The Panem et Circenses Prize

The American Dissident
A Literary Journal of Critical Thinking
In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine
A Forum for Examining the Dark Side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex

The Panem et Circenses Literary Prize

iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli vendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim imperium fasces legiones omnia, nunc se continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, panem et circenses. [Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things—bread and circuses.]
—Juvenal

Winners of the Panem et Circenses Literary Prize (formerly the Ostrich Prize for Literary Disengagement) receive a free advertisement in The American Dissident. Previous winners have included included Green Mountains Review, New Letters, River Styx, Thoughts for All Seasons, Oasis, Lungfull!, American Letters and Commentary, and Diane Ackerman of The New York Times “Writers on Writing” series. In these times of First Amendment violation and war, what surprising themes are proposed to keep the nation’s poets and writers entertained. Congratulations, winners, both past and present for making poetry NOT COUNT!

Winner, Issue #12

Barbara Kantz, Empire State College professor, for her anthology on women's accessories. Education: B.A. history; M.A. and Ph.D. Latin American history; M.S.W. social welfare. Other experience: 20 years in the public school system with New York State licenses in social studies and school social work. Taught in Teacher Education Program, SUNY Stony Brook. Private practice in clinical social work with children and adolescents. Exhibiting photographer, music performer. Mentoring interests: social work, social change and social criticism, disaster and disaster management, Latin America, international inequality, popular culture studies, cultural diversity, family studies, oral and visual history, the public school system, special education, child development, Gestalt Therapy, pedagogy, faculty development.

ANTHOLOGY: women’s accessories. Editor seeks creative nonfiction stories/essays/memoirs on women’s accessories. Chapters include: rings, shoes, purses, hats, clothing/body ornaments, jewelry. Deadline: March 15. Please include name, address, E-mail, brief bio. New and published writers welcome. Submissions to B. Kantz, 290 Main St., E. Setauket, NY 11733. E-mail: bkantz@esc.edu

Winner, Issue #9
Wisconsin Poet Laureate Ellen Kort, for her poetry workshop, “Stringing Words, Stringing Beads.” The competition was particularly tough this year, given the first-time ever congregation of the nation’s state laureates in Manchester, NH last April.

Winners, Issue #8

1.  FOR LITERARY DISENGAGEMENT

A. River Styx (St. Louis, MO) seeks poetry for its “Monster Issue.” “We’re not exactly sure what qualifies as a monster, but

that’s part of the fun.”

B. Thoughts for All Seasons (Miami, FL) celebrates the epigram, of 2-4 lines, as a literary form. Editor/Professor Michel P. Richard seeks to publish “rhyming, quatrains, limericks, [and] nonsense verse with good imagery.” Yes, you read that correctly: “nonsense verse.”

C. Oasis (Largo, FL) Editor Neal Storrs wants poetry and writing where “the style should seem to be the subject.”

2. FOR CUTTING-EDGE LITERARY DESPERATION TO BE UNIQUE
“LUNGFULL! magazine [New York, NY, Brendan Lorber, Ed.] is the only literary & art journal in America that prints the rough drafts of people's work so you can see the creative process as it happens. & as every journal claims, we're proud to present the most illuminating contemporary writing and art being conjured up. & as every journal claims, we're proud to present only magazine with a 100% waterproof laminated cover. Read me in the shower! Clean up is a snap!”

3. FOR WORLD-CLASS LITERARY POMPOSITY OR VACUITY

American Letters & Commentary features an article by Stanford University emeritus professor of Humanities Marjorie Perloff, who poses, then answers, the question, "How to write poetry after 9 the most illuminating contemporary writing and art being conjured up. It's also the /11?" The poesy prof quotes Ezra Pound, who when delirious wrote that poets were "the 'antennae of the race' and had to resist the 'language of the swindling classes.'" Yes, politicians, spokesmen, news anchors, and pundits. But for evident reasons the poesy prof fails to include amongst those swindlers academics and educationists. She calls upon poets to "resist this 'sloppy writing'—writing that undercuts the relation of expression to meaning" and to "'keep the language efficient' by refusing easy answers and invidious comparisons." "Precision, as poets have always known, is what matters."

Winner, Issue #7
The New York Times “Writers on Writing” series. Chosen writers in this series have written predictably dull, disengaged essays. “Poems Foster Self-Discovery” by Diane Ackerman is particularly pompous, even featuring one of her own poems:

Poems arrive as meteorites./ Collecting them, I try my best to impart/ impulses, the Morse code of the heart,/ but I do not understand the vernacular/ of fear that jostles me until art occurs,/ or why knowing you from afar/ spurs hours of working myself into the stars.

Another essay by Elinor Lipman, “A Famous Author Says: 'Swell Book! Loved It!',” discusses the art of blurbing: “A manila file folder labeled ‘To blurb or not?’ holds the galleys' cover letters, which I always mean to answer. Mostly I do; I e-mail the editor and make my excuse: Thank you, but I'm judging a contest and therefore have cartons of novels to read over the next three months. I'm on deadline. I'm leaving soon for a book tour. And the truest of all, ‘My name is on so many books this upcoming season that I fear it will render those endorsements meaningless.’ (My computer stores this document under ‘blurb moratorium template.’)” She notes: “I appreciate the sociology and transparency of blurbs: heads of M.F.A. programs praising their darlings, editors turned novelists praising authors turned girlfriends. I will see a mentor thanked in the acknowledgments for his support, his faith, his in-law apartment. Then I turn to the back cover and see the acknowledgee declaring the book ‘huge, important, dazzling, incandescent.’”