More Nitpicky Thoughts on American Mediocrity

Of late, I have been reading Nietzsche, who, except for perhaps one random mention, barely acknowledges anything American. My favorite of his philosophical determinations from Beyond Good and Evil: "The Herd." From which we may derive "the herd mentality."

Now try out this article from The Chronicle Review concerning the American institutionalizing of mediocrity--especially education.

Then I was sent this article from The Weekly Standard, a laugh-a-minute take on Facebook. Is everything in our life inherently interesting? Must we all be on display?

Both articles point to the mind-numbing truth of our contemporary existence. Is a blog going to help? A posting on my "wall"?

What would Nietzsche say?

Blogger Spotlight

The Fringe editors aren't the only ones getting all the buzz: our bloggers are doing pretty well for themselves too!


Cindy has had three poems published in the Winter 2008/9 issue of Conversation Poetry Quarterly, and one poem in both the Women. Period (2008) anthology from Spinster's Ink Press and the Empowering Women Through Literacy (2009) book from the Women Expanding Literacy Education Action Resource Network.


Sean's poems appear or are forthcoming in Exquisite Corpse, Elimae, Diode, In Posse Review, Willow Springs, Taiga, Weave, Willows Wept Review, Oranges & Sardines, RealPoetik, New York Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Juked, Eratio, Ditch, Pineapple War, Redactions, and Quarter After Eight. His book reviews wil be featured in Rain Taxi. He is currently working on two books: a 500-trail hiking guide for Oregon, and a nonfiction manuscript, Smoking Waters. His blog site is theimaginedfield.blogspot.com.

Cat had two Soapbox columns in Boston's Weekly Dig in 2008: Liberla Schmarts and Broken appendages cause bonding . She has also taken over as Head Copy Editor for Fringe!

Julie also found success in the Weekly Dig, with her Soapbox column in December. She also recently had an article published in Sirens Magazine about the ways in which overly-educated women are coping after a job loss.


Please, no photographs.

Animals Are Entering Our Lives

(photo credit: Morris Grover, Oregon State Parks Ranger)

Now they are coming back to us,

the latest homeless, driven by hunger.

--Lisel Mueller

I

In 1906, the last sea otter--once native to the Pacific waters off the coast of Oregon--was killed. After that, they were declared extinct. An attempt at reintroduction for this federally-protected species failed in the 1970's. Since then, there have been two major confirmed spottings: off the Yaquina Head in the 1990's, and Cape Arago in 2003. On Wednesday, February 18, 2009 an Oregon State Parks employee photographed a lone sea otter in Depoe Bay Harbor. Whether there are others remains to be seen.

II

According to the "Findings" section of the March '09 issue of Harper's, "Confused and dead pelicans were turning up far from shore in California, pygmy killer whales were disappearing off Hawaii, and coyotes were encroaching on Detroit."

III

The American pika, known in mountain country as "rock rabbits," and familiar to hikers in the high country for their familiar "peep" as they dart into their burrows on boulder fields, are threatened by global warming. They are adapted to cold weather, and can die from exposure to temperatures as low as 78 degrees. More than a third of known populations in the Great Basin mountains of Nevada and Oregon have gone extinct. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deciding whether the pika warrants endangered species status.

IV

This morning, on my way to work, two dead Canadian geese were sprawled out in the road, near the on-ramp to Highway 224. Not an uncommon occurrence, as bands of geese often feed on the grass along the shoulder and between interchanges. They sometimes wander into the road, and at such speeds cars and trucks travel, they cannot move quick enough out of the way.

The Herd Mentality Prevails in the Windy City

Having read Eliot Weinberger's 1983 essay, "The Bomb," in his classic Works on Paper, published on New Directions, I started immediately looking online for more. There is an article in Bomb Magazine, a conversation between Weinberger and poet Forrest Gander on why "they are confounded by the astounding absence of the role of poet as a public cautionary figure."

The essay "The Bomb" is a must, especially with these next few days seemingly everywhere devoted--from Facebook, to blogs, to poets' invitational emails--to the AWP Conference in Chicago. As early as 1983 Weinberger is pointing out the poet's "recently acquired status as a wage-earner" and its necessary complications involving literature in the affairs of the state (i.e., university chairs, federal grants, and the like).

