Quotes from two poets via LUMMOX magazine.

Kudos to RD Raindog Armstrong for giving rebirth to LUMMOX magazine as a mammoth annual issue (now onsale).  It throws a wide net in terms of poets and writers--and includes people from places other than Southern California.

Here are some quotations from the interview/essay portion of the issue:
"...I know there are plenty of people who will disagree with me on this, but I feel the battle between academic poetry and performance poetry, which seemed so important ten years ago, is largely over.  Sure, there are still disagreements over what constitutes good poetry (or even what constitutes poetry at all), but the divisions are not entirely as clear.  There is much more of a spectrum these days.  I hear poets with MFAs doing stuff that would have been considered pure performance, and I hear poets with no formal education writing poems as finely crafted as anything out rhere.  Maybe it's not all liked, or even appreciated, but it is all accepted as poetry."--from interview with G. Murray Thomas of NEXT magazine and NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS.

"Far and away the worst most flagrant element is the rampant and utterly rapacious careerist ambition practiced by increasing numbers of poets and would-be poets, a kind of relentless, compulsive self-promotion, which it it weren't so damaging would be almost comically ludicrous....unabashed status seeking...continual seeking and cultivating reading opportunities...intense conferences in restaurants talking only "shop"-which these days means comparing strategies to get published; which poetry "prize" to pursue; taking every available workshop and of course sucking up to celebrity poets.  These "name" folks are cultivated to 'get ahead'; attending no readings except your own and those of certified eminences and the ne plus ultra of this utter betrayal of the traditional poet's stance: contriving to secure a co-featured reading with the big-shot poet."

"It's hard to bust someone for undertaking an advance course of study so as to earn a living teaching about what [he or] she loves.  But "let's put it where it is": the MFA is a "union card".  And real poetry does not come from the Academy.  It comes from the confrontation of the nakedness of the poet's soul with 'being-in-the-world'.--excerpts from Steve Goldman's essay "The Coming of the YUPOETS".

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.

A glass-half-full statement re NEXT reunion in Long Beach tonight.

Tonight is the publication reading/party for NEWS CLIPS AND EGO TRIPS at Harvelle's in Long Beach. Won't be there, but I express thanks to G. Murray Thomas for publishing NEXT magazine and continuing its poetry calendar onto the Poetix.net site. Finding a copy of NEXT in the spring of 1998 was one of the best things to happen to me as a poet/writer--that a scene in SoCal existed and poetry wasn't limited to Drew Barrymore and Charlie Sheen and the old Cafe Largo on Fairfax.

G. Murray Thomas on NEXT magazine's impact.

From NEWS CLiPS AND EGO TRIPS, here's a small portion of Murray's introduction--pay special attention to the final sentence: "I well remember the way poets' eyes would light up as I walked in with a stack of NEXT...s. That was the key to the whole enterprise. We quickly became an essential and beloved part of the SoCal poetry scene. Poets relied on us to tell them where the readings were, as well as to keep them informed about the hot poets in their midst, and the hot readings to go to, and the other happenings in the scene. Sure, they argued with us plenty, but they loved us. They also wanted to be written up in our pages. Although not all of them who did get ink were happy with the results.. We supported the community, but we were also critical of it, and we were not always nice about it."

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.

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/

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOS ANGELES POETRY AS I KNEW IT

Heartwarming story of altruism vs unnecessarily condescending professional poetry behavior.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-banks-20101123,0,6020985.column
http://poetix.net/reviews_810.htm

On a personal level, I'm glad he'll be around for years to come.  Professionally, I wish that more generosity and less conformity to someone else's notions of "quality" (i.e. Murray's usual "layers of meaning" bromide about ideal poetry) could appear under the G. Murray Thomas Poetix.net byline if he's intent on continuing his  self-appointed tenure as a  Revered Figure in Southern California poetry/literature.

G. Murray Thomas interviews--and starts to mythologize--himself.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gmthomas/2010/09/g-murray-thomas-the-tnb-self-interview/

Key passage from the self-interview:
Right now I’m working with Write Bloody Press to produce an anthology of the best writing from Next... It will provide a snapshot of a crucial period in the development of American poetry, 1994 - 1997 [if my interpretive memory is right, Murray was likely hoping for the magazine to receive the kind of attention that would have led to substantial circulation and beaucoups of advertising dollars]. Slams, the internet and poetry tours were all in the early stages of their growth. During that time they came together to essentially create the world of poetry that exists today. Next... provided a ground level view of that transition.


Write Bloody, by the way, is a top notch poetry press. Run by poet Derrick Brown, they’re publishing some of the most exciting voices in poetry right now, poets like Buddy Wakefield, Mindy Nettifee and Mike McGee.

If it weren't for NEXT.... (picked up my first copy in a used record store on Balboa Peninsula), I probably wouldn't have become involved with going public with my poetry.  Sometimes, I wonder if it was the right thing to do.  Other times, I'm glad I did--in spite of being confronted with Murray's conclusion that I'm an unexciting poetry voice.

