Is the airing of criticism and challenge important, and therefore worth finding the resources for it? To me, The Times's Op-Ed page is at its best when it publishes pieces at odds with the paper's own editorial positions—when it shows it's strong enough to take the blows of differing views and thereby deepen the public debate. Likewise with informed, civilized criticism of journalistic practices: the strong can withstand it, and show their strength by absorbing it.

Adjunct Advocate—Higher education

Alternate Press Review

Briar Cliff Review—Briar Cliff University, English Professor Phil Hey

Concord Poetry Center

Contemporary Poetry Review

Creeley Award Event

Divide—University of Colorado at Boulder's Program in Writing and Rhetoric, Professor Steven Wingate, Editor

Fight Those Bastards

Foetry.com  (See Foetry's forum on The American Dissident)

Massachusetts Cultural Council
 

New York Quarterly

Pulitzer Prize

Pushcart Prize

Smith, Bill.  Smith had requested several times that I include his letters on this web site.  His logic was so lacking that I had chosen not to.  But he's been persistent. 

Stone Soup Poets

Turnrow—University of Louisiana at Monroe, William Ryan, Editor

Unauthorized Interviews

A. D. Winans

Writers-at-large

Other Accounts:

From Anonymous: “The American Dissident seeks that rare poem of rude truth that RISKS something by the poet…” [quoted from The AD flyer]. Even you don't believe this. You're-for all your posturing-another defeated soul with his hand out! Have you thought of suicide?

To Susan Maurer (NY, NY): Regarding your poem “Upon learning in February of 1995 that one of the ten chancellors of the Academy of American Poets is a woman” and first verse of another poem (“when I became a feminist”), I think you're off target-it is not a matter of male-female, but rather one of conformist-nonconformist. Besides, the Academy is really nothing but Corporate Cooptation of poetry… thinly disguised. What difference how many women are in it? Also, get with it! The chef supreme of the Academy is now a female! The AD seeks to counter the limiting paradigms set up by orthodoxies, be they feminist, gay or black. Orthodoxy often counters truth. I'd be interested in a piece noting the seeming utter failure of feminists and hippies to alter the piteous role of the female as mere male-sex object. Try again, please, but read guidelines first. Don't list publication credentials! I want to know who you are as a poet, not what your CV is. [No Response]

From Brian Morrisey, Ed., Poesy: (BM was going to interview me as editor of The AD but after skirmish decided to interview A.D. Winans on his new I-knew-Bukowski book instead.) I was going to grill you on your negativity toward the small press, your attacks on small press editors, etc. as a basis for your publication. It was going to be a challenge for me. I think my readers might want to know why you're crowned the plague of the small press.

To Brian Morrisey: I have no idea whatsoever who's even heard of The AD. I am an utter failure at marketing. I am truly surprised at being “crowned the plague of the small presses.”

From Brian Morrisey: Listen, I didn't answer your "plague of the small press" question and I am not going to. I'm not out to lynch or rat on anyone who tells me things in confidence. I am just letting you know, as a fellow editor, there are labels and stereotypes you might want to steer away from or at least change your approach working with editors and poets if you ever want anyone to take you seriously.

To Brian Morrisey: I'm not circulation driven, nor desperate to make friends. I have and maintain a hard-line editorial focus… so if your buddies want to malign that, so what? Again, I stand my ground that your Doug [Holder] has had his way after all [i.e., silencing my voice]. And I don't really care. Just stating a fact. Anyone in this business who hollers a little is ostracized. And I don't really care about that either. Just stating a fact. […] Hope you at least challenged your friend on the very idiocy of the remark: “plague of the small press.” Now, how can I not use that in next issue of The AD? It is too good to be true. He who criticizes is plague! How absurd to suggest I "change [my] approach" to avoid being "labeled and stereotyped" in order to be taken "seriously" by the labelers and stereotypers, whom I criticize for doing just that! Don't criticize the academics and they won't call you a "whiner"! Don't criticize the small press and they won't call you a "whiner"! Don't criticize George Bush and he won't call you a “whiner” either! Think man, think of the nonsense you're slinging! [No Response]

From Adele Willey Slone: Today's paper: “Poetry comes to life in Santa Rosa.” They have several poems I can mail to you if you like. “True Love” by Timothy Yates “I colored the truth/Today when I told/Her of my love/it was only the merest Blush, a tinting wash/Painted on silk,/A beginning nothing more./She said her truth was/Frightening that others Ran covering in fear/from the white-hot/ Sword of her truthfulness/"Pierce me!", I cried/But I wish she/had simply lied." You get the pic, eh?

Dear Ma: Yeah, I get the picture, and no thanks.

From Elma Sabo, Op Ed editor, News & Record (NC): That's a very interesting topic. I would run it this Sunday, but the designer doesn't come in until late, and I need to check with him about how well the cartoon would reproduce. We'll get the piece in within the next two weeks, but don't know about the cartoon yet…

To Elma Sabo: Great! If need be, I could easily run the original cartoon down to the office which is just around the block from Bennett College. I'll await news from you. Many thanks.

From Elma Sabo: We aren't going to run the cartoon. I'll get back with you later this week about the piece... [never did get back to me]

To Elma Sabo: Out of curiosity, was the cartoon too "tough"? Just two little errors on the Op Ed corrected in attachment. Thank you.

From Elma Sabo: I can't really say. My boss looked at it and I heard he didn't want it in the paper, but he's not here right now to ask…

To Elma Sabo: Thanks. I'd of course be curious why. Maybe you might ask him. [two weeks later, no response]

To Elma Sabo: Please inform me if your boss decides to can the Op Ed also. I am of course well aware that the pressure to censor becomes far greater the closer to home the criticism, as in my cartoon. It appears that Bennett President Cole may be too close to home and thus not criticisable in the local press, which of course would be a great pall upon our First Amendment and accountability of local leaders. Perhaps if the local press had been much more critical of ex-president Scott, she wouldn't have gotten away Scott-free and emeritus. In any case, I feel it my responsibility to test the boundaries of our community newspapers. Too bad they wouldn't simply and honestly publish concrete delineations. As mentioned, I'd tested the boundaries of The Concord Journal in Concord, MA where I used to dwell, and discovered where the journal was most likely to censor.

From Elma Sabo: Your op ed piece doesn't make as much sense to run if the cartoon isn't run because it talks about the cartoon so much. Can you revise it so the cartoon isn't featured so heavily in the piece? I think it's fine to mention it, but to make it a central focus of the piece when we're not going to run the cartoon doesn't make much sense.

To John Newsom, journalist, News & Record (Greensboro, NC): Your front-page piece on the new president of Guilford College has got to be one of the most embarrassingly obsequious and nauseating stories I've read in quite a while. “He [the new president] can use the words 'ubiquitous' and 'cool' within moments of each other.” Wow! “And he gives a good hug.” Wow! “He even seemed younger than his 55 years, especially when he changed out of his suit and into a Hawaiian shirt…” Help! Maybe you could write a book: How to bow, kowtow, and meow to the upper class! With all the corruption in higher education, toadying journalists must begin to bear their share of responsibility. Where the hell is journalism going, if not to hell? The following quote from The Diary of H. L. Mencken, regarding the Baltimore Sun, is no doubt pertinent to the News & Record, and so many other tedious community newspapers around the nation: “There was a chance to build up a paper that would show its heels to the country, but all he [the new editor] has produced is a highly prosperous but incurably dull and stupid party organ.”

From John Newsom: What else should I have written?

From John Castagnini: By profession I am an author, poet, speaker and musician. All of my work is focused upon the masterful expression of the deepest feelings and grandest inspirations that I experience. I have authored several books, and held seminars around the world for thousands over the past 3 years. Recently I have completed a book of 51 Inspirational poems. I am sharing this with your organization to see if there is a way to find a win/win between our parties. I am 31 years old and completely dedicated to sharing my work with millions over the next several years. The work is masterful, and deserved to be shared. If you are open to ways my work can be shared through your organization, please respond. I am in the process of launching my new company that markets my work through many avenues, all around the world.

