Rod McKuen and poetic snobbery.

Sad to read about the passing of poet/musician Rod McKuen, who successfully crossed over to mainstream audiences in the 1960s via albums with backing from the Anita Kerr Singers.
http://youtu.be/fOdbFnVB_yY. McKuen reading his poem "The Sea."

Now, the floor will be turned over to New England-by-way-of-Orange County poet Victor Infante, who found a way to diminish McKuen (an acquired taste, if one remembers his song score for A BOY NAMED CHARLIE BROWN, but someone who lived in an era when spoken-word recordings on major labels were a little more acceptable than now) in the context of eulogizing Maya Angelou last year in the litizine RADIUS:

When Maya Angelou died Wednesday, I told a story to my co-workers that I don’t think I’ve ever told before: That in my early teens, I read my way through the Laguna Beach Public Library’s poetry section. In retrospect, it wasn’t a very large section, not in the early to mid ’80s, but I would sit on the floor near the section and just read, sometimes flying through two or three books at a time.

This was my first exposure to numerous poets: Ginsberg, Byron, Shelley, Eliot, cummings, Plath .. and yeah, Rod McKuen. Some of the poems I loved because I could easily understand them – such as McKuen – and some of them I loved because they were totally opaque to me, because I thought that was cool. Thankfully, I grew out of both opinions eventually, although I should note I keep a McKuen poem pinned to the inside cover of one of my poetry notebooks. Just because.

Too ironic not to share: RADIUS online journal seeks submissions re series on bullying.

Reprinting this from the RADIUS website (http://radiuslit.org) for your edification:
Radius is currently seeking poems and essays for a special series on Art, Bullying and Culture.
“Bullying” has long been a part of the cultural conversation, but it turned deadly serious in 2010 with the suicides of several teenagers who were bullied for being or being thought to be homosexual. The outcry was enormous and wide-ranging, from several attempts to pass “anti-bullying” legislation, to journalist Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project, to responses in poems and pop songs.
It’s 2013, and whether anything has changed  remains an open question.
Radius is looking for poems and essays that pick apart the question of bullying, and which look at it through the frame of the journal’s mission: How art works, and how it interacts with the world.
We’re looking for poems that put a human spin on the phenomenon, essays that illustrate the role of bullying in the creative process, and examinations of what effects the conversation has had on the culture.
While Radius is primarily dedicated to poetry, essays do not need be exclusively about that particular art form, but should probably have an arts component. We might, for example, be interested in a non-ironic essay on Taylor Swift’s “Mean” or Katy Perry’s “Firework.” We would also be extremely interested in brief memoirs from artists of any discipline who may have been bullied, and how that effected their artistic paths. As always, we’re open.
The deadline for submission is Midnight Friday, March 15, 2013. To submit, please visit our submissions manager, and use the word “Bullying” in the title.
Thanks, and we look forward to hearing your perspective,
Victor D. Infante
Editor-In-Chief
Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge

Here's my perspective on bullying--starting with a re-quote of something the Editor-In-Chief Victor Infante wrote to me years ago (taken from a previous post titled NAME OMITTED AND THE UNDERBELLY OF POETRY):
"First off, I'm sorry I called you a jerk. I was out of line, and for that, I genuinely apologize. On the other hand, I'm not going to apologize for not paying more attention to you, and it's glaringly obvious that's what this little tantrum has been about. [prominent poet, now MIA from the scene] didn't pay attention to you. I didn't pay attention to you. Wah, wah, wah.Grow up, Terry. If you've got problems with the poetry scene, do something about it. Start your own readings, start a festival. Publish a journal or Web zine. Whatever, but stop acting like a baby because you don't get the attention you deserve and others do. You're right, it's not a level playing field, and you don't get points for just being there. You've actually got to do something well. Writing well would be a start. 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.You can have whatever opinions you want, Terry, and you can have whatever opinions you want about me, but the fact is, you're not the one out there doing the work, and if you've made any serious effort to BE the one out there doing the work, I'm sorry, but I don't recall it. [name omitted]."

For better or worse, Name Omitted's letter has been an impetus for me to carry on as a poet over the last half-decade. I've learned a few things since then (and have to learn a few more), but I hope I never sink to the depths of writing to someone else who sends me a book or poem with the condescending, dimissive tone of what Name Omitted dictated above.

Victor Infante and his "tame monster" roaming the literary countryside again.

"Sometimes, it's hard not to think that the urge for fame or success, for validation, makes tame monsters of us."--poet Victor Infante circa 2009

"All of us who take to poetry as a calling, especially those of us who work mostly outside the realm of the academic and corporate spheres, stand on the shoulders of poets such as Hugh Fox, who understood that poetry – that art, beauty and passion – isn’t a gift conveyed by an institution, that’s the prerogative of anyone one group or class. Hugh found poetry – and poets – everywhere. He saw that an outsider poet from Southern California was worth taking seriously, and he sought out Latin American poets and published them in both English and Spanish when hardly anyone in America was doing that sort of thing. And one day, for reasons that I’ll probably never know, he took a shine to an online literary journal, and thought it was worth sending a poem. A poem’s a small thing, but if it comes at just the right moment, it can mean the world."--poet Victor Infante's recent remembrance of deceased poet Hugh Fox (highlighting by me).

The entirety of Victor's article can be found here:
http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/09/11/where-we-stand-poetry-legacy-and-sorrow/

More tributes to poet Scott Wannberg.

Since Scott Wannberg's memorial (with food, drink, reminiscing, open-mike and music) is being held today at Beyond Baroque in Venice CA (http://www.beyondbaroque.org/) from 3:00 to 11:00 p.m., I'm porting over some memories of Scott from the RADIUS website:
http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/08/21/good-bye-to-all-that-thoughts-on-scott-wannberg’s-passing/
http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/08/21/poem-by-a-razor/#comment-2885

And here's probably the definitive tribute to Scott, from his longtime friend Rip Rense:
http://www.riprense.com/scott.htm

Reprinting a comment from a July post of mine--plus my comment on SoCal poetry's musical chairs.

I agree with you about parts of the Southern California poetry "community." I'm fairly "new" to the scene, but I've had quite an amount of success in the larger world of poetry. More than most of those on the scene. The buddy-buddy nature of the cliques is grotesque. Talent doesn't matter as much as friendship. The same people feature at the same venues and they read the same poems. These folks don't see the world of poetry extends beyond LA and OC. Just ridiculous. Carry on...--commenter on July post I wrote about "my blog going on late-summer vacation."


Amplifying the above:
The SoCal community is like a game of musical chairs where it's exceedingly rare when people get up from their chairs to play.


Sure, some people (poet/RADIUS critic Carlye Archibeque being an example) disappear and reappear years later to regain their chairs-held-for-them.


And there's the occasional newcomer (the gracious Rapp Saloon host Elena Secota) who arrives on the scene and makes a positive impact.


But, for the most part, people stay where they are for decades like the Soviet politburo--rarely being generous enough to allow or invite newcomers or under-recognized veterans to break bread and share a bowl of borscht.