Here comes The Rooster From Wooster!

Before I say goodbye to the first decade of the 21st century, I want to take one more chance to recognize the fatuousness of a ex-California-now-New-England literary poet/journalist who I've had issues with in the past. In this post, I'll omit his name, but refer to him instead as The Rooster From Wooster.

Here are a couple of pearls of intended self-reflection from The Rooster's blog:

Sometimes, it's hard not to think that the urge for fame or success, for validation, makes tame monsters of us.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
Thursdays are for pimping
I feel like I'm busy all the time, but it doesn't always feel like I've accomplished anything. Still, I turn around and there's something or other I wrote, or was interviewed in, or edited, or whatever. It's as though the process has become so commonplace that I fail to register it. This is not a good thing. Becoming jaded is dangerous, at least for me: it robs the writing process of its magic, makes me stop caring. None of this is good, and it's an impulse I need to watch out for.

Hope you were as impressed with The Rooster's crowing as I was.

Victor Infante and Ben Trigg explain The Ugly Mug for you.

One last (for the time being) post about how poetry business can get accomplished. A trend in certain venues in both Los Angeles and Orange Counties is to minimize the "growing" of local poets in favor of booking either touring or local "names"--either literary or slam-crossovers.

Here's an excerpt from Victor Infante interviewing his friend, Ugly Mug co-host Ben Trigg nearly two years ago for OC WEEKLY--where this trend is acknowledged on the record. The highlighting is done by me:
And perhaps the Ugly Mug reading is as much an artistic expression for Trigg as his poetry. Certainly, its growth as it enters its seventh year is astounding. Once it catered mostly to featuring local, developing writers, but it's now a frequent destination for touring poets, one where the pass-the-hat paycheck often nets the headliner more cash—as well as book sales—than some LA gigs.

"I like to think we've made this a completely welcoming space," says Trigg. "You're not going to be made unwelcome, no matter how bad your writing is. We're never going to overtly say anything to you. So this is worth doing. There must be some aspect of coming to the reading that's making the poets grow. And that's the vindicating thing."

But how much do the open-mike poets grow if the reading caters mostly to touring or local icons?

The complete interview can be found at:
http://www.ocweekly.com/2007-10-11/culture/nice-guys-finish-last/

Victor Infante gets his pompous on with this post about criticism.

I'll run just one more red light, then I'll write about other things for awhile besides internecine feuding with poets who, with all their current self-inflated Worthiness, likely won't be read in 300 years like, say, Shakespeare or Ben Jonson.

Yes, former Orange County poetry tastemaker Victor Infante is the poet who I renamed NAME OMITTED in an earlier post called NAME OMITTED and The Underbelly of Poetry:
http://poetry-arts-confidential.blogspot.com/2009/04/name-omitted-and-underbelly-of-poetry.html.

Here's Victor plumping for poetry eugenics, in his own charming (I kid, I kid) way:
http://ocvictor.livejournal.com/772896.html