I'm piggybacking on your message, Rebecca, out of sheer laziness--this
isn't directed at you alone.
This whole controversy is a bloody bore. Could everyone please stop?
In this case that means, Dave, that the onus falls on you. It would be an
act of selfless kindness to simply desist, regardless of rights or wrongs.
Mark
At 11:13 AM 4/20/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>David,
>
>I don't have any problem with your comments upon my translations, the
>exclamation points, or whatever, and am happy to consider them along with
>anything else. I also don't have a problem with being personal, have told
>a personal story or two, have made several jokes, and am in the vernacular
>with several people on the list. I don't care what the real story is with
>Alison, I don't care what's your hearing back channel, I just want this
>sort of remark, "I'm afraid I don't know what the hell
>Alison's
>problem is, it is she who keeps writing to me, up front or back, and I
>just
>respond."
>
>to stop. She wrote to you a post in reply to the discussion about my
>translations yesterday and you took it for an invitation to reopen this
>entire subject. So here we are again. In how many languages can one say "stop".
>
>Best,
>
>
>
>Rebecca
>
>Rebecca Seiferle
>www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>Rebecca Seiferle
>www.thedrunkenboat.com
>-------Original Message-------
>From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: 04/20/03 11:41 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: To David Bircumshaw
>
> >
> > Rebecca
>
>I find this post a matter of personal harassment. As I quite clearly said,
>the question about exclamation marks was a practical one. I do feel a
>certain ironic amusement that someone who has a magazine named after a
>poem
>by Rimbaud and translates Vallejo constantly makes prim statements about
>the
>undesirability of the personal, such attitudes wouldn't have lasted five
>minutes with either of them. I'm afraid I don't know what the hell
>Alison's
>problem is, it is she who keeps writing to me, up front or back, and I
>just
>respond. She initiated and maintained the friendship and for a long time
>it
>was very warm and supportive now its turned horrible. Being accused of
>being
>a stalker is awful and I'm appalled that such calumny can go without
>remark.
>I've never acted with slightest impropriety towards her and my 'unwanted
>attentions' are a matter of fiction. I don't like writing about any of
>this
>but I am forced to do so by the repeated libels you are casting on my
>name.
>
>And as for back-channel comments, well, here's an example, from someone
>who
>feels intimidated by the bullying on this list from saying anything
>up-front, I won't give a name:
>
> >Laughable, if it weren't so sad... The hypocrisy of it... Slandered by
>people who, when it suits them, feign outrage at the merest hint of
>defamation in other contexts...
>
>And really admirable... Your soldiering through it all... Actually
>sticking
>with them...
>
>They don't deserve you, Dave... Your wit and warmth... <
>
>
>I could publish other back-channel remarks of an even more revealing kind,
>but won't. Suffice to say some people are damaging their reputations by
>the
>way they are acting towards me, without any action being taken on my part.
>
>
>
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
><a target=_blank
>href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm</a>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 3:51 PM
>Subject: Re: To David Bircumshaw
>
>
>David,
>
>I think your post to what had been a discussion about my Vallejo
>translations and the desirability of translating the exclamation marks was
>very personal. Mark seemed to note this as well when in response to that
>post, he made a point of turning the discussion away from the personal.
>
>It's true that it was framed in jokes, but framing unwanted personal
>attention in the lightest and most humorous of terms does not make it any
>less of a harassment to the one who does not want that personal attention
>and who has repeatedly and as bluntly as possible asked that you stop. You
>seem to think that as long as you are hassling someone while you're in a
>good mood, it's not hassling someone.
>
>However, I think the deciding factor is how the person being hassled
>feels,
>which is often rather desperate and embarrassed and constrained. I am also
>commenting upon this as your remarks about me veered toward the personal,
>suggesting that poetryetc had become rebeccaetc. How am I supposed to
>reply
>to that? I think your appeal to 'common humanity' is related to that
>older
>usage of saying "well, I'm only human," the excuse that was often used by
>men to justify their continuing and unwanted attentions and actions toward
>women who were not interested.
>
>It doesn't seem to be connected to a sense of common courtesy and respect,
>since even at the most minimal level, if someone has said, please stop,
>one
>would do so out of any sense of common humanity and courtesy and respect.
>I
>don 't know how much more clearly Alison could have posted on this. And
>yet
>you continue to ignore it. It is true that you have posted poems, as we
>all
>have, but it's only been a week, and you are once again posting this sort
>of
>unwanted personal attentions.
>
>I am also tired of you suggesting that there is so much more going on back
>channel that we are unaware of, and which gives you the justification to
>persist in this, whether it is your leagues of women friends that find you
>unsexist, or whether it is your "personal and practical" matters that you
>have with Alison. It seems to me of the nature of innuendo and gossip.
>Furthermore your accounts are probably self-serving, having learned to
>read
>through your posts on this, I suspect that in point 2 you are describing
>your 'gentle responses' to Alison's having lost her temper and told you
>off.
>
>As for back channelling on this, I have back channelled you on this and
>tried to appeal to you to just stop. As have others.
>
>A refusal to hear what the other person, group, nation is saying, a
>refusal
>to respect and heed the other's wishes, a refusal to not hassle, invade,
>transgress, to not hear when one is telling you so clearly to stop. That
>is
>the ill that rules the world at the moment.
>
>Rebecca
>
>Rebecca Seiferle
><a target=_blank
>href="http://www.thedrunkenboat.com">www.thedrunkenboat.com</a>
>
>
>-------Original Message-------
>From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: 04/20/03 09:05 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: To David Bircumshaw
>
> >
> > Phew, Randolph!
>
>Point 1 - this is something that should have gone back-channel. Point 2 -
>I
>have assured Alison that I will write to her only if she directly
>addresses
>me, which was has happened both front and back-channel, nothing has been
>initiated by me, the back-channel messages in particular have been gentle
>in
>tone and only in response to some rather unwelcome messages from her, I'm
>sorry to say that, but it's the truth, the recent post that has seemed to
>have caused a problem was a good-humoured piece about exclamation marks,
>it
>was couched in jokes as is obvious to see. Point 3 - there does seem to be
>a
>problem about tonality on this list, I've talked about this several times,
>both in terms of e-mail texture and linguistic worlds, a sense of humour
>seems to be an endangered species here. Point 4 - I am saddened that
>denial
>of common humanity is being touted as a modus vivendi, the
>quasi-legalistic
>and morally censorious language that is becoming the apex of the list's
>status systems is depressing in the extreme. Point 5 - I have posted poem
>after poem and have consistently sought to talk about poetics. Point 6 - a
>separation of public and private speech is the rhetorical basis for the
>ills
>that happen in this world.
>
>Best
>
>
>Dave
>
>
>David Bircumshaw
>
>Leicester, England
>
>Home Page
>
>A Chide's Alphabet
>
>Painting Without Numbers
>
><a
>target=_blank
>href="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm">http://homepa
>ge.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm</a>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "wildhoney" <[log in to unmask]>
>To: <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2003 9:15 AM
>Subject: To David Bircumshaw
>
>
>Dear David,
>
>Given the serious complaints Alison has made against you, I
>previously asked that you do not respond or refer to her in your
>posts to PoetryEtc in an uninvited, personal fashion. I am saddened
>that you have decided not to co-operate in this, despite the fact
>that Alison's discomfort at this practice is so great that she has
>already had to take a break from the list. Not only this, but I
>understand that you are sending her unwelcome back-channel messages.
>
>I feel I must make it a condition of your continued membership there
>are no more such instances. It's up to you.
>
>Randolph
> >
> >
|