Amiri Baraka, who took part in the (now-largely forgotten, I think) May 26, 1982 "Poets Against the End of the World" reading at NYC's Town Hall, thought that the long shadow of The Bomb would lead to "dynamic, socially relevant poetry" which, to Weinberger at that time, remained to be seen. Naturally, this hasn't come to pass, at least in the large-scale poetry "movements" of contemporary America, aside from small pockets here and there.

Political thought in poetry, aside perhaps from Marvin Bell's Mars Being Red, is largely absent. After the Town Hall reading, Poetry East quoted Maxine Kumin as saying "Poetry is too fragile an art for polemic" and this attitude has remained indelibly marked on the contemporary consciousness. But why?

Weinberger draws a distinction in the identity of the poet: that they are not only poets, but also citizens (a thought Socrates would have appreciated) and, as far as writers go, capable of writing something other than poetry. Like essays, for example. Whether they recognize this is something else entirely. One would be hard pressed to find political poets of the caliber of Neruda today (forgiving him, and others, for their misguided rhetoric, all things considered) though you could find Vallejo's at a discount in any online publiction, wearing a political sensibility on their sleeves, perhaps, but certainly not a solid stance.



Poetry, for all its pretensions to "gnosis," is rather a series of "communities of like souls in remote mountain fastnesses" and "communities addicted to whimsey, nostalgia, preciosity" according to Weinberger. It's hard not to quote at length from this essay of this contemporary poetic "longing for Dada or Surrealism" that results in most of the poetry published in the online journals from the aesthetic left consisting largely of "a talking in tongues" where "fleeting insights are netted and pinned to the page." But if today's poets were living, let alone understanding, a true gnosis they would realize the impact of Herakleitos: "You cannot hide from that which will not go away."


So what will not go away? Human suffering, war, poverty. The hysteria of anticommunism of Weinberger's time has been replaced by the hysteria of anti-terrorism, but where are the answers from our poets? As Weinberger suggests, (and correctly, particularly if one reads the plethora of "bios" on poets) today's American poets are entirely dependent on the military state. How many are feeding the university system, both with their tuition and their energy, whether as students or teachers? Poets have become, essentially, "wards of the state."


And this weekend they are gathering in droves to congratulate themselves in Chicago. To sell their books, to give their readings, to meet and shake hands and to drink, as one poet put it, "over-priced drinks." Like an island in the midst of a public that one poet once claimed to me "had no taste."


As Weinberger notes in a footnote, "a magnificent half-century of American poetry ended when the poets allowed themselves to be organized and controlled by the two traditional enemies of poetry: the university and the state."


(all quotes from Eliot Weinberger's Works on Paper, published by New Directions Press in 1986; photo credit: Nina Subin)

Black Friday, or Death on the Blitz Line

You’d have thought by the news we were in a recession. You’d have thought people were beginning to be frugal, what with gas prices soaring in recent months, food prices skyrocketing, green peppers selling for $2 apiece.

Then what was poetically and accurately described as a group of “animals” and “savages” stormed and surged into a Long Island Wal-Mart, intent on $28 vacuums and $9 copies of “The Incredible Hulk”, unceremoniously trampling a temporary holiday worker to death. Despite recent hard times, can any of us admit to genuine surprise?

I understand that people likewise jostled the very medical crews trying to revive 34-year old Jdimytai Damour (who died of "positional asphyxiation") and kept shopping, even becoming irate when the store was closed on account of sudden death. “I’ve been waiting in line for days,” they said. And they weren’t talking of bread lines.

I recently learned that things were largely as they are today during the Korean War. People went about their business, more or less ignoring the news from the front, blithe in their new found prosperity. NPR reminded me that we have been at war this time around for seven years.

Last night I saw films of Iraqi children with their legs blown off by cluster bombs. Baghdad streets divided by razor wire, and the crumbling houses in Palestine. I am reminded of a story a few years ago, I believe it was in Texas, where free computers were given away at some fairgrounds one day. People attacked each other with folding chairs, an old man was clobbered, another man drove his car over the crowd.

It’s been said before, but now we are clear: America has gone insane.

