People get their feelings hurt in poetry. I have to say, that although I am one of the people who tells others to toughen up, I am one of those whose feelings are easily hurt. People sabotage me. Someone stole my books and journals from Pegasus; someone tried to break into my house; someone filed a false police report against me; someone sued me, fabricating an international mystery and didn't show up to court. Someone went to a poetry professor at UCB to tell them I was stealing submissions to Berkeley Poetry Review, which I wasn't.
There are all sorts of lies. People say they are going to be some place and they don't show up. They tell you how much they support you or how much they can't wait to read something and then you find out they were talking shit on you right before you rolled up. No one has the courage to actually attack you publicly because they want to be able to use you first. You might know someone, or you might publish them, or you might give them a reading.
It's disgusting. And I'm afraid to use names here because the ones who are the worst culprits usually hang together like Cassius's crew. Maybe I should start using names on this blog, though. There's no business to the poetry business after all. In fact, all the people who think it's a busines are precisely those who are ruining the art for everyone.
3 comments:
Hell, if it weren't for blogs, I'm not sure poets would even speak to each other, unless they had to, at readings.
True that. But most people who call themselves poets don't come to readings, which I think is like a basketball player never watching a game.
I want to organize a reading around here, but it would probably end up being in French and I'd be the only english reader.
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