To John Castagnini: Read guidelines before sending pompous self-congratulations! You are the symptom, not the cure. [No Response]

To Caroline Montpetit, journaliste, Le Devoir: Je découvre encore une fois que vous avez de grands penseurs au Québec. Bravo pour Mathieu Boily lauréat du prix Emile-Nelligan : «Je pense à l'impact des dents dans une pomme / il n'y a que des sons autour / pour un peu me rassasierait / cette idée intermittente du jour comme un vêtement.» Tu ne vois toujours pas pourquoi je considère les poètes en étant que véritables paons mous de l'établissement? J'espère que tu commences à t'ouvrir les yeux un peu. Il faut, bon Dieu! T'es journaliste ou guidoune de presse? [sans réponse]

From Gary Beck (NY, NY): Enclosed are three poems for your consideration: […]. I appreciated your note about personal brushes with corruption. I regret that I've had too many. I am a theater director of the classics and new plays. My translations of Molière, Aristophanes and Sophocles, as well as my own plays, have been extensively produced off-Broadway. I am an award-winning writer/director of social issue video documentaries. My poems have appeared in dozens of literary magazines.

To Gary Beck: Why send more poems? I sent my guidelines and you either refused to read them, could not comprehend them, or simply chose to ignore them. I want material that RISKS something on the part of the poet. I am not interested in credits and corrupt awards (who the judges of the awards and why don't you even ask that question?). Try me again, if you like, but study the guidelines! "Qui se sent morveux, se mouche,” wrote Molière. Ben, à ce point-ci, je n'ai plus de maudits mouchoirs! PS: My goddamn poems have also appeared in dozens of literary magazines… and so has everyone else's. Get the point? I'd love a piece on the corruption involved in producing award-winning, video docs. What kind of docs would not win awards? Docs criticizing the politically-correct mandarins dishing out the awards! [No Response]

From Zyskandar Jaimot: reread your "editorial" at beginning of # 6-if you are saying that all art is risk or pure art is risk in the sense of taking arms/words stand against the norm-i disagree-it is the new the spirit of the new as exemplified in a jackson pollack or a monet or a van gogh or a dickinson or browning or ginsberg or kerouac (vastly over-rated i think by the way) it is the new-the first bit of pollack in his pollackezque splatterings/meanderings it is monet's glimpse of light in the lillies van gogh's contortions of color or dickinson's (in my mind the first modern 20th century poet) surreal and metaphysical convulsions from her room in mass "which is zero to the bone" as regards ginsberg he lead a movement and brought his unique perspective of the moment to poetry (not a great poet but for his influence he deserves mention) kerouac brings to mind the novel as typist as much like i am typing now-and yet there is something there-BECAUSE ALL THESE ARTISTES WERE DOING SOMETHING NOT NECESSARILY AGAINST ANYTHING BUT SETTING THEIR NICHE-that is why you can't redo a say james joyce ulysees or a mitchel gone with the wind or a harper lee to kill a mockingbird-it is the moment of art if you are saying the only art is against something then i must disagree and ask you to look deeper into your work-because it is more than striving against but striving for something-for that moment that unique moment when something "new" is created-AND I AGREE MOST OF IT IS BULLSHIT-and yes i don't particularly like that the beatles or sting or anyone like ginsberg sells out-and it obviously changes their art in retrospect-but all art is changed by perspective-ah that is why i love the relative anonymous creators of say a t'ang sencai horse-IT IS BEAUTIFUL AND THE MAKERS ARE LONG GONE BUT THE SHAPE/FORM/BEAUTY ENDURES-that's as close to pure art as i know-and as far as i know it is not "against " anything-all poetry is not dissent nor should it suck at the tit of the establishment for those poets to get ahead because they ass lick those they think will somehow get them prominence-and yes the politics of poetry is smarmy-it has become an mfa business-if you have a degree automatically you are a poet-it is that i object with-the personification of the degree as conferring "betterment status" on anyone who is produced at those factories-and some of them may be poets- BUT BY AND LARGE THEY ARE WHAT YOU RAIL AGAINST THE CYCLE OF PROMOTION BY ASSOCIATION IF YOU SUCK UP YOU GET AHEAD-and poetry should be so much more-much more-more than i can describe here…

To ZAJ: I certainly did not use the term "all writing" in that editorial and certainly did not wish to imply such. What The AD would like to publish is not all writing, but writing that RISKS something. Here's an example: Write a poem or essay that criticizes your boss and send it to the local paper so your boss is apt to read it. That's called RISK of employment and probably writing very close to the edge of raw truth. Write a poem/essay that criticizes the poetry festival you attended and received $500 honorarium. That's called RISK of future invitations and dough and probably writing very close to the edge of raw truth. Send it of course to the director or better yet read it in front of the director. I tend to write RISK, but not what risks my life, though I have written against the local cops and tried in vain to publish it in the Concord Journal. Perhaps this concept is so difficult for poets to grasp, because they've never thought of doing such a thing, that is, writing very close to the edge of raw truth and publishing it. In other words, they do not write poetry apt to offend. Probably they would even label such poetry not poetry at all… and certainly bad poetry. Can you really not understand that editorial, ZAJ? Perhaps you sped read? Try reading slowly… Hell, what's the rush? The AD is not a forum for all Art and all Poetry. I hoped that you had realized that. I'm not defining poetry. I'm defining what I like and I like poetry that is dissident in nature and substance. That's all I'm doing or saying. My God, I can go through whole books of poetry without finding a phrase let alone a poem that I like and that includes the works of the so-called great poets, so-dubbed by bourgeois, academic lackeys of the wealthy elite. It's crazy to me that somehow you read ALL POETRY in that editorial. Yet, I suppose I shouldn't be at all surprised because so often I get the very same reaction from others. Several have declared I declared ALL MFA POETS SUCK. Yet I never wrote that nor do I necessarily believe it. Why did Holder conclude such? Why do you conclude such RE your remark on ALL POETRY? [ZAJ and I are friendly and correspond.]

To the President of David Mamet Society: There has to be something intrinsically perverse in your soul. You seek people to worship. I cannot for the life of me comprehend members of literary societies, who tend to be anything but the literary figure adulated. I think of Thoreau and the Thoreau Society. Do not venerate men or women of letters, as if gods, but rather have them confirm you in your own actions and writing! Most of you instead would use them to permit you to hide in inaction. Indeed, while Mamet satirizes society, you parade around as the very citizens criticized, yet refuse to contemplate that possibility. I do appreciate a number of Mamet's statements and live those statements. I re-fuse congeal in a literary society. [No Response]

From Conan Doherty: I attended the Iowa Writers's Workshop and I still workshop my writing with people from the workshop on a regular basis. I hope to make a living out of writing, escape this country.

To Conan: So, workshop is a verb now? Read g. lines. [No Response]

From James (anonymous): is a terribly funny read, and a brilliant insight into a multitude of psychological problems you seem to have. keep up the good work. i haven't laughed this hard in weeks.

To James: Who are you? How sad to be so indoctrinated as to respond with laughter in the face of piteous corruption. [No response]

To W.K. Buckley, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University: Thanks for the chapbook. Will check it out. However, I'm not crazy about your blurbs from Left Curve's I-knew-Bukowski Hirschman and Polony. As for the poems, the writing is fine. However, I need poems on personal experiences with corruption, any kind. It is so easy to write about general corruption in the USA. There is absolutely no risk involved for the poet! I want to publish poets who dare RISK. In your case, I'd love to read about corruption in your English Department, the pol-correct indoctrination, lack of free speech and ostracism of those who dare, fraudulent Critical Thinking courses, corrupt usage of student evaluations and letters of recommendation, inequitable treatment of faculty members, egregious brownnosing faculty, fraudulent faculty evaluations, refusal to hire and blacklisting of English professors who dare decry the crap out there, etc. Hopefully, you of course are one of the few English professors in the nation not willfully partaking in such activities. Hopefully, you are not another Gerald Locklin or NYQ Packard. Please try me again. [No Response]

From Francine L. Trevens (NY, NY): Enclosed please find three poems for your consideration. I offer all for First North American Publication rights. Other poems of mine have appeared in various magazines (including the current issue of Futures) as well as anthologies. My stories and articles have been published in dozens of magazines including Antiques Journal, Dramatics, Ford Times, Lady's Circle, YM and Yankee. I wrote the musical theatre segment of the McGraw Hill World Encyclopedia in the 80's, and in the 70's was a regular contributor for 7 years to Best Plays Annual. To Francine L. Trevens: Please read my guidelines. [No Response]

To Therese Eiben, POETS & WRITERS (submitted by Ben Satterfield (Hville, GA): During the past five years I have had 19 items stories, poems, essays accepted for publication in anthologies whose editors issued a call in your pages. To date, only one of those proposed anthologies has materialized, after a two-year delay and a change of editors. Three of the other editors claim to be "seeking a publisher," two are preparing for publication, three more gave up, and the other ten do not respond to queries. Authors have a right to expect publication after their work is accepted (often without payment of any kind), but "acceptance" by anthology compilers is often meaningless. Apparently, many so-called editors have nothing more than an idea for an anthology they have no publishing resources or commitments and frequently cannot obtain a publisher after "accepting" a writer's work. In order to prevent writers from being exploited more they usually are in a buyer's market, perhaps you could have your advertisers indicate whether their proposed anthologies are committed to a publisher or are being assembled purely on speculation. If the latter, then writers will at least be forewarned that acceptance of 'their work is also on speculation and does not promise publication.