The country is sickened by materialism. This is capitalism's inevitable end: that we kill each other for HDTV plasma televisions. The fact that 2,000 people are willing to stand in line for days on end--and in winter--to enter some warehouse-sized shopping center is enough to prove the fact. Maybe it began with the Cabbage Patch Kids. Maybe with Alexander Hamilton.

A friend in the Peace Corps in Gambia recently wrote that the Gambians love the idea of Thanksgiving--being with family, talking, a big meal--but the idea of spending all day shopping made absolutely no sense to them. In a country where Supermarkets are brand new, they were understandably confused.

Perhaps it’s only a start, wholly inadequate, but shouldn’t we put ourselves in those shoes? Instead of attacking each other for cheap sneakers?

News from the Center of American Poetry

I receive in the mail a cream-colored envelope from the Academy of American Poets in New York, New York. In the lower left-hand corner, this quote from Walt Whitman: “To have great poets, there must be great audiences…”

The bundle of paper inside is about what you expect: sophisticated panhandling.

First, a letter from the Chairman. “Dear Friend,” it reads. What follows is a petition for my Membership in an organization founded well over seventy years ago by Marie Bullock, who was “outraged” by the fact that poets were not given time off from their jobs to give readings—jobs such as “soda-fountain jerk” or “salesman in a clothing store.” A rather confident letter.

As a member, among other perks, you get copies of books awarded by the Academy, “a valued edition to your personal library.” Join at a higher level (“which will bring you closer to the center of the American poetry world”) and you get a DVD. About poets.

By now I am dismayed.

But look, a letter from Donald Hall, author of the great Anti-Institutional essay "Poetry and Ambition" (1983), telling me poetry “requires institutions to give it a presence in the public world.”

Here is a brochure on all the Programs the Academy sponsors: awards, book clubs, websites, events, and prizes, prizes, prizes. I feel ill.

Finally, the bottom line: check a box next to a dollar amount. American Poetry accepts Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. This donation puts your name on Annual Reports. The return envelope has paid postage—though a first-class stamp will “help keep costs down.”

Whitman’s dream. But how did Whitman get my name and address?

Poetry in the Age of the Fellowship

Of the poets I know in Portland, Oregon, one is an adjunct at a local community college, another is an HR temp, and another was recently laid-off from an editing position. As for myself, I am a marginally-employed substitute teacher and hand-to-mouth freelance writer. Obviously, the economy is faltering for young writers.

Who doesn't lament the loss of programs like the Works Progress Administration? Howard Zinn, in his People’s History of the United States, says this short-lived project of massively funding artists in the Depression was never to be repeated. NEA aside, of course he is right.

Consider a less-widely known branch of the WPA: the Federal Writers’ Project. It was essential for hardscrabble wordsmiths. Poets employed by the program included Claude McKay, Kenneth Patchen, and Kenneth Rexroth. Writers like Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, and Ralph Ellison contend that the WPA deeply influenced their later work.

But today it is with little surprise that I read a press release from Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council, announcing that poet and writer Kim Stafford had won the organization’s $20,000 fellowship, which he will use to take time away from his career at Lewis & Clark College to work on a project.

I find these “awards” troubling. How can I not notice that those who win grants, more likely than not, are artists already published, comfortably employed, and financially secure? The apparent purpose of “grants” and “fellowships” seems not to be in support of artists and writers with demonstrated financial need—those very creative-class types who tend to be young, trying to get their foot in the door of the writing community.

I am not begrudging Stafford, or any of the other writers who have won this award. I myself won a grant from RACC last year to attend a workshop with Marvin Bell, which paid for not only the $1103 tuition, but the experience and poems I gleaned.

Yet the granting of grants seems to closely resemble the structure of the rest of the economy: resources are allocated to those who already have resources. The rest of us are left to fend for ourselves not only artistically but fundamentally and economically. If the rich get richer, the poor take temp jobs, come home exhausted, and write poems about it.

What is the purpose of a grant? Is it to award accomplishment or to encourage new voices? With capitalism so firmly entrenched in literature, how are new writers to put out books (especially in a culture dominated by reading fees for first-book contests)?

Yeats said a poet should never get to comfortable. With this in mind, should young writers simply alienate ourselves entirely from the Arts Administrators? That is, is the best poetry to come from lack while lackluster poetry comes from "the best"?