Leaking out some meant-to-be-tough-love from poet I'm no longer in touch with.

Making this communique from earlier in the year public because it indicates how some in our poetry scene (and perhaps yours too) tend to react to complainers (guilty).  Human nature indeed.

Crying "poor me" all the time is boring and only hurts YOU. Once you have been branded, its hard to make it go away...its like an unwanted nickname, human nature and american social structure feeds that sorta bullying and as long as you keep playing the part, you will continue to be held in that regard... and believe me, from the folks that i [know in the SoCal poetry community].. most now, because of your attitude, consider you little more than comedic entertainment. Again.. im not saying these things to be HARSH.. im saying them to help you come to grips with the reality YOU have CREATED for yourself. no one else is responsible but you.. no one has the power to make the needed changes but YOU.. I am taking the time to attempt to help you realize that perhaps you are WRONG, and i do it out of respect for your support of my past endeavors and that i feel that for some reason (unknown to me) you have some regard for my opinion. Admitting being wrong is a trait that our culture really frowns upon, and being humble enough to admit when you have said or done something way outta line and stupid will gain more respect than anything else i know.




[SoCal poets' names redacted] and others you have issues with have traveled the country and the world and have performed their words for micro cultures of many different sizes and creeds.. their opinions hold merit, and should really be LISTENED to..sure they should be taken with a grain of salt, but they have experience and have learned things about the poetic experience that you have not, and their opinions hold keys and things to be learned..ignoring that is just stupidity. why would you NOT be interested in their opinions?? Poets as a general breed, are honest.. if they say something to you and you take offense to it.. its probably because you cannot handle criticism very well, and again this comes back to YOU.. not them. You are the one with the problem.. they do not have a problem, you do.

It's all over now: the end of LARRY KING LIVE.

It's going to be easy to snark about the latter years of LARRY KING LIVE where Larry's tendencies to throw overdeferential-to-guests softballs, not ask follow-up questions and become disengaged in the proceedings caught up with him.

Better to focus on what LARRY KING LIVE meant to CNN upon its 1985 debut: a chance for the network to evolve beyond its just-straight-newcasts-around-the-clock original formula.

Perhaps the show was at its best in the latter 1980s.  I particularly remember 1987, when news events such as the Iran/Contra hearings and the Jim Bakker/Tammy Faye Bakker/Jessica Hahn/PTL scandals were front-page news.  And it made for lively viewing as participants in the above events would come onto Larry's show to spin things their way.  In those days, Larry was still actively engaged in conversation with guests.

Now, that's all been washed away by CNN; CNN is now run by the guy who helped turn HLN (Headline News)'s prime-time lineup into Tabloid Central.  And it will be interesting to see if Piers Morgan's UK tabloid approach can transfer to CNN as successfully as Larry King's talk radio format did.

The story behind the statement.

Posted this on Facebook:

Will have poetry features in January and hopefully Februrary, then likely to go on hiatus and work on a revised version of an old chapbook. Thanks to the poets, living and dead, who made the SoCal scene a better place for the last dozen years.

The underneath of the statement:

Years ago, I had a health teacher in high school (a coach who looked like a cross between Peter Lorre and Patton Oswalt) lecturing our class about "survival of the fittest."

Years later, I had an accounting professor (last name Goode) who, when I asked for help on an assignment, said: "You haven't done a damned thing."  Meaning that I hadn't put in enough work struggling with the problem.

I guess I feel that I've done a bit of both in recent years with regards to poetry.  There could have been more work I could have put into what I've done.  And I'm not blessed with Darwinian (or even Jeff Probst/Mark Burnett) survival skills.

This year, I had the equivalent of rifle butts to the head from current and former SoCal community members.  All this helped to remind me that I have, in their collective opinion, a poor attitude, lack of reverence for certain community leaders and a writing ability lacking in such things as "imagery."

And recently, I've felt some light breezes of condescension from at least one current community leader.

But, enough politeness about adversity.  I'm hoping to get HOLLYWOOD POETRY's 10th anniversary edition out in 2011.

And I'm thankful to have discovered poets and poetry for all the occasional heartache and pain that's a byproduct.