From David Lawrence (NY, NY): I have published more than a hundred poems in Minnesota Review, North American Review, Midwest Poetry Review, Pearl, Shenandoah, Chicago Tribune, California Quarterly, William and Mary Review, Confrontation, The South Carolina Review, ACM, Folio, No Exit, Laurel Review, Poetry Motel, Poet Lore, Mudfish, Hoyden's Ferry Review, Lummox, The Iconoclast, Heliotrope, Barbaric Yawp, Mojo Risin', Zuzu's Petals Quarterly Online, P.D.Q., Small Pond Magazine, Hawaii Review, People Magazine, New Laurel Review, Coe Review, Sprout, New Delta Review, Kimera, Lynx Eye, Mind Purge, Real, Pitchfork, Porcupine, Now Here Nowhere, Cape Rock, Art Mag, Blue Unicorn, 96 Inc, Superior Poetry News, The Homestead Review, LSR, Wavelength, etc. Books: The chapbook Blame it on the Scientists was published by Pudding House Publications in 2002. In 1999 Mudfish published the first issue of its Individual Poet Series Dementia Pugilistica. Steel Toe Boots was published by Fithian Press in 1996. Boxer Rebellion was published by Maverick Press in 1992. In 1993 it was turned into a movie and played at the Sundance Film Festival, starring me. I am a poet, actor, screenwriter, model, business mogul, boxer, rapper, jailbird, professor (Ph.D.), stand-up comic, husband, father and amiable neurotic. I have been interviewed on CBS, ABC, MSG, BBC, etc, as well as New York Magazine, Men's Journal, People Magazine, Sport's Illustrated, etc. all for boxing and rapping, not poetry. Not my fault. What does People Magazine know about poetry, even though they printed one of my poems in their article about me? Thanks for reading my poems.

To David Lawrence: Read my guidelines, you literary blowhard! [No Resp.]

From David Lawrence (NY, NY): I am confused. I received your comment, “read guidelines before sending,” but w/o any of my poems. However, you did not say whether you rejected or accepted any of my poems. If you rejected them, you didn't give me the names of the rejected poems, thus I will never be able to retrieve them from my bucket of poems. Please let me know what this all means and if my poems are rejected, please give me their names.

From C. Leibow: I have been writing poetry over ten years. I currently work as a corporate trainer and I attend the University of Utah. Poetry has been something that has haunted me. I've tried to turn away from poetry but it simply waits for me to return. My primary influences have been the Beat poets and Latin American poets specifically Gary Snyder and Pablo Neruda. Other influences would include Charles Simic, Lawerence Ferlengetti and Stone-house's Zen Mountain Poems…

To C. Leibow: I don't think you read my guidelines. Try me again… but don't repeat that cover letter-it was a gem, exactly what I'm not looking for.

To Dan Kennedy, senior writer/ media critic, The Boston Phoenix: Good report on The Boston Globe. Now, how about a report on the Phoenix Media Communications Group? What corporations are The Boston Phoenix tied to? In other words, what corporations tongue-tie you? When are you going to do a story on corruption in the state colleges? Or is that another TABOO? I could sure as hell give you a story... but then I'm not tongue-tied.

From Dan Kennedy: The fact that I don't write about the publication that employs me isn't a "taboo." It's just common sense. It seems to me that if you really wanted someone to write about The Boston Phoenix, you would badger people at The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, Boston Mag., etc.

To Dan Kennedy: You are wrong. Avoiding critique of the place that employs you is not only a taboo, but a Faustian deal and egregious source of hypocrisy, especially for a media critic such as yourself. How can you criticize some media, but not your own? Avoiding critique of The Boston Phoenix led to hypocrisy on another occasion when you criticized the sell-out hippies as Bobos (Bohemian bourgeois), yet “avoided” mention that you and others at The Boston Phoenix were also Bobos. Rather than admit to the taboo and incredible conflict such a taboo must certainly have for a media critic, you choose hypocrisy. You would have had a lot more credibility if you had brought up the fact that your media conglomerate limits your news coverage. Why would such a statement endanger your job unless you're working for a particularly fascistic organization, which of course just might be the case? Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff sees things quite differently from you. He devoted an entire column to criticizing … The Village Voice (5/24/00), noting “Here now at The Village Voice, Freedom is Censorship. And Self-Censorship.” Since you admit being partisan of self-censors, perhaps it's time you raise yourself up a notch and write the same thing about The Boston Phoenix. Far too many entrenched columnists fall short of what writers should do and be. Hentoff did not lose his job. It is perhaps time for you to cast aside the easy road of hypocrisy and walk the tough one of truth. Hell, how much money do you really need to survive, man? By the way, your use of the word "badger" to qualify my critique of your column is unconscionable, considering you are also a critic. I've compiled quite a list of terms used to dismiss criticism, especially when irreverent. I shall add “badger.” Well, thanks for your response.

From Dan Kennedy: Nat Hentoff, who I admire greatly, does not make his living as a media reporter-he is a columnist who can write about damn near anything he wants. I have a simple position: I report on all media *except* The Boston Phoenix, because I have an obvious conflict of interest and it would undermine my credibility. You either understand that or you don't. And I guess you don't. But thanks for writing.

To Academe: Would you be interested in an essay calling for radical change in the heart of the ivory tower written by a blackballed professor?

From Ellen Schrecker, Ed., Academe: While we do publish occasional opinion pieces, most of our articles deal with very specific topics and have usually been commissioned.

To Massachusetts Cultural Council: Is there any concern that the brother of a serial murderer, child pornographer and cocaine dealer sits on the board of your Council? It is now probable that William Bulger knew everything about his FBI most wanted brother. I hope you've at least read the 4-part series in the Boston Herald (www.bostonherald.com/bostonherald/bostonmob/ index.html) As citizen, I am disgusted with your Council for Bulger and other reasons already noted (see www.geocities.com/enmarge/Cultural.html).

From MCC (Tom Connors): Thank you for your interest in the Cultural Council.

From Fitchburg State College Counsel John F. Driscoll, Esq.: Please consider this letter as a response to a 2/7/01 e-mail communication that you sent to the Human Resources office at Fitchburg State College. Specifically, you alleged that FSC in some way interfered in your attempt to obtain employment. FSC terminated its relationship with you pursuant to an August 1996 agreement and the College takes the view that it has no continuing relationship with you. The College is aware of no basis for your allegation that it has interfered in your attempt to gain employment. FSC has no continuing interest in this matter and considers the matter to be closed. Thanking you for your attention to this matter, I remain, very truly yours.

To Fitchburg State College President Riccards: Your paladin-for-money, justice-indifferent, and intellectually corrupt lawyers, Peters, Driscoll and Cie, don't scare me. You and FSC have kept me from finding further employment. You are a heartless bunch of bastards… and I truly hope your health may be suffering for it. I challenge you and your minions to seek a court order preventing me from criticizing and attempting to expose the corruption in your hearts and procedures. You are, after all, a public institution, though in this Massachusetts of political corruption ubiquitously bursting at the seams. Clearly, FSC has blackballed others beside myself and keeps the evidence under lock and key in the archives of the Massachusetts State College Association. How grotesque that some corrupt legal contractual stipulation has permitted you to conceal public documents from public scrutiny. How pitifully successful your “Leadership College” has been keeping students from questioning and challenging what needs to be questioned and challenged, including you, Semerjian, DeCesare, Scott, Wagner and all the other small-time corrupt weasels parading around in black robe. Your consistent concealment of corruption can only hurt true leadership. FSC may consider "this matter closed," but I shall never, as long as I live. Only JUSTICE, not CLOSURE, will prevent you and your lawyers from continuing to fill your pockets and greed with public monies! You are a veritable scourge, spreading terminal cancer in the belly of higher education. How to stop you? [No Response]

To Community Newspaper Company, Inc. editors [sent to about 50 Massachusetts papers, eliciting one response]: Well everything is clean and dandy now in one megacorporate newspaper [RE The Boston Herald purchase of you guys]! Bravo. Yes, you will edit for clarity and civility. Of course, the latter will mean editing out anything apt to underscore corrupt people in power. Massachusetts has gone down the shit hole and hardly anyone has even noticed. Evidently, higher education, the Massachusetts Teachers Association et al ought be congratulated for a job well done. When did you sell out?

