Another email to a youngish poet

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I fully realize that it's easy for me to criticize when I'm not writing poems myself, because when I write, it's mostly like wading through a self-generated disaster zone. Poetry is mostly false starts and abortions, but you wouldn't know it from the self-congratulatory chatter of the poetry crowd.

One more thought: the workshop format is obviously bullshit, since a poem cannot be audience tested or written by a commitee. The word itself, workshop, is ridiculous as applied to poetry. If this entire system isn't unraveling, I'm sure the next evolution in the poetry writing racket will be assembly line poetry:

Good at metaphor but clueless at syntax? Don't worry, we'll plug you into the right slot at the South Dakota/Oracle/Beige University MFA Poetry Assembly Line System. We'll "teach" you how to generate endless bizarre yet apt metaphors while never having to worry about periods, commas, clauses or any of that other grammatical bullshit. We already know you can't even compose a coherent email, but don't worry, you'll be a certified poet soon enough, with your own well-linked blog. Bank loans readily available for all qualified or unqualified sensitive and intellectually ravenous, sort of, suckers.




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Email to a youngish poet

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Your new poem is tight, smart, without any false notes, and the title is fantastic, but, but, but, you're basically writing in the Ashbery mode. This is no fault of your own, since Ashbery casts a huge shadow across contemporary American poetry. That wry, intelligent noodling, with just a touch of pathos, is showing up everywhere, and not many people can do them well even, as you have managed to pull off here. Still, you must move beyond this. To take real chances, you must lose yourself, freak out a little, become wild yet still in charge. I know that sounds oxymoronic, but that's what it takes to luck into a super rare, truly authentic poem. When I saw Anne Boyer in Philly recently, I said to her, "I'm preparing to write my first poem." And who knows, maybe I won't ever get there, so welcome to the gestation club, motherfucker! Technically, I'd say pay more attention to sentence lengths, try to vary them more. Also, be more conscious of mixing dictions and modes, as in be a more versatile ventriloquist, and speak from all of your orifices, even those you didn't know exist.

I haven't been wearing my poetry cap, but I hope the above still makes some sense.




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Sharing the Turkey

A published in OpEd News, Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice and Intrepid Report, with a shorter version in the Guardian, 11/24/11:






Thanksgiving is the occasion or requirement, not necessarily welcome, that one eats with many other people, while looking at their faces even. As a contemporary American, I take many meals alone while staring at a medium, which in my case is the computer and, before that, the newspaper. I eat in silence and darkness. It hasn’t always been this way.

My first Thanksgiving, I had just turned twelve and had been in the US all of six months. I was living in Tacoma with my father, kid brother and a woman who would morph into my stepmother. Even then, we hated each other. For $150 a month, we had a one bedroom apartment not far from my school, McKinley Elementary. My brother and I slept in sleeping bags on the living room floor, with our treasure a tiny black and white TV, a tutor in American culture and English.

Each afternoon, the magic box would usher in Bugs Bunny, then Shirley Temple or the Three Stooges, to be followed by Jimmy Snuka. No more dismal or heroic singing, as on Vietnamese television. No more body counts or political speeches. This is America, boys and girls, where everything is goofy and fun!

Though they hardly knew us, the people next door generously invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn’t a family but two young couples, with the men bearded. We ate on the floor. I had just learned, “May I,” so I tried out, “May I have the corn, please.” This linguistic feeler elicited a compliment from one of our sweet hosts, which flattered me. In Vietnam, I had studied French from kindergarten onward, but since I had no need to speak it, I never owned any French, not even a mouthful, yet here I was, already careening forward with a new, reckless tongue that I wagged about like some lashing weapon.

For whatever it’s worth, it’s true that Americans do say “thank you” and “sorry” quite readily, at least much more often than Vietnamese, and I’m only talking about ordinary people, of course, not any official. The American government should apologize constantly, but never does. Better yet, it should cease and desist from all the looting, carnage and destruction that require that it gets on its knees and begs forgiveness from man, gods and gaia.

