Prison Poets

From the front page of today's Wall Street Journal: "Prison Poets of Guantanamo Find a Publisher."  22 poems by 17 prisoners at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will be published this August in Poets from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak (University of Iowa Press, $13.95).  The detainees' lawyer, Mark Falkoff, who earned a Ph.D. in English before going to law school, compiled the poems.  Two poems from the collection are included in the article.  (Via Shelf Awareness.)

Comments

[K.I.N.G. Wenclas]

Wow! the selective focus of the liberal intelligentsia in this country.
Meanwhile, radical American writers are completely shut out by the establishment media world-- our message blocked and censored at every turn. This includes, of course, those in the U.S. prison gulag system (half in for ridiculous drug law offenses) if their writing goes beyond the merely literary.
If your audience would ever care to notice these voices, contact zeenster Anthony Rayson of the South Chicago ABC Distro. (I don't have contact info with me, but you can google.)
(I wonder how many Harper Perennial employees, so concerned with the Guantanamo crowd, care two cents worth about the jails and prisons surrounding the island of Manhattan, most of which, by all reports-- like on Riker's Island-- are quite awful. These are stories which seem to be covered only by the print underground.)

[Mike]

Thanks for the note, King. I don't think my post is really indicative of the "establishment media world." I relayed a news item relevant to the topics covered on this blog. It's an interesting story no matter who reports it.

I'm sorry for under-representing work from the "U.S. prison gulag system." They went beyond "merely literary" and I felt I had to suppress them.

Kidding. But it is unfair to wonder in text "how many Harper Perennial employees, so concerned with the Guantanamo crowd, care two cents" about Manhattan-area prisons. That's groundless. You don't know any of us personally.

Ok, you can go ahead a freak out now.

[K.I.N.G. Wenclas]

Sorry, but my point remains that the established literary world's concern and compassion is very selective-- it hardly exists if it cuts too close to home. This book by what well may be terrorists or prisoners of war is a good example. So easy to languish concern over those many miles away.
Millions of people are languishing in America's prisons-- quite brutal places, I'm told. They are part and parcel of a civilization which at the present time operates around monopoly-- including the gigantic conglomerate you work for. That you're paid by Rupert Murdoch, yes, indeed makes you one of his soldiers.
When one visits Manhattan from the hinterlands (I'm from Detroit), one notices the stark gap between rich and poor on the island. One can't help see the presence of enormous power and wealth, enforced by brutal security. (Note the essay I wrote for the ULA about our January visit to NYC, when we were roughly handled simply for trying to distribute flyers in front of office buildings.)
Free speech? One has the speech in this country which one can pay for-- which means multi-billionaires like Murdoch have the largest voice.
The lit world today circulates within the topmost levels of America's caste system. This is reality. Surely you've been to enough chi-chi soirees to acknowledge this.
I recall attending an Open City party in a warehouse in 1998, amid an egregiously out-of-touch crowd of trust-funders, and glancing outside a window at homeless people rummaging through a dumpster below on the street-- those the cool partygoers never see. (And they call themselves writers?!)
With this blog you seem to be grasping for some kind of cred-- by associating with names like Bukowski.
But cred isn't gained by being a conformist soldier in an office building-- it has to be earned, as a writer, or an artist, by living among the people and understanding core truths about this society, truths which you, and other servants of media empire like you, willfully avoid.
If you believed your ideals, you wouldn't be working where you are to begin with. You wouldn't have put yourself through a conformist system of writing programs whose chief object is teaching writers how to conform; affirming their ambition and their obedience. If you were for real you'd be with the rebels; those who believe and also live what they say, even if it brings them scorn and poverty.
Opposing a corrupt system-- thoroughly corrupt-- is the only way to change it.

[K.I.N.G. Wenclas]

p.s. By the way, how come we never hear from any Harper Perennial employees on this forum?
Three possibilities:
1.) They're too stressed-out and busy from their jobs as cogs in the gigantic machine.
2.) As their chief concern is career, they're afraid to say anything publicly; to express their ideas.
3.) As mere functionaries they're actually not very bright, and so have no ideas and nothing to say.
Probably a combination of the three.
It's sadly true that for all the many billions invested in America's writing system, it produces by and large only mediocrity. A band of outsiders, like those in the ULA, not only wins every debate with the very best of system advocates, in any poetry or prose Read-Off we'd chase your best poets and writers right off the stage.
Any time you want to put this to the test. . . .
(Please give me advance warning if you're about to again delete my posts. I look for cracks in the system, like this one, to debate these matters, being shut out of more "respectable" forums. Thank you.)

[K.I.N.G. Wenclas]

(Isn't the exercise of free speech maddening? Sorry for taking you-all into unfamiliar territory.)

[Mike]

Your first comment almost sounded like an invitation toward the end. I'll think about it. Thank you.

As for who comments on this blog, well, it's mainly just you and me. I'll ask my Harper Perennial friends why they don't visit. I think your concerns regarding MFA programs, if that is what the "conformist system of writing programs" refers to, is a separate issue. I don't know of anyone, at least in my circle of acquaintances, who earned an MFA prior to being hired at HarperCollins. That wouldn't be a very bright thing to do.

Might I nudge your complaint toward the more relevant topic, on which I presume you have a stance, of whether or not publishers favor MFA's over non-MFA's? Seeing as who we are, that would be a more valuable debate.

As for Buk, the fine people at Bukowski.net can tell you how things came to be as they are.

I promise not to delete your comments, so long as they aren't ad hominen attacks on individuals and don't use foul language. I learned my lesson the first time I lashed out.

And, of course, free speech can be maddening; though, I always look forward to your comments.

[K.I.N.G. Wenclas]

No, the relevant question for me is the corruption of the literary scene-- NBCC being one example. (Keep in mind that the ULA, now producing and promoting books of our own, is a competitor of yours.)
What prodded my interest in HP is that the NBCC gave your boss virtual free rein in a puff-piece "interview" on their blog-- while the ULA's books are not being reviewed by anybody.
And, sorry, our writers are better.
Someone at your place decided to be relevant and publish an underground writer-- and chose one of the quirkiest but far from the best among zeen writers of the 90's, Dishwasher Pete. A sign of total cluelessnes about what's really happening.
The lit scene has to be democratized-- which is all I'm lobbying for.
Nothing against you personally-- but MFA or no MFA, you're part of the system, too domesticated to understand the necessity for writers like those in the ULA.
Fight the monopolies!
Support the ULA!

[Mike]

Guh.

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