From Dan MacAlpine, Ed.Melrose Free Press: I can't print language you used in your letter. I also need a phone number for verification. Clean up the language and give us a contact number and we'll print your opinion. By the way, if you saw my salary it would be hard to argue I've sold out to anyone. Also, is The American Dissident a semiannual lit journal or a semiliterate annual journal? My dyslexia has struck again.

To Melrose Free Press: Well, Dan I guess you got pissed off, eh? Guess you got criticized. I don't mind your little quip about my semilit mag. That's cool. But this whole thing stinks to high hell, doesn't it? This utter corporate takeover of everything... the media (you guys), academe, etc. How'd you like to interview me as editor of a local DISSIDENT literary journal? I can't interest The Concord Journal... they've been fully purchased and digested. Imagine, I was jailed four hours because of an argument with a park ranger at Walden Pond and subsequently threatened with further incarceration for simply standing by the entrance with a sign declaring absence of free speech at the park and also on other occasions for leaving my diss flyer in Thoreau's fake shack. I say, bravo to you for responding! I couldn't interest anyone in the state college corruption I witnessed as a professor. Nobody gives a damn. CRITICISM is viscerally hated. If you'd really like to print that letter, just remove the BAD word. Are you even aware such words are not illegal in the Commonwealth? Are you aware there is no list of such words? The self-censorship in this state is reaching disastrous proportions, man! [No Response]

To Poets & Writers, Inc. (from Robert Betts): As a black writer, I couldn't agree with one point in Miss Shayla Hawkins' article, "Cave Canem: A Haven for Black Poets” (Mar/Apr, 2001). I never go to white writers' workshops because the atmosphere there I learned from other black writers is often uninviting and even hostile in subtle ways. Yet I don't go to black workshops either. In fact, I don't go to ANY writers' workshops or writers' retreats at all, mainly because they are moneymaking rackets. “Every day,” according to Ms. Hawkins, “Cave Canem fellows are expected to write a new poem and present it to their group.” Many writers' workshops, regardless of their racial makeup, adhere to that same paradigm. But how can poets crank out a poem per day and expect each to be worthy? Assembly-line poetry is not poetry. Perhaps writers-regardless of race, sex or sexual orientation-ought not be writers if they cannot endure the personal, intimate anguish of the critical creative process in solitary, and depend on subjective feedback from others. Equally important about writers' workshops and excluded from the article is that THEY COST MONEY, which many talented unknown writers often do not have. MFA programs cost money also. Be assured that some philistine corporate CEO who does not give one hot damn about art is speeding off to a bank to cash the check of some talented, eighty year old widow in Iowa who attended one of his prominent-poet-for-hire managed writers' workshops. How to be an excellent poet or fiction writer is not learned by shelling out cash to attend workshops and $100,000 MFA programs. Learning is accomplished by doing. In "The Black Writers Retreat: Where Each Voice is Equal” (in the same issue), Tashia Asanti mentions the workshops are led by Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and “other publishing professionals who head up seminars on the business of writing.” The business of what? I hold Baraka and Sanchez in the highest esteem, but not regarding business. Paul Lawrence Dunbar never attended a workshop. Ernest Hemingway never went to college or an MFA program. Now come to think of it, why do Poets & Writers and The Writers' Chronicle both have so many ads for very costly Writers' Retreats and MFA programs? [No Response]

To Aiken Technical College (SC) [sent to Personnel Director-white man, Vice President-black woman, and Dean of Education-black man]: Let this letter at least support your not hiring me, your wasting two days of my time in Aiken, and your refusal to explain why. After all, how could you, an academic administrator, hire a man who questions, challenges, thinks for himself rather than in the academic mode of team think, and would opine openly? Your silence regarding my query is bizarre. I'm simply curious if you're at all conscious as to when you might have begun lying as an administrator, and how you began justifying your prevarication with denial and rationalization. Perhaps you may wish to contemplate these things in the context of your religion and how you don't give a damn about someone like me, a fellow American, whose livelihood you help destroy by your unusual commonness. If you can even comprehend what I write here, then, well, there has to be some hope for you. If not, then, evidently there is not.

From Aiken Tech (Dean of Education Larry Hawes): "Ugly in yielding, as you were ugly in rage!/ Natures like yours chiefly torment themselves." (Oedipus Rex, Scene II. 151-2)

To Lucid Moon (Ralphy, Ed.): If you're gonna push Jack Powers, take me off your list. His little Stone Soup Poets Society is an old lady's sewing circle. I read some harsh poetry in front of those characters, and all he could say was: "our poets don't like you." Well, fuck him... and that I did say to his face... and he squeamed away to another corner where friends to hold him up. Print this in your rag. Also, you're on this superficial name game crap. Get off it. Stop pushing names, the Lifshin, Locklin, Corso garbage. Start pushing poets who have something tough to say about our cancer-ridden society. Okay, Ralphy. I've got no real beef with you. But “majestic poetry”? You just ain't gonna find it in that crowd... not in Lifshin, not in Locklin, and not in Jack Powers. Those people are not on the edge. It is disgusting that poets like Powers don't give a damn about the First Amendment. Yeah, his poetling crowd walked past me while I was at Walden Pond holding a placard. Yeah, the cops threw me out... and Powers couldn't have been happier. Is he the kind of “majestic” poet you seek to publish? All he can do is ride on the coattails of dead Corso who did the same RE Ginsberg who did the same RE Kerouac. By the way, in each issue of The American Dissident, I make it a point to publish the harshest criticism. How about you?

From Lucid Moon (Ralphy): Tod, GO FUCK YOURSELF! I'm removing you from my list and leaving you alone to wallow in your own crapulance and hatred. You asshole.

To University of Guam: Why not be creative in mind. Reflect a bit on what those three letters of recommendation and student evaluations really mean... SAMENESS... CORPORATE/ACADEMIC SAMENESS... KOWTOW CERTIFICATION! If you would like a couple of essays on the subject, let me know or check out my website. But you probably are not be inquisitive... just another pedagogue functionary. I will not apply for the English position because of all the tedious documents you request.

From University of Guam (English Prof Robert Alan Burns): Thank you for your note. Thank you especially for letting us know you will not be applying.

From College English (Jonathan Hunt, Assoc. Ed.): Your essay, “Courses on Critical Thinking, Collegiality, and the War against Negativity,” addresses issues of ongoing and critical importance to the profession. I was struck by your observation that there is something “profoundly fraudu-lent” about Critical Thinking as it is currently institutionalized, and impressed by the potential of your critique of the recent chorus of appeals to “civility” as camouflaging a “cunning shield against critics.” Unfortunately, our decision is not to pursue it for publication, largely for reasons relating to the journal's parameters. College English opinion pieces are typically involved in an ongoing conversation around a particular topic.

To College English: TRUTH and hard reality must probably also fall exterior to the “parameters” of College English. I am struck by the observation that there is something profoundly fraudulent not just with “Critical Thinking as it is currently institutionalized,” but also with College English… and Thought & Action, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, Lingua Franca, and Adjunct Advocate, to name a few. The bulk of such journals forms a single hermetic, if not impervious, ivory-tower bastion, publishing only “safe” manuscripts written in the MFA mindset with a good dose of MLA bureaucratese and/or Chicago Manual Style doublespeak. Your cunning shield against critics of College English is of course your very “parameters.” [No Response]

To Alternative Press Review: What you guys are doing is assembly-line reviews. In reality, you manifest zero interest in a review like mine, which provides a venue for socio-politically engaged literature as opposed to fame-game Chomsky-type political commentary. I once tried to interest Z-magazine and received similar disinterest and aloofness. I wonder if it's an ego thing, a leftist petty-power mongering of sorts. It's bullshit that the review you guys did on my first issue is still circulating in cyberspace like an orbiting fuck-you. Enclosed is my cartoon review of your mag. Publish it if you have the balls! From Alternative Press Review (Jason McQuinnn, Ed.): If I recall, I told you I'd forward your message on to the person who did the review of your zine-and I think that was Chuck Munson. Otherwise, what did you want me to say? Having neither seen your zine, nor having written the review in question, I simply don't know anything about it. PS: Nice comic.

To APR: Passin' the buck? Hmm. What do I want you to do? Print the comic in your letters to the editor section! Then rebut it. It is a positive sign that you have printed negative letters. Most zines don't do that. I'm not holding a grudge, nor really warring. The matter is simple: I don't think you or your sub-reviewers can give fair reviews if you're running through them on a conveyer belt and if you're not really into what the review is about (e.g., literature, if you're into hardcore pol. commentary). I never heard from your subreviewer. Perhaps he knows, if that's possible, that my critique is on target... at least vis-à-vis his review of The American Dissident. [N.R.]