One more post on John Lennon.

I bought the latest issue of ROLLING STONE, with the full text of Jonathan Cott's 1980 interview with John Lennon.

In the November, 1980 issue of ESQUIRE, Laurence Shames' "John Lennon, Where Are You?" was published.  The article, which bemoaned the business activities (and, to an extent, the previous life) of Lennon, could be described as inflaming the mental disorder of Mark Chapman:
http://books.google.com/books?id=BeYCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30&dq=Laurence+Shames+Esquire&hl=en&ei=A34GTfyECoyksQPAw5ykBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=Laurence%20Shames%20Esquire&f=false
Lennon didn't like Shames' take--and here's a portion of the response:
"That guy is the kind of person who used to be in love with you-you know, one of those people-and now hates you-a rejected lover.  I don't even know the asshole, but he spent his whole time looking for an illusion that he created of me, and then got upset because he couldn't find it."
A few lines later--"What they [referring to critics] want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean.  I'm not interested in being a dead f---ing hero...So forget 'em, forget 'em."

It was thirty years ago today: memories of before, during and after John Lennon's death.....

Around late summer/early fall of 1980, I remember being excited to read the Random Notes section of ROLLING STONE and discovering that John Lennon was ending his long (or so it seemed then) retirement to record a new album.

That album, DOUBLE FANTASY, appeared a couple of months later.  A DJ for the now-long-dead Top 40/AOR hybrid station KKQV-FM in Wichita Falls, TX played the album in its entirety--and pronounced it "Double Nightmare"; presumably, she didn't like John and Yoko forsaking activism for chronicling adventures in ordinary living.

And then, on the night of December 8, 1980, I came home from a foreign film appreciation class to find out that John Lennon had been murdered.

A few weeks before, Lennon gave an interview to NEWSWEEK.  He mentioned not wanting to be "Elvis Beatle" and made a chillingly prophetic comment: "The King is killed by his courtiers."

Days after Lennon's death, I remember reading a letter in the editorial section of a Wichita Falls newspaper.  It came from what I presumed was an elderly woman in Burkburnett.  She ranted that all four Beatles should have been shot.

Angered by this stupid, malevolent outburst, I quickly turned the page. 

A selection of articles about WikiLeaks.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2034276-1,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks
http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech
http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=%2Fopinion%2Fgreenwald%2F2010%2F12%2F06%2Fwikileaks

From John Naughton's GUARDIAN column, linked to above:
"Our rulers have a choice to make: either they learn to live in a WikiLeakable world, with all that implies in terms of their future behaviour; or they shut down the internet. Over to them."

Mixed feelings about Darren Aronofsky's BLACK SWAN.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/black-swan/5174

Ed Gonzalez' review of BLACK SWAN is probably the most perceptive so far regarding its virtues and flaws.

My take on the film is that its a mixture of Val Lewton-esque psychological thriller capped by a final half-hour of Ken Russell-esque excess that even Russell would find over-the-top.  Suffice to say CGI-effects are wielded a la the comedian Gallagher performing his Sledge-O-Matic routine.  Obviously Darren Aronofsky thought the audience needed a heaping dose of literal-minded dramatization of madness.

Essentially, Natalie Portman's performance is Seven Degrees of Tremulousness followed by One Degree of Wearing Red Contact Lenses--with no real in-between (probably the way Aronofsky wanted the character to be played).

And it must be said that for all the filled-with-ominous-portent you-must-find-the-Black Swan-within talk from Vincent Cassel's ballet master (rooting for Cassel and Barbara Hershey to get Supporting Actor/Actress nominations this awards season--as well as Clint Mansell's score and Matthew Libatique's cinematography), BLACK SWAN is a film about two actresses (Portman and Mila Kunis) who steadfastly refuse to be fully naked on film even in non-gratuitous contexts.

Steve Martin and 92nd Street Y interviewer think they're at NYC's MOMA.

http://nyti.ms/hJLOu2

It's probably petty and rather plebian of me to hamfistedly point out the irony of someone who, during much of his past two decades in commercial cinema, has made underachieving an art form (of sorts) so he can buy major works of Art.

But I'll do it anyway.