More temporary-exit musings.

Thanks to those in the L.A./Orange County poetry communities who have been supportive of the poetry I've written over the past eleven years and/or willing to defend my right to offer (sometimes contentious) opnions about the scene and some of its people--even when they didn't agree with those opinions.

And I do plan to keep writing poetry. Some of it may turn up on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/terrymcca

Hopefully, see you sometime next year at a LA/OC venue.

Statement ot temporary withdrawal from L.A. poetry "community."

From my Facebook wall:
For the rest of the year, withdrawing from active participation in L.A. poetry community (have been alerted I'm not meeting community standards). Will still be supportive of others when possible. Hope to return sometime next year.

Poetry community standards are high in L.A. these days. Recognizing that I'm not sufficiently hip, or tolerant of certain egotistic behavior, or a recipient of a MFA degree, or a proficient-enough example of "craft-conscious writing", I realize it's time for me to find the exit door for awhile. At least in 1998, when I started going to readings here, there was such a thing as inclusiveness, no matter where your skill level was. Now, it appears to me that the approval of local poets has become highly conditional.

When poetry reviews become more about gatekeeping than reviewing.

This is a continuation of the previous blog post--which mentioned long-time Long Beach poet/writer/ex-NEXT magazine editor G. Murray Thomas and his attempts as a reviewer to alert poets re what they SHOULD be writing to meet his standards of "depth" and "craft."

It's the eternal conundrum for a critic/reviewer: to evaluate poems in terms of the standards the poet aspires to (entertainment, profundity, mastery of form, etc.) or to take the easier path of reviewing the poetry the critic/reviewer would LIKE to see.

As I evaluate them, Murray's reviews tend to be 25% of the former and 75% of the latter.

To make a brief lapse into Ad Hominism, someone I'll refer to as Infante Terrible has caterwauled on his blog about wanting to determine what poets and poetry should "survive."

And when poets (especially those who haven't made a huge impression outside of their own cliques/scenes) decide to become gatekeepers, they seem to be desperate to make a mark on poetry in any way possible--for a few momentary opinions *with their byline) to "survive" after they leave the Earth. If that turns out to be tilted-nose disdain for self-published chapbooks or throwing spitballs at Billy Collins because he sells too many books, then so be it.

Ultimately, it's the public that makes the final decisions about the poetry that should "survive"--and it's the poet's job to carry on regardless of whatever reviews he/she receives for his/her labors.

You can set your watch by G. Murray Thomas' reviews.

G. Murray Thomas stays consistent in adhering to his Len Goodman-esque yardstick of poetry "standards" (aka Let Only The Right Ones In). This month, long-time San Gabriel Valley poetry institution Don Kingfisher Campbell gets Murrayed (in a similar manner to what happened to me) on the POETIX reviews site:
http://www.poetix.net/reviews.htm

Also, there are more positive reviews of Orange County poetry institution Marcia Cohee and Elaine Mintzer's latest literary poetry offerings.

David Letterman outs himself re workplace affairs.

I just watched David Letterman confess having workplace affairs with female LATE SHOW staffers (and a producer of CBS' 48 HOURS trying to blackmail him for $2 million regarding this subject was arrested yesterday).

Having found this out before tuning into the show, the monologue--which included jokes about Roman Polanski, Mark Sanford and businessmen bringing their wives on business trips (relating somehow to Barack and Michelle Obama working together to bring the Olympics to Chicago)--was a bit creepy.

And so was the Paul Shaffer choice for play-in, play-out-of-commercial music:
The Rolling Stones' "Bitch."

A key lyric of the above song: "Love...is a bitch."

[Guessing that Bill Carter, who wrote THE LATE SHIFT (about Letterman and Leno jockeying to be The One to sit in Johnny Carson's vacant TONIGHT SHOW host's chair), won't have any trouble pitching a LATE SHIFT II to publishers.]
UPDATE as of October 6th:
Dave tried a second pass at an apology/explanation, and he's still upset about the extortion attempt. One fairly deft joke about how he can no longer do Bill Clinton/Mark Sanford material. Some contrition towards wife Regina. And, sort-of reversing a "they're welcome to come forward" comment the first time around, expressing worry for the staffers receiving attention from the media.

Short of any smoking guns related to sexual harassment and/or hush money (although it's being revealed that Letterman's involvement with assistant/occasional on-air foil Stephanie Birkitt continued after his marriage to Regina), I'm guessing this is the last on-the-show statement before Robert Joe Halderman's trial.

Nude photo of 10-year-old Brooke Shields at London's Tate Modern museum.

Regardless of one's position on Roman Polanski's arrest and possible extradition to the USA, there needs to be some additional mention of the wink-wink attitudes regarding sexualization of young girls that was pervasive in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Currently on AOL's PopEater blog, there's an article on the display of a nude photo of a 10-year-old Brooke Shields in a gallery exhibit (with a warning about "challenging imagery") in London's Tate Modern museum: http://www.popeater.com

Any nuanced discussion of the Roman Polanski arrest highly unlikely in USA.

It goes without saying that Roman Polanski's 70s statutory rape (it is rape, whether consensual or forced) of a 13-year-old girl (with a mother who wanted her to be a part of Show Business) was a crime.

And Polanski spent 42 days in Chino prison for "psychological evaluation." A plea deal was created ; the 42 days was to be the entirety of his punishment. Then the judge reneged upon the decision--and Polanski chose to flee the US.

Like him or not, Roman Polanski (in exile from both the US and the UK for over three decades) has been punished enough.

There are more recent crimes that the Los Angeles District Attorney's office should marshal its resources towards prosecuting--rather than trying to "win" an old case that (even the victim agrees) should be put behind us now.

60 MINUTES cheerleads for the war in Afghanistan.

Here's an excerpt from Matea Gold's article about the new season of CBS' 60 MINUTES in Sunday's LOS ANGELES TIMES Calendar section:
[Current executive producer Jeff Fager] said he plans to make Afghanistan a major focus on the program this season, eager to challenge the conventional wisdom that the public has tired of the war [my emphasis, not Ms. Gold's].

And to that end, last night's program led with General Stanley McChrystal doing his best Douglas MacArthur impersonation and croaking SURGE!!! SURGE!!! in an effort to manipulate President Obama into not appearing "weak" and giving McChrystal his extra mass of U.S. troops.

I was surprised that the lovely war-lover Lara Logan wasn't interviewing McChrystal. Instead the stenography task was handled by CBS national security correspondent David Martin.