To ACLU-Massachusetts (Wendy M. Zimny): Thank you for your second reply. But if we are indeed going no where, why continue? Why not just tell me the ACLUM has limited funds and my case isn't pertinent, as the ACLUM did when contacted regarding my whistleblowing at Fitchburg State and Martha's Vineyard H. S. several years ago? Well, enclosed are the documents requested. I have not been to Walden Pond since being forced off the premises by BOTH state and Concord police. Authorities at Walden refuse to answer my correspondence, thus I cannot offer you their particular code of rules. But I assume their rules are the same as the enclosed Title 304. I have scanned these documents for you and taken time to send you this letter. I did attempt to file a complain against the arresting officer for fraudulent testimony, but was told I'd have to pay $100 and that chances were 99.9% I'd lose. Again, please inform me what gives the police and park authority the right to prohibit a citizen of Massachusetts from holding a sign of protest on STATE property? Is not STATE property PUBLIC property? Am I not PUBLIC? Interestingly, the PUBLIC library in Concord will not allow me to post on its PUBLIC bulletin board an account of the incidents at Walden. [No Response]

To National Poetry Month: How do I get The American Dissident listed on NPM's site? Must I be backed by corrupt academics and known kowtow poets? Must I wear the fraudulent shield of Civility and praise your corporate sponsors? Must I be a society-friendly advocate of national hypocrisy?

From National Poetry Month (Matthew Rohrer, cc: Charles Flowers & India Amos): No, you just gotta fork over the cash, baby. These websites don't just stay up for free.

To National Poetry Month: My website costs not a cent. Try it out unless of course you don't have a curious bone in your poet-society self. [No Response]

Dear Word Press (Kevin Walzer, Publisher, connect@wordtechweb.com): I read your essay "Sellout Studies and Scholarship" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/25/01). So, you are a full-time corporate "marketing writer" and part-time poet. Wow. The Chronicle has become downright embarrassing as it overtly manifests its own corporate ingestion with an increasing number of cutesy, Salon.com-type essays such as yours and Ms. Mentor's perpetual column. Please be advised in case of grotesque ignorance: There is great intrinsic corruption in Academe! The Nation needs a hell of a lot more than your pitiful 10 steps on how to sellout and continue kissing Academic ass at the same time. The networking and team-playing mindset that you advocate are killing Academe, pumping up departments with like-minded, loyal cronies and family members, hardly critical thinkers apt to question and challenge. Thanks to happy fools like yourself, Academe has become corporatized, that is, highly authoritarian and rigidly hierarchical in a great breeding ground of snakes, weasels, rats, and sheep. Maybe you're into something new: CORPORATE POETRY. Maybe corporate poetry written by corporate marketers, technical writers, and corporate-ingested academics IS on the verge of replacing poetry on the edge written by poets on the edge. In fact, I'm convinced it is. You vaunt being a "sellout." But I'm not so sure you had anything in your soul to SELLOUT to begin with. Sure you meant sellout from Academe to the Corporation. But can you be so blind as not to see that Academe, in the same manner as GOVERNMENT, HAS essentially become an intricate component of the CORPORATION today? Well, I suppose the only positive thing in your essay, at least for me, was your statement that, "Since joining the business world, I've managed to continue publishing, albeit at a slower pace." Poetry will at least be thankful for the "slower pace." I won't bother sending this rebuttal to The Chronicle because I know all too well what they publish and refuse to publish. [No Response]

To Debbie Orton, Pub. Flashcake (Albany, NY): Sounds like a gimmick and crock… your Flash poetry! How about Flash Gordon? He could write a Flash poem on outer space. How about Flashers? You trying to bring them back into fashion? Anything but tough critique of the state of the Nation, goal of the hatched MFA mob! Anything to divert the already tiny minds of the American populace from the crap in which they swim every day. [N.R.]

To PBS (viewers@pbs.org: How disgusting your public-service commercial featuring Teddy Kennedy talking to a stuffed Teddy bear (or was that a tiger?) and telling everyone to read! Any thinking person, Democrat or Republican or Green, would come to the conclusion that Kennedy is promoting himself and anyone else in his family with political aspirations on PBS… and FOR FREE! Imagine how much an ad would cost if he had to pay as a politician. Perhaps he's even making money indirectly on that ad as tax deduction. Should PBS be pushing itself as DEMOCRAT organization? Isn't that precisely what you do when you put a politician like KENNEDY on your station? Isn't KENNEDY the very hypocrisy regarding democracy with his family dynasty and he hogging the senate seat for over 40 years… keeping the poor out of the Senate! I'd love to read your response, but doubt you'll respond. [No Response]

From Patricia Lesko, Exe. Ed., The Adjunct Advocate (for p-t professors): No offense intended, but I am really, really busy. I simply don't have the time to "debate" anything with anyone. […] I learned long ago that writers who demand too much of my time and energy are just not the kind of folks I can work with. Good luck placing your work elsewhere. The cartoon you submitted [and I previously accepted] will not be used in the magazine. [N.B.: Lesko became offended when I brought up corruption in academe, though not directed at her. She refused to respond to any of the points made, instead retaliated by keeping me out of her publication. This is the way of Academe.]

From The Book Doc: You'll have to show me other sites where writers write about being a pickle… I can, on the other hand, show you 1000 angry poets…

Dear American Dissident (from Lauren Janis, Ass’t Ed, Columbia Journalism Review): The editors read with interest your proposal for an article that would analyze how and why the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is an inherently unfair contest. It is an intriguing idea, and your arguments certainly piqued the interest of our editors. Yet, as we are not a poetry publication, after consideration, we decided it wasn’t right for CJR.

Dear Ms. Janis (CJR): Well, that's an absurd/bullshit reason for rejecting my Pulitzer essay. Is not the Pulitzer part of the Columbia School of Journalism? My essay exposes, though perhaps indirectly, corruption at your School. That's why you do not wish to publish it in the CJR. The points made in the essay regarding bias are facts, not even hypotheses. [NR]

Dear American Dissident (from B.B. Smith): I took a class in the MFA program at Manhattanville College, and realized I knew more than the teacher, both about life' and the craft of poetry, so I didn't go back, though 6 years later they are still sending class schedules. But I decided to help begin their Lit Mag, Inkwell, when the call went out. However, I soon got a taste of what's actually going on behind the scenes of some institutional lit mags and decided it had nothing to do with poetry and quit in even more disgust. The female MFA student who volunteered to be editor in chief of our "premiere edition'' was herself a "contributing editor" to the local newspaper, the Journal News, a Gannett Publication. Laurie Nikolski was her name. I volunteered to be one of two copyreaders, not wanting anything to do with the business end of it, but merely to read the submissions and choose the best work from what was submitted. But Laurie never submitted to me more than 1/4 of all the submissions that were circulating, and there was never a meeting to discuss the submissions with her so-called staff, but instead she (and possibly those she loved best) chose to make the decisions as to what went in and what stayed out. Naturally, she made sure one of her own stories was published. Ghastly isn't the word to describe that piece. I was embarrassed to find that my name appeared on the list of copyreaders-as though I actually had something to do with choosing the work appearing inside. Laurie has since disappeared into the realms of the publishing world-don't know where, but obviously working her wiles and clawing her way up the Poetry Ladder. Manhattanville's Inkwell is now in Poets & Writers Mag offering a $1000.00 prize like so many other MFA Programs.

Dear Jaimes Alsop, Ed. The Alsop Review: Sounds like you have your head up your ass.... naming a poetry review after yourself... and enlisting seven board members and six administrators… and bragging that your writers are the best! Wow! Is this what poetry has come to? Why not start your own ostrich-head-in-the-sand poetics university a la Naropa? Before boasting of literary prizes, why not ask yourself what the Pushcart et al really are? Who are the “blind” judges on their panels? What is the intrinsic corruption in the prizes?

Dear American Dissident (from Jaimes Alsop): Thanks for thinking of the Alsop Review but we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. [?]

Dear Lewis Rice, Editor of The Concord Journal: Not a word from you, Lewis! What kind of journalism school did you attend? Or was it just your grades? How can you a journalist not give a goddamn about First Amendment issues right here in your own lily-white Concord backyard? Shame on you and all the others who practice the kind of crap you call corporate-conglomerate community news. Are you at least aware who your owners are? Can you name those who have succeeded in muzzling your brain? FYI, Deathrow journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal noted in All Things Censored: "The essential role of the media became one that is inherently and profoundly conservative, in keeping with the class interests of its owners. It is not its job, therefore, to rock the boat, but merely to occasionally splash water."