So what am I suggesting? I’m saying that Americans are for most part kind and generous, unlike its murderous government. I’m claiming that our 99% are mostly fair and decent, unlike the 1% that rule and represent us. Working against humanity and country, this 1% bring shame and dishonor to our name.

In 1976, my father decided that we should join my aunt in Houston, so he drove us 2,400 miles in his Chevette, the cheapest on the market. In the middle of the Sonoran desert, this crappy car died, so strangers had to come to our aid. This was before the cell phone, so a passing motorist had to use a payphone to call for a tow truck, and, even more incredibly, a mechanic at this garage invited us into his home for the night, since we couldn’t afford a motel. My brother and I played with his two boys, and his wife made burgers for us all. My father did give them some money, maybe $20, as a token thank you, but their kindness and graciousness were truly marvelous, though at the time, as a kid, I didn’t fully appreciate it.

In 1983, during my second year in art school, I had another memorable Thanksgiving dinner, this time at the home of a professor, Boris Putterman. I had started out calling Boris “Mr. Putterman,” but he insisted on “Boris,” which is the informal, American way. Boris liked my progress as a young painter, and also my confidence, which later he would discover, to his dismay if not disgust, to be an unwarranted cockiness. Stoked by a combustion of social, intellectual, alcoholic, dope, speed and sexual awakenings, I even declared to Boris, “You should never say sorry!” His response, “Where did you get that?! You should always say you’re sorry.” Life would kick my ass good upon leaving school, however, so I got my comeuppance in ample dosage. Whether in an individual or nation, hubris is a distortion that demands correction, for sooner or later the proper perspective and proportion will reassert themselves.

It’s strange but from all the conversations of that night at Boris’, the only bit that’s stuck in my mind was uttered by his mother, “I don’t see how people can eat chicken wings. There’s no meat on them!” Instead of fading, this will only mean more and more in the years ahead, and not just to me but nearly all Americans, so be thankful for what’s left, but unless some are made to feel sorry very soon, the rest of us will be kicked in the ass.





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Banks, Pentagon and Academic Pusillanimousness

As published at OpEd News, Common Dreams, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 11/19/11:

“I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy.”—GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain

Not everything, mind you, but anything, which would put him on par with the dumbest American living under the heaviest and mossiest rock. Hell, he's running neck to neck with that boulder. Though Cain knows nothing, he has enough political sense to bluster, “If you mess with Israel you're messing with the United States of America.”

That’s been the mantra in Washington, Wall Street and Madison Avenue. Iran knows this as well, and that’s why it is, in all likelihood, trying to develop the nuclear bomb, not to strike New York or Washington, but Tel Aviv. It only makes sense, since that’s the only deterrence it has against an American invasion.

Clueless Cain thinks the Iranians have warships off our shore, but it’s America who has Iran surrounded, with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Fifth Fleet also operates from Bahrain, a mere 120 miles from the Iranian coast. Washington has been itching for a fight with Iran ever since it had the (Muslim) balls to depose the CIA-installed Shah and kept 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran is also the largest Islamic country to openly defy the United States. By the way, it also has a lot of oil and natural gas.

Threatened for three decades by the biggest empire on earth, what can Iran do but strive to aim a nuclear warhead at Israel? You mess with us, we’ll kill your daddy!

A few days ago, I was a guest on Iran’s Press TV to talk about the anti-Wall Street protest. On the same show was Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. A year after his book came out, Kovel was fired from Bard College. Seeing a causal effect, Kovel issued a statement charging that he was terminated because of “differences between [himself] and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism.” At that time, I was teaching creative writing at Bard, so I tried to drag this controversy onto its listserv, but no one, absolutely no one, responded, to my astonishment. Hey, a college teaching job isn’t easy to come by, so why rock the boat? President Botstein will kick your ass. A few months earlier, the same listserv was orgasmic with cheering for Obama, but, then again, nearly all of the American left were. Ah, how idyllic and delightful it is to be a tenured liberal in the waning days of empire!

