Mark Weiss wrote:
>Ken: It was you i think who mentioned Graham's looks as a possible source of envious sniping, hence my comment.
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I didn't keep the post, I'm not THAT vain. But I do recall saying I
suspect there are people who would find Graham a source of offense
because she doesn't look plain or unattractive. At the end of all the
blathering, what she did is relevant, not her appearance. And what she
appears to have done is really low-rent.
>I did apply for a grant once (which I think is different from a book contest), it must have been in the 70s, and got it. It was a NY State grant. The judge, I subsequently learned, was Witter Bynner, who I never met and whose work I don't care for.
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I had my 15 minutes in 1995, New Jersey, same kind of award: State
Council on the Arts. The nicest reward was a really good poet named Joe
Salerno coming over to me in Barnes & Noble. He barely knew me
personally but by then I'd be in Sander Zulauf's magazine and a few
others; so he said "I"m glad they gave it to someone good." I was
touched beyond words. This was in July '95. He died around
Thanksgiving that year. He knew he was dying when we met. Instead of
obsessing about his imminent death he gave gifts to others. That
generosity makes valuable and redemptive this sometimes scummy enterprise.
I got copies of the judge's comments on my work. There were three
judges but they were not named. One wrote "I want to hear a lot more of
this man's voice." Well, you heard it. It changed a bit. So?
I feel like Pietro Mascagni. He composed _Cavalleria Rusticana_ after
Giovanni Verga's short story in 1890, he was barely out of the
conservatory. When he died in 1945 he had never come close to equaling it.
>I think contests are a lousy way to assign value to poetry, for a lot of reasons, not least that I think the notion of winers and losers is destructive to the community of poets.
>
So tell me how I felt when I lost the same NJ Arts Council thing twice
afterwards. Don't bother, I will tell you. Valueless. Invalidated.
Impotent. Fired by Donald Trump. We getting the idea? Okay, it's been
taken over by some Mid-Atlantic Arts Council headquarted in Maryland.
Undoubtedly the behind-the-scenes rules have changed. Does that help
me? No. You are entirely correct that contests in and of themselves,
the winner-loser perpetuation, is appalling. It is at least partially
politically driven. And the fixation on winning?--if I could resurrect
Vince Lombardi and his Winner ethic, I'd have to kill the bastard
again. Yet hating the competition drill didn't stop me from sucking it
up and entering this Poetry Foundation competition, first book by a
writer over 50. No fee. Prize ten grand. Why not? All it cost me was
postage. No, that's a lie. It cost me postage plus "dirty hope." Hope
that I do not want. At the end of May I put my best fastball over the
plate. If the judges hit it out for a home run, how am I going to
feel? "Oh well"? Not damn likely. I could do my best imitation of Lee
Strasberg as Hyman Roth: "This is the business we've chosen." It really
is: the writing part if not this detestable Bowling for Dollars
routine. When the results hit in October, if I "win" I will be very
happy. If I lose I will be devastated. I can't help it, I have bought
into that winning ethic as much as I hate it.. Take it further: what's
a runner-up? What does a runner-up get? Half a publication? Payment
in Confederate money? A certificate in which he or she can roll a real
big joint?
How do you proceed when you have no connections in the literary world?
Self-publish? Pray? Get a copy of Poet's Market, find a dowsing rod,
and point at the entries with magnetic properties?
Ken, clueless in Princeton
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