Dear American Dissident (from Gregory Turner) Lewis Rice is no longer editor of The Concord Journal.

Dear Gregory Turner: Well, send the goddamn letter to the new editor then! [NR]

Dear American Dissident (from Russ Loar): If you are to gain wide acceptance for your publication, you should be quick to poke fun at and criticize your own sacred cows. There is no shortage of those willing to condemn the conventions of our modern culture in order to champion a particular point of view. But what I find truly refreshing about your publication is its potential to be a forum for exposing the artificiality, the manipulativeness, the folly of sacred cows of all shapes and kinds. It is the rigid adherence to a particular dogma, theology, philosophy or any set of rules for living that should be attacked and exposed… Of course, we now live in an increasingly corporatized culture in which people seem eager to enslave themselves. So often we are the victims of ourselves, and that is where dissent may perhaps have its most powerful effect, in liberating ourselves from our own self-induced oppression.

Dear American Dissident (from Syd Bradford, Ed., Enigma): I agree with the premise of your article [critical of the hackneyed ‘cool’ style of writing in Salon.com], but think that the piece would be more powerful and striking if it dissected the enemy rather than hacking at it with a broad sword.

Dear David Wainberg, Common Courage Press: Thanks for your reply regarding my request for employment. I'm just trying in vain to find a place here in this bizarre Nation. It is odd that ‘radical’ editors and publishers like you tend to be utterly incurious. You haven’t manifested the slightest interest in The American Dissident. Is the explanation pitiful niche guarding? I'm just curious. I question and challenge everything, including ‘radical’ editors and publishers. [No Response]

Dear Civic Education Project (a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting reform efforts at universities in Central/Eastern Europe and Eurasia): Perhaps your project would be more credible if it also provoked reform efforts in American universities, where corruption is intrinsic, profound and utterly grotesque. Perhaps you might wish to hire me as blacklisted professor to help establish an American branch to the Civic Education Project. Perhaps you are not offering civic education at all, but rather cheap labor to spread English, language of Business, not thought, not truth, not justice, not even democracy, but BUSINESS. [No Response]

Dear Academe, the bimonthly publication of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP): When will you get your heads out of your asses and realize that hiring minorities is not going to resolve your serious problems of intrinsic corruption, cronyism and sell out to the Corporation. What you desperately need to do is diversify not color but mind. It is time that you open your doors to hardcore critics of Club Academe. I know this is pipedream because it will not happen. Jefferson had said: “Every institution needs a revolution every generation.” Well, why has yours never even had one such revolution? Tenure of sameness of mentality, black, white, Hispanic, male or female. Do you have the balls to devote ½ page of your review to comments from hardcore critics of the ivory tower? [No Response]

Dear American Dissident (from Dr./Prof. Natalie Hess, Northern Arizona University): I am sorry that I triggered such angry feelings in you, and I sympathize, but I also feel that surely someone who goes out and gets a Ph.D. knows what the academic game is all about, and if he/she doesn't want to play by those rules, then really he should play some other game, and I don't pretend that the rules are just or fair, but they probably are more just and more fair than those of most human games. I do believe that you mistake what goes on in the academe. I tend to work a 12 hour academic day and from what I have observed so do most of my colleagues, but since most of us love the subject matter we happen to deal with, we really don't mind. We find most of our work a pleasure and would do it even if we were not paid for it.

Dear Dr./Prof. Natalie Hess: “Angry feelings”? Well, maybe. Just the same, for me anger is not a sin, but rather a creative force, one that helped create this very Nation. Anger! Do you think the Revolutionary Patriots were joyous in their little situations… or raging? I am not looking for “sympathy” from you or any other Academic lifer but rather raw, visceral change… and removal of the likes of you from the Nation’s universities. What does your ready acceptation of the “game do to the soul of the Nation? It makes the Nation itself but a “game”… as we saw in our president’s egregious lies and bullshit lines of contrition… and so many universities desperate for him to speak at their ceremonies! Think, Ms. PhD, if you can, if you haven’t been totally brainwashed by years of chortling with “game” loving professors and doggie sycophancy. Contrary to what you believe, few “games” are more sleazy than the academic one. Does that mean you or I should accept the pitiful status quo and become happy game players? Haven’t you read any of the literature exposing academic corruption? Shake yourself from your stupor… for the Nation’s sake and in memory of Jefferson, Paine, and Monroe! As for your statement that you work 12 hours a day and would do it for nothing, how hypocritical! As an ex-prof at four different colleges, I never met one professor who would teach without pay. On the contrary, the bulk of them are ever obsessing over salary issues. It is sad for the Nation that only sycophants are permitted to thrive in your ACADEME, LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. [No Response]

Dear Dr/Prof Rebecca Moore Howard, Director of the Syracuse University Writing Program: Your ad for a Professor of Writing was astounding. Has writing and English really become so utterly perverted at Syracuse? Can there really be PhD writers specializing in "digital rhetorics and pedagogies" with interests in "computer-rich Writing pedagogies, electronic communication across the curriculum, theory or history of digital authorship, multiple literacies, or humanities computing?" When will your department place an ad for hardcore engaged writers, who will not cower at the thought of criticizing the hand that feeds, that is, the university? Academe in America is in dire straits! Have you noticed, or is your head buried into educationist jargon and theoretical crap? By the way, please consider subscribing to The American Dissident, for it is precisely what your Writing Program could use.

Dear Becky (from Dr/Prof Jeanne Gunner and also sent to The American Dissident): Again I'm astounded at the sense of entitlement and righteousness the author has in making such a personal attack (and again a male, I note). I hope you'll post his message to the WPA list.

Dear Prof/Dr Chair Becky Howard and Dr/Prof Lackey Jeanne Gunner: Well, thanks for your reply, though behind the back a la academic "entitlement" and "righteousness." Funny, how there is such sameness (and smallness) of mentality throughout the Nation's ivory towers. A thinking MAN and WOMAN must ask: why? I sure as hell have. Have you? Clearly the answer reposes in those three letters of academic kowtow approval that you demand from anyone applying for a job. If citizens do not feel a sense of “entitlement” to inspect and criticize academe, then the Nation is doomed. Well, I guess Syracuse is yet another lost cause. We are no longer a democracy but a hypocracy, thanks in large part to institutions like yours. What is the WPA list anyhow? Might it stand for Women's Patrol Association? By the way, I am not afraid to criticize female frauds... and there are legions of them in academe... no doubt as many as white male frauds and minority frauds. [No Response]

Dear American Dissident (from Hosho McCreesh): Got some rag in the mail, The Clark Street Review, publishes "narrative" poetry, but written almost prose-like... which makes me wonder why he doesn't just call for prose... "shit or get off the pot," my Ma always says. I'll try some prosy-talky stuff, won't change anything "to suit his needs" but we'll see. Then again, it usually means trouble when they say something like "excellence is our only criteria." They might as well say "We don't know what the fuck we want or what we're doing but if you write like the fudge-pushers in our spoken word troupe, we'll publish you."

Dear Stella Sue Lee, Poetry Ed., Rattle: No problem with the rejection of my poems. Out of curiosity, what does getting stocked in Barnes & Noble inevitably do to a small press review? I too run a small mag. But since its focus is not simply poetry for the sake of poetry, I imagine it will have to remain small and thus off the shelves of B&N because if I pushed circulation in line with B&N requisites of over a 1000, the focus would end up corrupted. With the push gowith the integrity! No doubt those upon B&N shelves would not like to hear this thought. The specific focus is the only reason I’m editing the journal. It is what makes it different from 99% of the journals out there... on or off the B&N production line. Why name a mag RATTLE, if you’re not gonna rattle… the sunsobitches?

Dear American Dissident (from Stella Sue): Because there are so many B&N and Borders stores, should you wish to go in and look at what I've accepted before as to style and content, and because these stores are most places, I am telling you that is a possibility. I am not in agreement with you over this issue [i.e., gowith the integrity], but what's the problem? I would like to hear more on your reasoning. For one, RATTLE is about the only literary journal that is poetry and poetry alone. What difference does that make? Well, I don't. I just don't understand your reasoning. You want to run this by me again-your "focus?" Do you mean subject matter, content?