2011, at another supposedly radical bastion, Berkeley, cops wacked students with the chancellor’s approval. Protesting outrageous tuition hikes, these students correctly blamed banks for their university’s and state’s budget crises, but banks and universities have been in cahoots for a long time now. Schools jack up rates, knowing they can send students to banks for loans, but no matter what one’s major these days, the jobs are simply not there, but one’s debts are, for life!

Is it a surprise, then, that so many of the Occupy Wall Street protesters are recent college graduates? Spat out by the system, they know that they’ve been had. Like investment banks, American colleges are also purveyors of ponzi schemes. Beaten to the ground, flattened, these protesters are suspicious of all hierarchies, of all pyramids, and that’s why they’ve refused to elevate leaders or even to prioritize key issues, but these reluctances must be overcome, I think, for this movement to move forward.

Its success, so far, can be attributed to two crucial decisions, to have an open-ended occupation, not a one-day march, and to target Wall Street. This movement, then, is about the money manipulators' looting and corruption, so it’s important that the public be educated and constantly reminded about the abuses of the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and the rest of the banking cartel.

As Americans endure actual or symbolic homelessness across this land, their government is hankering for yet another war. To distract attention from problems at home, the US wants to attack Iran and/or Syria. This is madness, certainly, but not to the war profiteers. Having bought off all of our politicians, these money masters own the Pentagon and its obscene budget that eats up half of our tax money.

When Michael Avery of Suffolk University pointed out, in a leaked email, that it was irrational to support troops sent overseas by a war-prone country to kill, he was met with considerable abuse and hostility. Unsurprisingly, his school’s president quickly distanced himself from Avery’s lucid remarks by saying that he himself was sending a care package to the troops. So, yes, if you don’t die by the time this box arrives, have a bar of chocolate on me!

How can anyone in his right mind not be against corruption, since corruption is just stealing public money, but unfortunately, many of the 99% are still misled into supporting our military. They cannot see that the Pentagon, like the banks, is also a nexus of corruption, that its main task is not to defend our republic but to funnel money from the 99% to the 1%.

Do not lose sight that our main battle is against the corrupt banking cartel and equally corrupt Pentagon. Much of our financial, political, social and ecological ills can be traced to these monsters. Winter is coming. Time is running out.





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'The Pentagon is as corrupt as Banks'

Iran's Press TV, recorded live yesterday:

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the US should also place some focus on the Pentagon, as it is as corrupt as the banks that caused the country's financial crisis, an analyst says.

Press TV has interviewed with Linh Dinh, an author from Philadelphia, to further discuss the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of two additional guests, Sara Flounders as well as Joel Kovel.

What follows is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: More Americans are losing their homes we know; a recent Gallup poll finds that only forty-four and a half percent of Americans adults received health insurance from an employer in the third quarter of 2011.

Another recent Gallup poll report shows that twenty percent, or over sixty million of them, were not able to bring food for themselves, or their families over the past year.

Now against this backdrop, what do you think will be the future of the protester movement against the economic, social, and the political inequalities?

Dinh: Just like you are saying, many Americans are directly threatened by this collapsing economy.

The situation is so precarious that they can be fired tomorrow; they are making less money. So the occupy movement is a kind of symbolic homelessness, so these people are living so poorly, and are camping out in the hearts of American cities, to vividly demonstrate to the rest of the world, that they are just a step away from being homeless.

And what's interesting is that the actual homeless people are moving into these camps. So there's a blurring of the real homeless people and those who are for now only symbolically homeless.

But what's interesting is that, if you think about it, every homeless person is already a protester, whether he has a sign in front of him or not.

Because in a country that wastes so much money on the Pentagon, on the military, there shouldn't be that much homelessness. In every American city, in every American town you can see the homeless people.

So these tent cities will only grow as the economy collapses further.

Press TV: The Republican presidential hopefuls had a foreign policy debate the other day, and in that debate, all of them expect for Ron Paul, focused on attacking Iran, and waging another war.

