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Infante's Inferno - "Best American Poetry" blogger time travels from 1997!!!
Nov. 18th, 2010
04:24 pm - "Best American Poetry" blogger time travels from 1997!!!
"Best American Poetry" blogger Janice Erlbaum outs herself as a pretentious twit. Money quote:
"In the ongoing battle to see which school of poetry can greater damage the reputation of the truly BEST American Poets -- the ones who, you know, actually read and write poems instead of watching poems, thinking them up and then performing them -- I ask you to consider these two contenders: Flarf and Slam."
Dear Janice, thank you for joining us in the "slam vs. academia" argument that was settled more than a decade ago. For fear of spoiling the ending, the rest of the poetry community long ago concluded that there was far too much crossover between the printed and spoken word for the argument to remain relevant, and that the far more important discussion was the quality and presentation of one's writing.
But hey. Since you raised the question, Buddy Wakefield and Andrea Gibson are fine poets, although I'm biased, as they're friendly acquaintances and on the same publisher as I am. I can fully see, however, that they may not be to everyone's taste. (But what art worth encountering is?) Still, there are any number of fine poets who have emerged from (or at least traveled through) poetry slam who may be more to your taste, including Patricia Smith, Rachel McKibbens, Jeffrey McDaniels, Tara Betts, Jeanann Verlee, Brendan Constantine, Anis Mojgani, Lea Deschenes and Roger Bonair-Agard, to name a handful, all easily orderable from one of these new-fangled online bookstores we have these days, as many of them are indeed published on the same small presses your so-called "BEST American Poets" are on.
So, yes. Thank you for playing. And while you've achieved a score of EPIC FAIL for this stint of blogging, hopefully, you'll have some good sense to do some reading (an activity you claim to be fond of) before the next time you say something truly stupid in public, sullying the name of the "BEST American Poets."
Signed sincerely,
The 21st Century
http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_
"Best American Poetry" blogger.
Carol Muske Dukes talking in a clothespin-over-nose manner about the writing skills of people she was teaching creative writing to at a women's prison.
And I give a HELL YEAH! to Janice's comment about how the teen slammers haven't had the hope stomped out of them yet.
Thanks
Life changes, and so do artists. Most of us stop slamming and go do something else with our writing, eventually. But I find it distasteful to turn around and (pardon the expression) slam the places you've come through on your artistic journey.
Edited at 2010-11-19 01:31 am (UTC)
alternate take
Janice does have a history with the Nuyo (she is the poet on the cover of ALOUD) and a history with the Bowery Poetry Club (she helps run all the "stakeholders teas") and has performed at Urbana (a great sestina her husband's porn habit) and shone a spotlight for "Words In Your Face" when it came out:
http://thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.co
If you look at the questions she gave me in the interview linked to above, I think you'll see that she was trying to softball me in a hardball way -- by mentioning that she sees slam poets sounding the same, she gave me the ability to respond to an enduring criticism in slam in way in why that a reader who might agree with Janice's take might actually want to read, you know?
I think in this most recent column she is acknowledging the criticism that people have for flarf and slam (aggressively so), but then she is showing GREAT examples of the two forms, which sort of contrasts that whole point of bashing one-sided piece, yes?
The poets she chose for her slam video, for instance, are definitely ones that we (the slam community) would have chosen to represent us (and have, if you consider Buddy and Andrea have been crowned at individual slam competitions) and who are reflective of what's succeeding the scene today (as opposed to choosing the shittiest poets you can find on Def Poetry, even if those poets never had been in a slam before in their lives), you know? And that's to her credit.
The Poetry Slam community always complains that there isn't enough criticism about what we do -- both from within and oustide our community -- and I think she is just trying to drum up dialogue about it -- albeit in a rabble-rousing way. ;)
And it should be noted that the comments section has not filled with slam haterade... or any flarf haterade at all either! ;)
Re: alternate take
Admittedly, the BAP Blog seems thin on comments all around. Am I the only one who keeps it on my Google Reader? Perhaps, but then, I'm a nerd about these things.(:
And you're probably correct about the intention, but I have to say, if what you say is true, then the problem lies in her writing more than anything, because the tongue-in-cheek only comes across if you know her. Otherwise, she just comes across as an out-of-touch academic trying to be cute, and I was beginning to think those were becoming an endangered species!
Indeed, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that Ms. Erlbaum is the latest candidate for a "Dr. Cox Humor Rant" award. Take it away, Perry:
I'm being unfair, I'm sure, and I apologize for that. But there are things here that are problematic, and aside from the fact that the jokes just aren't working the way she may have intended, which happens to the best of us, the jokes aren't working because she's being disingenuous, on the one hand claiming a basic ignorance of slam and on the other having a fairly good involvement (if only peripheral, these days, but hey. Whose isn't?) Instead of perhaps writing something from her own experience, which might have actually been interesting, she makes flip with the dated cliche. It's a bit like Jay Leno making Bill Clinton jokes.
And allllllll of this happens because, in the end, there's this strange idea in the ether that, when talking about poetry, we now have to be flip and cool and funny. Which works for some people. But not everyone. And frankly, it bombed here.
Edited at 2010-11-19 04:51 pm (UTC)
Re: alternate take
I agree that her tone is likely off the mark, but if she got at least a couple of people to click on those vids and see Buddy and Andrea, and thus update their vision of what slam poetry is (you know, for those people who still think all slammers sound like Saul), I think it still did a good deed! ;)
Re: alternate take
And does anyone still think slammers sound like Saul? It's been a while. I find Buddy and Andrea to be much more indicative of most people's perceptions these days. Mostly (as was the case with Saul) because they're the ones whose success and personal charisma has made them the models for imitation.