Sort of reminds me of a line in a Bill Cosby routine:
"I brought you into the world.....AND I CAN TAKE YOU OUT!"

If you want validation for your poetry in the L.A. "community", you're likely to starve to death.

I don't remember the exact quote at this moment, but Lillian Hellman said something still-resonant about the House Un-American Activities Committee (and testifying before it): "I do not believe in cutting my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

Don Kingfisher Campbell was panned by G. Murray Thomas awhile back in the electronic pages of Poetix.net.  Don apparently found it important for Murray to look at a subsequent volume of poetry so Mr. Thomas could evaluate whether or not Mr. Campbell had improved sufficiently.

The results are here (reviews for August 2010): http://poetix.net/reviews.htm

Speaking for myself, I'm beginning to find the search for validation from members of the Los Angeles/Orange County poetry communities by way of accolades-in-print to be something as hollow as a Cadbury chocolate Easter bunny.

The LA/OC communities can often be layered with egotism, posturing, punishing enemies and chasing what's currently the coin of the realm (in the 90s, it was the strength/articulation of one's political activism; now, it's MFA-craziness, evidenced by the buzzphrase "sufficient imagery or metaphor").

If one does subscribe to the slogan "LONG LIVE SUFFICIENT IMAGERY AND METAPHOR!  NO FLAT STATEMENTS EVER!", then perhaps it's best to submit your poems or chapbooks to other learned poets/reviewers outside Southern California (be it for literary review or contest consideration).

That way, you can be assured of a review--good or harsh--free of bias, favoritism and/or the reviewer following the trend of the moment or the temporal self-appointed "leader."

Adding this statement I wrote on Facebook earlier today:
I'm sorry to be the odd person out but I don't think anyone should give Murray the keys to the Poetry Oracle-mobile. During the dozen years I've been involved with poetry, I've seen tectonic shifts in what's considered au courant. I don't think that Don's poetry needs to be put in a context where it does battle with Peggy's for Murray's monthly crown. There's validity to both of their approaches--and, ideally, a reviewer should evaluate in terms of how successful each is in what he/she is striving for. Not this nonsense of "layers of meaning" and metapnors and imagery thrown around as look-at-me tinsel.

Critiquing a poem from a poetry critic who critiqued me.

http://poetrysuperhighway.com/potw.html#fp2 "Prejudice" is the title of the poem.
The highlighting below is my own.

"While we can’t all write the next “Wasteland,” it often seems like we should at least try. But that is not always the case. Sometimes we, as poets, are better off not trying, better off reining in our ambitions, and instead trying to be the best poet we can be, within (and fully cognizant of) our limitations. Yet at the same time, too little ambition can prevent us from even living up to what potential we have. "--G. Murray Thomas from the February, 2009 Review column of Poetix.net.

"The problem is McCarty, in these poems, doesn’t have much new to say....But in all his poems, he refuses to go very deep. His poems skim across the surfaces of his subjects....What is interesting is that his poems are almost entirely devoid of irony. Usually, a deadpan style is used to heighten irony, but McCarty really is interested in only the facts. Now irony is an overused device these days, and on the one hand I commend McCarty for managing to avoid it. On the other, this is another way McCarty avoids layering meaning into his poems."--G. Murray Thomas from his review of my chapbook yellow tree red sky in the same column.

So I commend Mr. Thomas for using an overused device called irony to make an easy I'm-so-better-than-you point about people offended by language and content at a poetry open mike. And, as well, kudos for the obvious title PREJUDICE--in case you, the reader, aren't able to figure out what kind of behavior the poem is about.

I'm now a member of the Bad Review Club!

It's been a banner fortnight for bad reviews of artistic output. First, Bruce Springsteen took a fair amount of flak for his latest album WORKING ON A DREAM being, in some critics' viewpoints, little more than nonessential pop music with subpar lyrics. Then, Ron Rosenbaum (a critic/essayist I used to read when he still wrote for THE NEW YORK OBSERVER) weighed in on Slate.com with an angry takedown of Billy Joel...an artist who basically said good bye to pop/rock in 1993 and surfaces only occasionally to do play-the-old-songs tours either by himself or with Elton John. Rosenbaum christens Joel as "The Worst Pop Singer Ever" here: http://www.slate.com/id/2209526/

And then, it became my turn.

G. Murray Thomas, who used to publish the NEXT poetry-reviews-and-events-calendar magazine, now is a reviewer for poetix.net. Recently, he reviewed a chapbook of mine called YELLOW TREE RED SKY. The review can be found at this link, along with deserved praise for a chapbook by Pasadena's Mary Torregrossa and a peeved, he's-coasting take on Billy Collins' recent BALLISTICS: http://poetix.net/reviews.htm

This is the first time I've experienced an in-print review of a book of mine--and if Murray had given it boundless praise, I would have written a blog column about it too.