With twenty percent of Americans not having enough money to buy food, why do you think there is so much talk about another war, when of course one of the major demands that has been voiced in these protest movement has been an end to the wars that the US is currently engaged in.

Dinh: Sure the government wants to attack yet another country, to distract attention from problems at home.

And I see a big problem here, you know that this movement is called the ninety-nine percent, and it is that, but there is a kind of a disagreement between the conservative Americans and the liberal Americans.

The conservative Americans are also against corruption but they support the Pentagon, they support the US military foreign policy, whereas the liberals are against corruption but against the Pentagon. So there has to be a kind of consensus reached, in that Americans have to be persuaded, to understand that US imperialism is not just bad for Iran, or Iraq or Libya or so many other countries, it's also bad for the USA.

We are not just killing other people, we are killing ourselves.

So how can you not be against corruption? Corruption is just stealing money. I mean you, how can you be for corruption? But so many Americans are still misled into supporting our military.

Because they are persuaded somehow, that a country like Iran is a threat to the USA. Whereas it's exactly the opposite, the USA is threatening Iran. Iran is not a threat to USA at all.

So I think that hopefully in the future, people can be persuaded to realize that the Pentagon is as bad as the banks, a major source of corruption.

Press TV: Speaking about this major financial and political overhaul in the United States, well one of the demands voiced by the protesters is being against what they call the military-industrial-complex for instance and the military-banking relationship.

If you were to say what is at stake now for the US, is it corporation, is it more about Wall Street, is this military-banking relationship, or is it capitalism as a whole?

Dinh: Well, basically it's corruption; it is the criminal banks which are represented by the Federal Reserve which has a power to generate money out of nothing.

And then the Pentagon, which is this major source of corruption. But anyway, I agree with Joel too, with the ecological issue, in that capitalism is predicated on growth, and I think growth is over. And the United States has to come to terms with that.

In that this country cannot grow anymore, because there are ecological limits, and that is something that most of the public are not aware of.

And there is a huge challenge of how to manage, not growth, but contraction. And that is a very difficult issue and no one is addressing it at the moment.


PM/AZ






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PSU protesters blindly ignore real victims

Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette



Unless they're prepping for that extra-credit question on a philosophy midterm, most college students don't do a whole lot of thinking about morality.

Maintaining a decent grade point average while navigating the more libidinous temptations of college life is about as deep as it gets. It has been books-versus-bacchanalia ever since the days of Socrates.

Students usually learn a university's definition of morality sometime near the end of first semester of their freshman year. That's when bills are sent to their parents warning that their young scholars won't be allowed to enroll the following semester unless the next installment of the shakedown known as college tuition is remitted before sundown.

At least colleges and universities are honest about being cash-hungry businesses. The extent that they are also idea factories and molders of morality ranks far down on their hierarchy of values.

Contrary to society's most sentimental myths about higher education, colleges aren't set up to instill students with a conscience. Those who arrive on campus without fully functioning empathy chips aren't likely to develop a taste for moral inquiry by sitting in a lecture hall or by playing beer pong.

That's why no one should be shocked by what happened at State College when news spread Wednesday night that longtime head football coach Joe Paterno had been fired. Up to 5,000 young people took to the streets around Penn State University for several hours to protest the sacking of their beloved "JoePa" and to vent their rage at the trustees who denied their hero the dignity of going out on his own terms.

After flipping over a TV news van, the students made it clear that larger questions of morality in what is easily the biggest scandal in the school's history were beside the point.

Petulant chants of "One more game" and "We want JoePa" united the crowd in a bond of youthful stupidity and shortsightedness that is only possible when mom and dad are paying the bills.

The only thing more naive than the misplaced chants of support for an 84-year-old football coach is the question indignant viewers asked while watching the riot footage on cable news: What exactly are they teaching those kids at Penn State?

