Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I think standard operating procedure around is to state that anyone who becomes a victim of Twitter basically deserved it, and even if they didn’t who cares

Re your question about SPD, Sarahell:

The original complainant was joined by another. At the same time, a fake "Poets Union" formed and tried to start a boycott of SPD and some of the presses it distributes. The remaining workers there didn't call for this boycott, the Poets Union persisted, there was an impasse, things died down except in the world of the original complainant, who seems to be a grievance machine tbqh.

Basically, there was a huge shitstorm in...April or May. The original complainant totally showed that their intention was to try to destroy SPD rather than reform it, and most people in the literary world said, "nope, and no to this weird cadre of shitty leftist poets, too."

feel like the first few replies itt by call all destroyer, xyzz, james, joan chachi, table, aimless are a sadly generic example of the reflexive impulse to justify ppl getting canned due to twitter flameouts. ‘she should have written it in an essay’, ‘her poetry/the magazine is bad anyway’, ‘she’s wrong to acknowledge that only poets read poetry because poetry shouldn’t be a conversation(?).’ the proper reaction to this is ‘lol a substantial fraction of poets are properly deluded about the size of the reading audience.’ the replies to her tweet are an incredible and hilarious display of how out of touch poetry ppl are—one person said “poetry is actually really popular if you count slam”. this is like if wolf eyes got dropped from their label for saying ‘not many ppl listen to noize tapes’

emily & wins otm

lol i'm literally just being pragmatic maybe don't express your (possibly valid) thoughts about the viability of your industry in a medium that discourages detailed and nuanced thinking?

like she can do whatever she wants and i am not in any way justifying her loss of employment for that but tell me why twitter is a good medium for the thing she's trying to get across?

flopson's seeing all those replies as 'generic' is enough to give away how much effort was put into reading them. as for me, i wasn't 'justifying' her termination so much as saying I could see how that tweet was unwise, given her position, as opposed to untrue. she was essentially correct enough that I don't disagree with her tweet.

but the fact us that opinions about canning someone may be within the sphere of twitter comments, but the decision to can someone isn't. her boss canned her. her boss was able to justify her termination to themself. it happened. it's done. and our comments are just so much, uh, shall we say... twittering, after the fact.

do you think it would it help any if I deplored it? yeah. maybe some other commenter would declare me 'otm'. that's about it.

the proper reaction to this is ‘lol a substantial fraction of poets are properly deluded about the size of the reading audience.’ the replies to her tweet are an incredible and hilarious display of how out of touch poetry ppl are—one person said “poetry is actually really popular if you count slam”. this is like if wolf eyes got dropped from their label for saying ‘not many ppl listen to noize tapes’

― flopson, Tuesday, 7 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

The couple of poetry slams I've been to have had readings by minorities and women and people who are not employed in the literary culture sector. They were enthusiastically attended and the crowd in both performing and in attendance were younger than the audience attending more literary poetry in bookshops I have also attended.

Why are you typing this ignorant dismissal of it?

this is like if wolf eyes got dropped from their label for saying ‘not many ppl listen to noize tapes’

not really ... it's a different type of relationship ... besides, Wolf Eyes have released stuff on multiple labels

#PsychoPoetry #TripPoetry

feel like the first few replies itt by call all destroyer, xyzz, james, joan chachi, table, aimless are a sadly generic example of the reflexive impulse to justify ppl getting canned due to twitter flameouts.

― flopson, Monday, September 6, 2021 10:41 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

so otm i am getting it framed

i don't know why people love the spectacle -- really, the blood sport -- of people getting fired for expressing anodyne opinions, but it's a very harsh feature of our current world.

poetry's relative marginalization is simply a fact. poetry editors should be free to explore its consequences for poets and readers.

do you think it would it help any if I deplored it? yeah. maybe some other commenter would declare me 'otm'. that's about it.

Are you questioning the impact my otms have on the world?

