Friday, February 11, 2005

Moving on

Well, I'm going to focus on rounding out my discussion on the Value of value and Oppositional Poetics topics, reply to both Josh and Jake, and await responses from those out (t)here who cultivate community. I am anticipating a few more responses. I hope they arrive.

Also, be on the look-out for a call for submissions for a chapbook on Angry Utopias. Be thinking about what that can possibly mean to you in terms of prose and verse. I will have a formal call ready to send out very soon. I will post it on Dagzine as well with all the particulars. And everybody is welcome to submit. I have a small group of friends ready to help me edit and compose...

I apologize for allowing myself to become engaged in a whining match with the pseudonyms and anonyms on Foetry. I haven't brought that onto dagzine, but for those of you who read the message boards on Foetry, you know I have been arguing. That is why I have dropped the ball on my discussions here. No longer going to attend to those creeps who spread gossip about secret hotel room visits and who attack young writers. What nonsense.

One of the recent posts at Foetry suggests that stealing money (from a published writer) to publish a book is a useful response to what appears to be an unfair publishing market. Crass threats. Strict gossip. Unbelievable spectacle. In other words, counter-revolutionary. And arch-neo-con rhetoric if you think about it.

Situationism 101: All energy wasted on half-measures strengthens the tyrannical grip of the old regime.

Foetry is the finest example we've got going of a "half-measure."

Market economics meets Radical Politics: The only free choice is the refusal to pay.

But this is not the call to steal from your colleagues dudes. It is the refusal to compete within that market. It is the acknowledgement that we must take what is ours with us when we leave. If Foetry were doing its job (American Poetry Watchdog,) it would simply resist publishing at all. Oh, but that's what they want--the commodity, the fetish object. They could care less about smashing the ideological structures that oppress the anonymous masses--the silent majority.

In other words, you cannot reform the system from within it: liberalism doesn't work that way. The more you regulate the liberal market economy the more complex it gets, and the more complex it gets the we are limited: the less control over the concrete details that arrange the market economy.

They claim they are "grass roots." Please. If Foetry was grass roots, we'd at least know their names and at best be able to meet them over a beer.

So there. You (Foetry) can refer to what I do as "gassy rhetoric" and you can insult our community all you want. In the market, you have the choice to exit. Voice is not what the market is sensitive to. I am not going to stop because of your masturbatory version of the dozens. And I really am dismayed that some of my newest friends have decided to quit rather than weather the storm.

----
listening to McCluskey: "whiteliberalonwhiteliberal action"
on deck: Cows, Effete and Impudent Snobs

3 comments:

dooflow said...

Well, I keep seeing this foetry thing come up here & for the longest time i thought you were talking about http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006JO3X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
(probably have to cut & paste that)
So I googled and read, and I really have to agree with your assessment, Gary.
These are like the people at the Art Institute of Chicago that would make the same complaint about the gallery scene, until they got into it & then they'd play the same game they were bitching about. All of a sudden they start making objects for sale, rather the conceptaul idea structures they trafficked in when no one would show their piles of empty soda containers.
Second, I can't believe that this is what they are spending their time on?!!? Instead of bitching, be truly grass roots. Create your own network. BFD!
I do think the Bin as Wizard of Oz thing is pretty damn funny, though. Anyway, I was disappointed.

Unknown said...

Astute post, Gary. In another comments box somewhere I said that the whole thing reminds me of junior high: whining about how the popular kids don't like you and wanting desperately to get invited to their parties.

totalvo said...

chap book.. gary i can help you with that chap book putting it together.. let me know when you can get together with me and i will make the time to start working on it for you