Dear Stella Sue: […] There is a lot of bubbling criticism surfacing today regarding the state of poetry. Your vaunting Rattle as one of the only small mags that publishes only poetry is a meaningless. Again, poetry for the sake of poetry is probably the biggest perverter of poetry today. Yes, we each define poetry. I define poetry as good and bad... and bad is generally poetry for the sake of poetry, disengaged verse. In other words, I choose to define poetry as that written by Poète maudits a la Léo Ferré, Baudelaire, Robinson Jeffers, Neruda, Bukowski, Benedetti, as opposed to the Pinsky/Haas/Dove/ Lifshin/Locklin variety. Sure, I'll run it by you again... for what it's worth. 99% of poetry journals have no focus... just poetry. For me, poetry is not a focus. It's akin to having a journal devoted to writing-much too broad to call focus. […]

Dear American Dissident (from Stella Sue): Each to his own, another meaningless quote I guess. Can we agree to completely disagree? Dear Stella Sue: Well, I am disappointed that you decided to kill the budding debate, that is, not respond to the points made in my last letter. But your reaction, I hate to say it, is typical. BTW, I’m of course curious regarding your funding. Your mag must cost lots of dollars. Where do they come from? My mag is definitely small compared to yours RE dollars. Well, I suppose having focus on poetry by American Indians is a focus. You’d have to reject my poetry because of skin color for that issue. But it’s as if that were not a focus either. Poetry by Indians, love poetry, critical poetry, family poetry, kowtow poetry, but by people with red skin only… is really no focus at all. [No response]

From David Baratier, Ed, Pavement Saw Press: We have published Errol Miller's 3rd full-length book in an edition of 1000. Are you stating you are some esteemed source? More so than the editor of the second largest non-university poetry press in Ohio? Perhaps you should read the book before making obviously uninformed statements based upon irrelevant tertiary information. So if I understand your last email correctly your authority comes from the fact that you inflict your own material upon the world, as other publishers find it unsuitable to waste good paper on. This makes sense especially considering you think a thousand copy press run is a brag. You must be a uberpeon; change the name to american pissant. One would think if you were truly a dissident, your website would load fast rather than take 8 minutes to bring down, revolution happens quick, I don't have time to wait for the cute little capitalist photo crap that starts infiltrating the screen you vile unrolled ALIC [Academic/Literary Industrial Complex] mindset uberquality fucker. You want to see how revolution happens: your [sic] in contact with the right folks but yr a pseudo revolutionary who takes aim at the largest publisher in the same category. Ripping down the past to "make room" because you are lazy and unable to create an audience without relying on the same principles you are "vehemently opposed to". Recant your [sic] teeny soapbox, poser. You never dared print an "unsellable" thousand copies of a book like gordon massman's. The number’s where the virgin mary gets fucked & fisted in #619. ALIC, Are you retarded? Too many beans in mass after voting for Bush? That's dysentery, Sloan. Or not to vote, so cliche and "Dissident." Dissidents are supposed to be angry and talk a bunch of uniformed shit? Not here in Ohio, we shoot folks for that, its what we go to the range for weekly. As for me, I am an editor, I edited (that means changed) Errols poems before I published them perhaps you should do yr job you lazy self publisher.

Dear Pavement Saw: Your letter sounds confused and boiling in anger... but the wrong kind. Your anger is the simple anger of suddenly being criticized. It is not the anger evolving from experience with corruption, injustice and prevarication. It is like the anger of the comfortably tenured academic who is rarely if ever criticized... then suddenly someone like me comes along and criticizes. He/she doesn't quite know how to react... though inevitably with fury and inability to debate the issues. Funny how some of you characters go absolutely whacko when criticized. Look at yourself yapping about shooting people. Apparently, you haven't engaged in battle very much. When you mention that you and yours are the "right folks." Do you mean on the right, as in ultraconservative or in accord with Jim Hightower's thought that “ultra PC characters are quite similar and often unmistakable to ultra right wingers.” I think all that sex is crap and diversionary and anything but revolutionary. What do I care if some dork you publish fist fucks the virgen Mary... and you call me a teeny bopper? I mean how puerile can one get? You're producing trash and for some curious reason you think you are a revolutionary. You are precisely what the oligarchy wants... another producer of diversionary garbage. Why do you think I voted for Bush? Why publish Miller if you had to radically alter what he sent you?

From a subscriber Dennis S. Smith: […] Just because some folks are "doing time for a crime" does not make them all "political prisoners" and "victims of the System," giving them a right to have a sounding board in a publication. Nor does the amount of f-k's in a stanza make a quality poem. Shock value is fine, but it should not be carried to the extreme in the Arts. You have some very good political and societal themes in your cartoons that you publish. But they should be done by one with more artistic talent so as to render their meaning more graphically to the reader without distraction. […] The bottom line is, Mr. Stone, is that I am proud of who and where I am on this "twirling Top" called a planet. I do not attack life in general, just because it has dealt me a rough hand. This nation is the only one I have and my ancestors had. We fought and died for it many times over. If anybody is in the position to criticize it, I can. Criticism is a healthy stimulate for the making of a healthy society. And it should be done to make folks think and aspire to higher goals. I do not belittle it just to make good copy. Neither did Emerson or Thoreau. […]

Dear Dennis Smith: I’m just a bit perplexed as to what you might have thought a review called The American Dissident would be about. The tone itself is the message is the tone. This is why I refuse to censor and reject any piece that has the word fuck in it. Please, note I will publish your criticism nailing my cartooning skills, for if I’m not man enough to do that then why the hell am I editing this journal? If you have better cartoons, then send them. Regarding your dislike of my use of poetry by prisoners, I’m not happy with the cops at all, or with the horrendous prison situation in this country. Who knows how many innocents are rotting in our prisons? Contrary to you, I am not proud to be an American. If I were permitted to work in Canada, I would have left this sick society years ago. I am not, as you imply, belittling society “to make good copy.” That is bullshit. Besides, if I were making such “good copy,” why can’t I even give away free subscriptions to the local colleges and high schools? Yes, I have tried. Thoreau was especially disappointed with his fellow citizens.

Dear American Dissident (from Major Daniel E. Jamroz): As the Commanding Officer of Tactical Operations, the Mounted Section falls under my command. I have been provided with the copy of the investigation that was conducted by Captain Robert C. Laprel of my staff. I have found that this complaint that you made against officers assigned to the Mounted Sections for incidents that occurred on Sept. 8 and 9, 2000 at Walden Pond Park are Not Sustained. [N.B.: On 9/9/00 The editor was holding a sign protesting the lack of free speech at Walden Pond State Reservation, neither blocking nor approaching people, nor handing out brochures. Both state and city police ordered me to move or be arrested.]

Dear American Dissident: Since my query from March, I have begun to think that you are no longer in business. If not, I am sorry that you are not... In the meantime, I have inherited some money, and I was thinking of offering you support-but better yet, a partnership, which I would buy from you. If, however, you are no longer in business, I hope you would not mind if I appropriated your idea for the publication and began to publish it from here. Would like to hear from you about your situation. -Dr. J. E. Bennett (WV)

Dear Con Lehane, Ed. Thought & Action (NEA): Would the NEA, “trades union of the higher pedagogical functionaries,” (the words are Mencken’s) be interested in an essay written by a blacklisted, former college professor, "Omerta: Modus Operandi of Academe"? My experience confirms that, confronted with criticism, intellectuals tend to remain silent or, at best, respond with a hollow ‘best wishes.’ Rare is the intellectual today who appreciates criticism and engages in meaningful debate, unless, of course, such may further that person's goal of ‘getting ahead.’ Today's intellectuals tend to reason that to respond to criticism (at least that not coming from a superior or known personage) would be belittling of a person of their stature as known poet, editor, publisher, or simply well-seated professor. Intellectuals and their PG13-rated reviews (e.g., Thought & Action), form a vast fluff barrier in defense of the status quo. Many have become thinly disguised sales agents of themselves, often diversionary, substance-less verbosity. Some even adorn a transparent, faux-radical veneer (e.g., the nation's so-called ‘tenured radicals’).

Dear American Dissident: I'm sorry the Thought & Action Review Panel did not find the article you sent right for our journal. We do appreciate the submission, and the panel would be willing to review anything else you wish to submit that you think would interest our higher education readership. Best Wishes, C.L.

