current chapbook. And I should have been more aware (in the sense of SoCal poetry politics) at the time that criticizing a critic and then submitting a chapbook for his review might have consequences.
Here's the portion of my early 2009 post that still resonates with truth over three years later:
When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven years ago [now over fourteen years ago], there were coffeehouse and independent bookstore readings that made room for just about everything, like a variety show: "serious" literary poetry, traditional rhyme-and-meter verse, monologues, stand-up comedy, musicians, etc. etc [plus slam poets in open mike or as features]. And Murray seems to have cast his lot with the hosts and influential poets in LA/OC that seem to think that only "serious" poetry should be allowed with the other subsets I mentioned above actively and/or tacitly discouraged.
I remember a few years ago at the Moonday reading at Village Books in Pacific Palisades when, after reading on the open-mike, Holaday Mason (a well-known L.A. literary poet) performed her five minutes. The late Anne Silver (then a Moonday co-host) spent a minute or two copiously praising Holaday for her work--and, to me, the message was ultraclear; I was too depth-free and craft-poor for such a distinguished reading. I got Ms. Silver's message--and never returned to the reading again.
Time to say it again: for poetry to flourish--particularly at a time when there will be renewed jeers over the idea of the arts being essential in a near-Depression economy--a big tent needs to be pitched.
It's not to be expected that all poetry will be to the liking of everyone--tastemakers, professional/amateur poets or civilians who prefer merely to attend.
But at some point the "poetry community" needs to stop pushing the poetry-eugenics nonsense that poems should be nothing more than gilded creations engineered to be admired for their complexity and intricacy--sort of like building a scale model of the QUEEN MARY in a Sparkletts jug or (to steal a phrase from the late Robert Mitchum) construct a replica of the Taj Mahal from matchsticks.
Otherwise, there's going to be an increase in boring, arid, intended-more-to-impress-than-enlighten-or-even-stoop-to-entertain "craft-conscious" word art which will likely go unremembered a month from now--let alone a decade or even a century.
Here's the portion of my early 2009 post that still resonates with truth over three years later:
When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven years ago [now over fourteen years ago], there were coffeehouse and independent bookstore readings that made room for just about everything, like a variety show: "serious" literary poetry, traditional rhyme-and-meter verse, monologues, stand-up comedy, musicians, etc. etc [plus slam poets in open mike or as features]. And Murray seems to have cast his lot with the hosts and influential poets in LA/OC that seem to think that only "serious" poetry should be allowed with the other subsets I mentioned above actively and/or tacitly discouraged.
I remember a few years ago at the Moonday reading at Village Books in Pacific Palisades when, after reading on the open-mike, Holaday Mason (a well-known L.A. literary poet) performed her five minutes. The late Anne Silver (then a Moonday co-host) spent a minute or two copiously praising Holaday for her work--and, to me, the message was ultraclear; I was too depth-free and craft-poor for such a distinguished reading. I got Ms. Silver's message--and never returned to the reading again.
Time to say it again: for poetry to flourish--particularly at a time when there will be renewed jeers over the idea of the arts being essential in a near-Depression economy--a big tent needs to be pitched.
It's not to be expected that all poetry will be to the liking of everyone--tastemakers, professional/amateur poets or civilians who prefer merely to attend.
But at some point the "poetry community" needs to stop pushing the poetry-eugenics nonsense that poems should be nothing more than gilded creations engineered to be admired for their complexity and intricacy--sort of like building a scale model of the QUEEN MARY in a Sparkletts jug or (to steal a phrase from the late Robert Mitchum) construct a replica of the Taj Mahal from matchsticks.
Otherwise, there's going to be an increase in boring, arid, intended-more-to-impress-than-enlighten-or-even-stoop-to-entertain "craft-conscious" word art which will likely go unremembered a month from now--let alone a decade or even a century.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
A favorite passage from NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS
"...I'm sometimes amazed by my stick to-it-ness because the years have seen a lot of treatment of poets by other poets (who were also editors and entrepreneurs) that have caused me and others much pain. I'm not talking about mere rejection of poetry here. I'm talking about the self-importance with which poets inflate their egos, trying to compensate for the way the mainstream culture ignores them. We're all pretty weirded out and we all have to find our way to deal with it. But seriously, I've seen this personal ego-need manifest itself in poets who hog reading time, poets who schedule themselves and their friends over and over again in reading series, editors who do not merely reject poets' work but tell them sarcastically that they are not and never will be, ahem, "ready" to be published. We've all met up with the inevitable cliques, and the people who make their personal taste in poetry the "law," not to mention the irresponsible types who don't return manuscripts even when there's an SASE attached."--from Lynne Bronstein's article "Why Can't We Be Friends?" which originally appeared in the March 1995 issue of NEXT...magazine.
Friday, April 20, 2012
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).
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).
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
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
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