Isn't it obvious? Penn State isn't teaching the kids anything they didn't already learn at home. It isn't the university's job to inculcate kids with values such as empathy for young rape victims. That's a moral blind spot that represents the absence of good parenting, not bad teaching at Penn State.

Those protesters arrived at the school fully formed and with the capacity for uncritical worship of a football coach whose two-syllable nickname invokes the same assumptions of omnipotence as Yahweh.

Although the thousands in the streets were an impressive turnout, they represented a minority of the school's student body. The majority of students stayed in their cubicles and dorm rooms, perhaps embarrassed by the lemming-like behavior of their classmates chanting the name of a man who enabled former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky by not reporting what he knew or suspected of sexual abuse allegations to police a decade ago.

The kids who marched through the night at State College confronting pepper spray-wielding police in riot gear didn't ask themselves the nature of what they were marching for. They didn't engage in dorm room rap sessions about the morality of their protest. No one wondered if any of the alleged victims of their beloved coach's former assistant was within earshot.

What would the eight victims of child sex abuse described in the grand jury's presentment think of the crowd if they saw it? Would they feel like scapegoats, or would they realize, sadly, that their pain is a non-issue to those who cried over JoePa's firing? Where do these eight victims fit in the morality of the crowd that turned out to protest?

If one tries to imagine other issues that could drive thousands of Penn State students to the street, you would probably come up empty. A decade of war abroad doesn't generate such passions, nor would a threat of tuition hikes.

In Happy Valley, it only takes the outcome of a football game, or the dethroning of the campus' resident god to get those kind of numbers. That's the only incontestable morality the university has cultivated over the four decades of Mr. Paterno's reign.

Lately, I've been thinking about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. He served nearly two years in prison for running a dog-fighting ring and was only grudgingly allowed back in the NFL. Among the Penn State protesters, there was probably more sympathy for Mr. Vick's dogs than for the children victimized in this case.





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Penn State and Berkeley: A Tale of Two Protests

Dave Zirin


Last night, two proud universities saw student demonstrations that spiraled into violence. On the campus of Penn State University in State College Pennsylvania, several hundred students rioted in anger after the firing of legendary 84-year-old head football coach Joe Paterno. At the University of California at Berkeley, 1,000 students, part of the Occupy USA movement, attempted to maintain their protest encampment in the face of police orders to clear them out.

At Penn State, students overturned a media truck, hit an ESPN reporter in the head with a rock and made every effort at arson, attempting to set aflame the very heart of their campus. They raised their fists in defense of a man fired for allegedly covering up the actions of a revered assistant who doubled as a serial child rapist. The almost entirely male student mob was given the space by police to seethe and destroy without restraint.

[...]





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With two more days to go,

I've managed to have $3,350 in pledges at my fundraising at United States Artists, but if I don't meet my goal of $5,000 by 11:59PM of November 11th, 2011, I'll get nothing! My appeal:

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Occupy Boston Occupies Israeli Consulate

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‘Media treating OWS as a joke’

Iran's Press TV, Tue Nov 8, 2011 4:7PM:

An exclusive interview with Linh Dinh, writer and author

Major media outlets are mocking the Occupy Wall Street movement, seeking to distract and confuse public opinion as the anti-capitalist pitch grows louder, an analyst says.

Press TV has interviewed with Linh Dinh, writer and author from Philadelphia, to further discuss the issue.

The video also offers the opinions of Don DeBar, an additional guest.

What follows is a transcript of the interview.

Press TV: The majority of economic analysts and experts speaking about America agree that there was financial greed, there was a financial fraud involved that led to the financial crisis. Now these protesters are showing their anger, saying that the banks and corporations, the ones who created the crisis, are the ones getting funds and not them. Will this protest movement eventually force the government to admit that point, and to appoint a different economic policy? Or is that asking too much?

Dinh: So far there’s been a lack of clarity about what the protesters really want the government to do.

About two weeks ago, they did put out an announcement that they will have a national convention next year in which they would put out a list of demands, and then wait one year for the government to meet these demands. And if they don’t, if the government doesn’t respond, they would put out a party that would run for elections. They would put out candidates that would run for elections in 2014, and then presumably in 2016.