Feel like there is a difference between our unthinking first takes on this thread vs. like if we piled on on that tweet or something but whatever

given how people continue to willfully misread what i was saying i might as well be on twitter

Lol, yeah.

I have been agreeing with you throughout thread but I am afraid to do so again lest we get into it due to the Bad Juju Narcissism of Small Differences associated with the LCF2013 thread and LCFs in general.

we should do updates on the CFs chronicled here since 2013

I never justified anyone getting canned, so kindly shut the fuck up and don't put words in my mouth.

I just noted that no one knew who she was and her poetry is shite. She even noted on her Twitter page that the tweet went viral, and did so proudly. It looks like she wanted the attention. That's fine!

The thing that many of you seem to not understand is that— horror of horrors— no one gets paid for doing this poetry stuff. Getting your name taken off the masthead of a publication is crappy, but it's not the end of the world. I don't think it should have happened, fwiw, but I still think her poetry is shite.

and even if they didn’t who cares

imho a tweet is a perfectly appropriate format to express a simple and and unobjectionable idea that should require no further elaboration or hedging, maybe she could have done it as a poem but then nobody would have read it

she could have named it after a New Yorker editor

This was an unpaid position but I don’t think that matters xp.

There is a certain stench that comes from being let go in this way, with a grandiose letter about how her opinion somehow betrayed the magazine’s values of “celebrating multicultural visual and written art.” I just don’t think her tweet did that and now she is going to have this albatross on her neck.

dental plan
Lisa needs braces

And I just think it sucks and, especially in the literary world, there is this obsession with separating the wicked from the elect, often by reading nefarious intentions into perfectly reasonable statements. No one here engaged in that, it’s true, but I still find the urge to defend the magazine weird. They went out of their way to make her look like an asshole.

yeah when I hear someone was fired because of a controversial tweet, I assume it was something racist or antivax.

so otm i am getting it framed

― treeship., Tuesday, 7 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

You should be ashamed of displaying your lack of reading comprehension skills like this. At least you are not doing it on twitter.

Yeah, love how this Kitty Karry-all set of not-quite random ILX0rs who posted early on in this current brouhaha became some kind of instant Most Wanted List.

xyzz, if there is something i can’t comprehend, it is the fact that people can read that sanctimonious open letter and feel anything besides annoyance or anger.

Wait, were we supposed to read the letter in addition to the tweet?

honest question, treesh -- does the strength of your feelings in this instance connect back to something that happened to someone you know? because your reactions seem disproportionate to merely siding with a perfect stranger over her losing a non-paid position due to a tweet you only became aware of via this thread.

I have had friends get tagged as “problematic” and have their words be misrepresented, yes.

Which you then did to...a bunch of us, myself included.

Well, i am sorry about that I was just quoting the post. I do feel that the post identified a real phenomenon—an impulse to assume the worst of someone who is the subject of a pile on.

xp - that happens all the time on ilx with few or no repercussions to the poster who has been tagged, so I suspect there's more to that story. which you need not share. thanks for the answer.

I do not feel that any of the people named in that post are bad or malicious in any way.

how exactly were the early posts misrepresented or read incomprehensibly?

I guess these fellows believe flopson and i were implying they celebrated her firing

is it good or bad that nobody reads poetry

They didn’t quite say that

self xp

to me it was just jaded social media management stuff and then table came to say he hated her writing (as he does with every author ever mentioned)

Most poetry is crap

Sounds like you're applying as editor at Barren Magazine.

xp - because it's very hard to do well

Seems to me some guy had a rule about that, Waldo Something or Other.

I always forget the correct percentage.

Read for yourself: https://daniellerosepoet.wixsite.com/home

Much of it is in prose blocks, and reads like stuff that was coming out of MFA programs in the late 90s and early 2000s. It's not very exciting, though I rescind my earlier adjective.

#PsychoPoetry #TripPoetry

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

Inzane!!

Though sincerely, I kinda feel like the academic poetry community could really benefit from having a viral memelord associated with it

otm