On two or three past occasions I have dropped off this list, usually in
a huff, only to return shortly thereafter. This time, taking the same
leave, I am entirely deliberate. I cannot stay here. I don't know what
the World Elsewhere looks like, but it doesn't look like this.
Earlier today I entered into a brief but hostile correspondence with
someone on the list who, when confronted, told me she withheld an
invitation from me to contribute to the winter anthology because she
considered me duplicitous and a false friend. Why? Because I did not
take her side in a controversy regarding the now-famous online
anthology. When I asked for further details she said did not want to
argue anymore. Yes, she named names. I will not repeat them.
In fact I had taken no side. I wanted no part of the hyperventilating
and name-calling. But imagining I did appeared to gratify this person's
need for neatly defined angels and demons, as though this were some
damned Dan Brown or Tim LaHaye novel where you're with the powers of
Darkness or of Light.
Yes, from my hurt and to my discredit I then took chunks of the received
emails and sent them to people on and off the list. It was surely an
ugly gesture in recompense for one that was uglier still. I have
sometimes probed my personal limits of forgiveness, and today I found
one of them. I have no charity for the uncharitable. And I learned
that here.
For the last year this has become an increasingly painful place. I do
not like censoring myself. True, doing so was my choice, going
effectively silent was my choice: but I felt as though my choices of
subject matter were subject to the prevailing attitudes here. I was too
cowed by the prospect of disapproval to go counter to an environment
that would have sunk far better writers that I can hope to be. Where
poetryetc in 2003 and 2004 was feeding my writing and expanding me,
beginning in 2005 it's undermined my ability to create much of anything.
There seem to be two modes on this list: ignore and attack. I'm sure
that's not news. I just happen to detest it. I would rather be attacked
than ignored, and I've been ignored for longer than I care to remember.
A great and good friend of over 12 years' standing who is not on the
list but is in fact in the winter poems anthology told me today that she
has begun backing away from the politics that are pervasive in any group
of poets. I don't know if she can do it. Naively, I didn't know there
*were* any. I never thought about factionalism while I was here, just
the vapidity and arrogance of specific individuals. The more fool I.
In this particular inbred society I feel like an intruder about to be
sucked up by white corpuscles.
I shall simply have to find a new place in which to be a misfit. And no,
BritPo is not an option for reasons you can easily discern.
Best wishes to you all. Some of you I would delight in hearing from
again. Others have names I hope to forget.
Ken
--
Ken Wolman http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com/ http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
---------------------------------
"All writers are hunters, and parents are the most available prey."--Francine du Plessix Gray
|