Essentially, Murray disliked the book overall, while offering some praise for a couple of poems and meant-to-be-constructive criticism (which, whether taken or discarded, should always be welcomed by reviewees).

But it seems like one particular poem in the book caused an inflammation of discomfort in Murray. The poem is called "it's not just you" and I'll reprint it here:

it’s not just you

I read the news today, oh boy
about the lucky poetry venues
that made the grade
it made me kind of sad
to know you ushered me in
ten years ago
and are now letting me and others know
about the poetry venues
that are too highfalutin
for cheap entertainers like me
I remember a lot of poets
no longer active on the scene
(or in some cases not on the scene at all)
who were mainstays ten years ago
now even if a few of them came back
they probably wouldn’t be accepted
in the new poetic order
it’s not just you that’s making things clear to me
I’ve been told to get educated
and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously
but I like being a cheap entertainer
and committing the sin of being easy to understand
so it’s time for me to go quietly
into that gentle night
reserved for sig rumanns and margaret dumonts
declaiming into microphones

about their hot new pantoums
as the audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
in approval
if it doesn’t make most hosts
and some audiences go
mmm, mmm, mmmm
it just isn’t poetry anymore

[The poem makes a brief reference to a column Murray wrote citing favorite LA/OC poetry venues: http://poetix.net/reviews_of_venues.htm ]

Now, let's print a few excerpts from the review to examine Murray's references to this poem:
Terry McCarty is up front about his ambitions for his poetry. In “it’s not just you” he states “I like being a cheap entertainer/ and committing the sin of being easy to understand.” This would seem a pretty easy ambition to live up to.

Yes, he is easy to understand. There is not a single poem here where I wondered, for even a second, what the poem was about. (With the possible exception of “shya lebuff,’ but that’s only because I’m not up on my pop culture -- who is Shya Lebuff anyway?) That’s fine. I’m not one who considers being easy to understand a sin in poetry. In fact, I believe that the audience should be given, at the very least, an understandable entrance into a poem.

However, if a poet makes being easy to understand their ultimate goal, he or she is usually in trouble. More on that in a minute.

But in all his poems, he refuses to go very deep. His poems skim across the surfaces of his subjects. Also in “its not just you,” he writes “I’ve been told to get educated/ and upgrade my craft to be taken seriously,” an option he rejects in favor of being the aforementioned “cheap entertainer.” While it would be easy to read this as mere laziness, I prefer to take him at his word —that his ambitions like somewhere other than “well-crafted” poems. But he seems to have confused depths of meaning with craft, and rejected it as well. The result is he prevents himself from even hitting his own modest goal.


If McCarty doesn’t want to make his audiences think, I guess that’s okay, But if that is the case, I do wonder why he’s writing poetry.

Philosophical differences aside, I do like the poetry of Murray's I've read and even recommend his one sold-in-regular-bookstores-and-Amazon compilation COWS ON THE FREEWAY.

[And, for some further context as to Murray's poetry ideals, here's a rave review for Milo Martin (ex-Onyx reading host) by Murray in this column from November of last year: http://poetix.net/reviews_1108.htm]

But I do take some exception to being called lazy (even if its just an inference) and having questions put to me as to "why" I'm writing poetry.

When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven 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. 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.

[UPDATE 2/4/09: Here's an example of what I described in the last paragraph. One of Robert Pinsky's weekly poetry picks for SLATE: http://www.slate.com/id/2210318/]

G. Murray Thomas' reply to my original post about poetry decade 98-08.

[Note: this came from the Cobalt Poets list, where my recent post about changes in Los Angeles poetry was forwarded.]
In my opinion, 1998 was a highwater mark in L.A. poetry. There was an energy and excitement in the poetry scene which has, to a large part, dissipated. My analogy is that in 1998 the poetry scene was an adolescent, full of energy and believing that anything was possible. Since then, we have matured a bit, and realized, for better and worse, our limitations. Most readings today (and maybe this is what Terry means by "Chamber music", I'm really not sure) have settled into an identity. Even witht he big ones like Da Poetry Lounge, you pretty much know what you're going to get when you walk in the door. This does create a certain comfort level, but at the expense of innovation. It also means the each reading has developed its own taste in poetry, which may lead poets to feel they are being excluded if they dont' fit that taste.On the other hand (and I have had this discussion with Terry before) it is easy to see any insistence on quality as exclusiveness. Especially since quality in poetry can be a very subjective standard. What gets wildly cheered at Da Poetry Lounge would not fly at the Ruskin, and vice versa. So the key becomes finding the reading whose taste fits your poetry. However, as readings become fewer, and more set in their taste, this can become more difficult.I think part of what's missing is new blood, especially on the level of hosting. In 1998 new readings were popping up all over the place. Not just new readings, b ut ambitious readings. What new readings I do see are usually on the order of -- another coffeehouse, another open reading.Still, I do believe the scene in 2008 still contains a variety of readings accomdating a wide variety of taste in poetry.G. Murray Thomas