But this proposal has not been followed up, you know. It sounds like a much needed idea, that they would put out a third party to challenge the Republicans and the Democrats. But for some reason this declaration has not been followed up. So, I’m not sure whether they will follow through with this idea.

But anyway, the media has not been very helpful in educating the public about what these protesters are really after. And of course, the media are not here to educate, they are here to confuse and to distract. So there’s been too much emphasis on the protesters themselves, as far as the sanitation issues, the sexual assaults and etc. etc.

These problems with any kind of public outdoors encampment are to be expected. And so far, these incidents have been very few. The sanitation, the assaults, the violence, these incidents have been very few.

But these are the problems ordinary homeless people face anyway, you know. So the protesters are only symbolically homeless, but whereas regular homeless people are often assaulted.

And of course, if you are sleeping outside, you’re not going to be clean. Using the bathroom is going to be a big issue, etc. etc.

And so I think it’s profound that so many Americans all over the country are willing to live so poorly, so squalidly, to make a point. So, instead of applauding the sacrifice that they are doing every day, you know, the media are treating them as if this is some kind of a game, as if this is a joke. You know it is not fun to sleep outside in the cold, in the snow.

Anyway, they don’t have all the time in the world. So, at some point I think they would have to limit the main points and clarify exactly what they are after.

Press TV: Do you agree that nothing can change for the better until the entire economic system is completely dismantled?

Dinh: Well, I think there is no consensus among the protesters, and that’s what I am trying to get at. Some of them are against capitalism and some of them are not. We don’t know what percentage of them is against capitalism.

It is a structural problem. I definitely agree that it’s a structural problem. And some of them are talking about the Federal Reserve as this generator of money. That the power to generate money in the United States is in the hands of private banks, and that’s a main problem. I don’t think you can solve much until you address that.

But then again, not all of the protesters agree with that assessment either. We don’t know how radical these people are, eventually. I think some of them are fairly radical in that they want a complete overhaul of the system, and some of them are fairly conservative in that they just want some people to be prosecuted within the laws that already exist.

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General Strike: November 28, 2011!

http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011

The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

The debt “super committee” makes its budget recommendations on Wednesday, November 23^rd, the day before Thanksgiving.

We know that the recommendations will include deep cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

We know that the Republicans in the Senate and House will overwhelmingly approve of the austerity package that is sure to come from the super committee's recommendations.

We also know that the Democrats will by and large fold and accept the austerity package.

We know that Obama will approve of the budget recommendations. (Otherwise, he would have invoked the 14^th Amendment and lifted the debt ceiling.)

Likewise, we know that as of November 23^rd, ironically the day before Thanksgiving, the austerity package will be forthcoming and that the vast majority will now pay an additional price for the criminality of the corporate, military and financial oligarchy.

The vast majority will not have the corporate, military and financial oligarchy to thank on Thanksgiving.

Instead, the vast majority is being attacked by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy and its representatives in the White House and both houses of Congress. We are being forced to pay for the failures of the capitalist class and the precariousness of the profit system.

We are no longer represented by the U.S. government. Instead, the government is an instrument of the capitalist class and this class has nothing but its own interests at heart. This class will continue to force its will upon us. The two political parties are simply two levers by which this capitalist class controls the political processes in the U.S.

The only thing we have left is our consent to work. The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

Likewise, Citizens for Legitimate Government is calling for a General Strike to begin at 7 AM EST on Monday, November 28^th, 2011!*

Extend your Thanksgiving weekend by refusing the austerity measures to be imposed on the vast majority by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy!

General Strike, Monday, November 28, 2011!

URL for this page: http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011

Media inquiries: media@legitgov.org

General inquiries: contactus@legitgov.org

Contribute to this action by clicking here.

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*Note, the CLG encourages ALL workers in the U.S. (and abroad) to join the strike. This is a unified strike of the entire workforce.

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