Dear Con Lehane, Ed.: As mentioned, I am distressed by the total lack of indignation on your part relative to the substance of my essay. (No Response)

Dear American Dissident: I'm balancing good vs bad. I agree with alot of what you say, believe me. Since Don Lee [editor, Ploughshares] is a friend of mine, etc. Would it be possible to get the point across without blatantly naming names? Toning it down a bit? I know you probably don't want to, and I don't blame you if you feel strongly against it. -M. Neff, Ed. Webdelsol.com, Locus of Literary Art on the WWW

Dear Michael Neff: I am confused regarding your admission that you believe in “a lot of what I say.” By declaring this, you seem to be making a confession that you are not being true to yourself. Moreover, how can I eliminate Don Lee's name, amongst others, if I am quoting him? Would putting the Managing Editor of Ploughshares without his name make a difference? Clearly, Don Lee's words are so revealing of the inner workings of the academic literary game that I cannot simply delete them from my essay. Recall what he said: “Hardly anything ever gets published from the slush pile, and we don't expect [them to]. The function of our readers in going through the slush is to find incipient talent. If we like someone, we'll send a note, and the next time around that writer will bypass the slush.” My underscoring Lee's statement ought help educate new or unknown writers and otherwise deter them from wasting their time and energy. Lee has wasted my time, postage and energy. Everybody in this free country seems so bizarrely fearful of naming names. The great worry of lawsuit keeps the citizenry in their proper place. It keeps the graft and corruption, intellectual or other, running smoothly and the corrupt happy-go-lucky. Should I be surprised that you and Don Lee are friends? Of course not. I've already written an essay on in-breeding, rampant cronyism and back-slapping in academe. The problem with the extensive network of academic literati, and networking in general, is that when everybody is friends, criticism either disappears or becomes scandalously diluted and literature, of course, suffers tremendously. Finally, “toning down,” of course, would simply render me another whore in the nation's far-reaching literary prostitution ring. “Toning down” is the key point of my entire essay... “toning down” to the level of sameness. I'd rather let “Sameness: Defining Trait of the Typical University of X Literary Review” remain unpublished than join the ranks of America's literati and media whores The whole point is that literature has become a game where everyone knows everyone. You don't or can't get published unless you know somebody in the literary circle. Webdelsol knows the editor of Ploughshares and vice versa. The editor of Ploughshares knows the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, who knows the editor of Poets & Writers. You and they have become a protected group like a species on the verge. Protected from hunters like myself, hunting for hypocrisy, deceit, clubbiness, fame game, backslapping, and all the other traits currently destroying literature in America. Literature in your high circles does not criticize the plutocracy because editors, publishers and writers in those very circles are the plutocracy. I shall keep barking at your academic rearends and, like a lone pitbull, intend to stay there until I'm dead. Now, if you would still like to publish the essay as is, go for it, break away from the clique... or continue chatting at those NY-Boston black tie cocktail parties. (No response)

Dear Nancy Bernhard, Associate Ed. The Long Term View: A Journal of Informed Opinion (Massachusetts School of Law): I like the lofty subtitle: “A Journal of Informed Opinion.” “A Journal of Informed Spreading of Plutocratic Garbage” might be better, though. In any case, I am not surprised, given your academic background, of your total lack of interest regarding my article on legalized nepotism in Massachusetts. Yes, I too have a PhD but do not advertise it because I've met far too many lowlifes and sheepish cowards dressed in the black robe and tasseled pinto hat during my 14 years of college teaching. I've also met far too many lawyers who just don't give a damn about justice... only CLOSURE and the DOLLAR BILL. Shame on your stinking profession, Dershowitz, and all of you. It will surely help bring this great nation down into the dumpster. God save America. Enjoy your summer. (No response)

Dear Matthew Kearney (member, Georgia Council of the Arts): Thank you for your submission. I have read your poems and do not find them adequate for the American Dissident, which needs in-the-trenches, confrontational, angry, antiestablishment pieces. It needs, for example, writing highly critical of the nation's fraudulent public educational system. Also, the AD is particularly unfriendly to members of literary panels, be they Georgia Council for the Arts or the Massachusetts Council for the Arts. These Councils serve the corrupt American oligarchy, literary mediocrity, image-ridden fluff, obfuscation, and generally disengaged writing. The AD wants tough writing with Dylan Thomas rage, Arthur Rimbaud "et le poète soul engueulait l'univers," and Emersonian speak the rude truth. Feel free to resubmit.

Dear American Dissident: I understand, now, the focus of AD, and I applaud its mission. Most of my poetry, though formal and subtle, places into question not merely our established institutions, but our culture, language, and place in sense of time, geography and identity. I'll try to put some of those in the mail. Unfortunately, even someone like me who is struggling against the establishment, becomes, as I move toward “success” co-opted by it. The Georgia Council of the Arts is new for me, and some other groups of which I've become part of the hierarchy. I think more than anything that's the difficulty for the American artist. Success, even when we rage against it, leads to being swallowed, digested, and actively part of the machine. Thanks for the quick turn-around on the material and the honest feedback. I wish AD success, but to a measured degree, lest it become “establishtized.”

Dear Library of Congress (lcweb@loc.gov): What is the Library of Congress doing for the dissident sector in America? Would the library help fund my review, the American Dissident? I shall stop here, because I sincerely doubt that anyone will answer this missive. Isn't that what America has become, Robot responses or no responses from the nation's politicos and foundations? (No Response!)

Dear Dr. Agnew: Are you related to Spiro? Did you vote for Spiro? What an asinine idea: assembling an anthology with “happily aging boomers who re-joined the rat-race”... after parading around as hippie flower children, I add. I place your Poets & Writers advert on my hall of horrors list right next to Palm Springs Life: “for wealthy, upscale people who live and/or play in the desert.” Why not just call your anthology: HOW TO SELL OUT YOUR IDEALS: STORIES FROM 60s TURNCOATS? You could even add to the hypocrisy by prefacing it with a quote from Emerson: “We must walk upright and speak the rude truth in all its ways.” So much goddamn corruption in your ivory tower and this is all you could come up with? I pity you and that Faustian deal you made so very long ago. Yeah, get fat, get clone children, get pension payments, grant monies, then cancer, then croak. (No response)

Dear Janet Landman (Psych prof at Babson College): Thanks for your submission and interest in the American Dissident. Your writing is very good. Unfortunately, I felt the theme a bit frivolous. You mention Clinton as opposed to Teddy K.. But aren't they still boating together on the Vineyard? In any case, I hope you might resubmit and even spread the news of my existence. I could sure use your support. In fact, I could sure use the support of academe, the NEA, NEH and Mass. Cultural Council. You might wish to read my first editorial and updated guidelines at members.theglobe.com/enmarge. Since there is so much corruption in academe parading around under the misnomer POLITICS, perhaps you might wish to treat that subject RE Babson College. I would certainly be willing to publish such an essay. You might also wish to ask yourself why Babson would never hire a blacklisted professor like me, who blew the whistle to the deaf ears of Massachusetts on corruption at Fitchburg State and state public higher education in general. Indeed, my three letters of recommendation have since diminished to one. You might wish to ponder what those three letters really represent: Certified Fearing, Fawning and Following. I hope you might prove different from all the other academics I've contacted, relative to matters of academic corruption. But I shall hold no illusions. Clearly, higher education has sabotaged America, selling the country off to corporations. Today, higher education is indoctrination, no longer bastion of American first principles. (No Response)

Dear American Dissident: After making some phone calls I have decided not to do the story. As you said, the records are indeed confidential. I spoke with a consultant to Massachusetts State College Association, and she confirmed that the collective bargaining agreement keeps arbitration records confidential. Mary Scott from Human Resources at FSC cannot discuss the matter per the terms of the agreement: "Records are absolutely confidential." [...] -M. Charalambous, reporter Massachusetts News

Dear M. Charalambous: No problem and no disappointment... and no surprise. As mentioned I'd already tried just about everyone and everything. The issue that you and the media cannot, or simply refuse, to grasp is: Why the secrecy in public institutions? How can the public verify anything relative to the state colleges? How can you as a citizen verify that there is or is not rampant corruption, cronyism, nepotism and favoritism at a public college, if all records are confidential? By the way, it has always been strange to me that nobody wishes to consult the stack of documents that I possess that prove all of my assertions. God help you. And God help public higher education. If Massachusetts News is so very interested in public education, which I assume it really is not, then it will have to look into this matter of secrecy. (No response)

Dear Northwoods Journal (ME): Can I interest you in a tough essay on poetry in America today? -The American Dissident

Dear American Dissident: Don't know, haven't seen it. Allowing me to think mercenary for a moment; how will its publication increase sales? -Best, Bob

Dear Bob: It should diminish sales. Anything that's done right, that is, in line with Emerson's speak the rude truth should always diminish sales. So the question is: truth or dollars? -The American Dissident (Bob actually ended up publishing that essay! There are some tough guys out there... but like looking for the needle in the stack, eh?

 

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