The American Dissident: Literature, Democracy & Dissidence
SPEECH PUNISHED as if a CRIME IN BARNSTABLE, MASSACHUSETTS
Sturgis Library Director Lucy Loomis permanently banned the editor without warning or due process on June 19, 2012 for written criticism of the hypocritical policy that "libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view.” The banning clearly proved the point! My civil rights were being denied because I could not attend any political or cultural events held at my neighborhood library. The ACLUM, PEN New England, Office for Intellectual Freedom (American Library Association), Barnstable County Human Rights Commission refused to help the editor obtain justice. The local hacks, poets, artists, journalists, and other librarians didn't give a damn either. TheCape Cod Times refused to even cover the story. Russell Streur, however, pursued the matter (see Camel Saloon). A decade later, at my request, Loomis agreed to finally lift the ban (November 2022). Check out The American Dissident blog for P. Maudit socio-political cartoons et al. The American Dissident, a biannual 501 c3 nonprofit publication founded in 1998, seeks "rude truth" submissions, preferably stemming from the questioning and challenging of power, preferably local, and with a touch of personal risk.
Updated 05/14/2023. Issue #45 distributed.
Focus
The American Dissident seeks to publish truth—left or right—and especially opposes political correctness and its facile knee-jerk dismissal of any valid criticism as racist, islamophobic, sexist, homophobic, right-wing extremist, nazi, etc. Read more...
The Editor's Curriculum Mortae
To get a teaching job in academe, one must present a CV or Curriculum Vitae, which inevitably presents reasons why one will likely fit in, and otherwise not buck the university system, go against the collegial grain, or make controversial waves. Thus, I present the opposite of a CV, the CM or Curriculum Mortae. Academe is a mess today of pc, anti-free expression, and multiculti-diversity crap. So, why not hire those who present CMs to help shake the shit up? Read the CM...
Notes on Risk and Rude Truth
Few poets and writers dare risk anything at all—certainly not career, nor publication and invitation opportunities. Few dare speak the rude truth because most are driven by hopes of "success," fame, and recognition. Read more...
Démocratie en péril... au Québec
Cette partie du site contient, entre autres, les notes critiques du rédac'chef sur le Festival International de la Poésie de Trois-Rivières. Lire encore...
Why Poetry Doesn't Matter
Harvard’s Stephen Burt and an army of similar academic literary clones control poetry, act as offical Soviet-like gatekeepers of poetry, censor what they do not like, ban those who criticize them, assure the high-brow bourgeois innocuity of poetry, and thus constitute the main reason why poetry does not matter. Burt is depicted in the cartoon below. For a larger version, click on the cartoon. Scroll down to check out other parts of why poetry doesn't matter, including the Academy of American Poets, which permanently banned me from commenting on its website.
Censorship and general disdain for vigorous debate seem to be increasing deplorably in America today. Dismissing criticism and critics with denigrating epithet has become common practice. Rare is the person who will examine the facts and logic presented. Read more...
Newfoundland by the Editor
Photo Exhibit at Camel Saloon.
“The Road to Big Brook" (Downhome magazine)
"Great Caribou Island" (Downhome magazine)
Other Essays and Cartoons by the Editor
See Global Free Press and GFP.
Books by the Editor
We Come and We Go. 2020. 54 pp poems. $9.
Loser: Chronicles of a Failed Academic. 2020. 148 pp. $12.
The Recusant. 2019. 574 pp autobiographical novel on teaching at an all black college in the south. 2019. Send $19.
Suburbanitica. 2018. 149 pp autobiographical novel with cartoons here and there on teaching at an all black college in the south. $12.
Ah, O'Neillians! 2018. 25 pp one-act irreverent play with a few cartoons. $6. View excerpt.
P. Maudit: Lone Literary Sniper. 2017. 56 pp collection of highly critical P. Maudit cartoons. $9.
Black Hole Abyss, Being Then Nothingness (56 pp, jam-packed), includes poems, dictums, and short essays. Send $9. View excerpts.
Transcendental Trinkets, a compilation of essays, poems, broadsides, cartoons, and journal notes all pertinent to Thoreau, Walden Pond, and Concord, where the editor lived for over a decade and incarcerated for a day. 89 jam-packed pages. Send $9 for a copy. View excerpts.
Leaves of Democracy/Poems of Heresy (68 pp, jam-packed) and includes poems, dictums, and an essay challenging Whitman's 1855 "Preface." Send $9. View excerpts.
Triumvirate of the Monkeys includes more critical poems and dictums by the editor and is 72 pp long... jam-packed. Send $9 for a copy.
OIL OF VITRIOL. Selected Poems. Petroglyph Press. 2009. 60-page chapbook of highly critical poems. $10. For excerpts, read on...
Où c’qui faut pas/WHERE A POET OUGHT NOT. 2008. Gival Press. 170pp bilingual French/English... both versions written by the editor. Poems and several essays. $15. For excerpts, read on..
Parrhesiastic Edge (ContraOstrich Press, 2004). Poems and "The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack," a long essay written by the editor on democracy and literature and the case for parrhesiastic poetry, writing, and art. 64pp. $8. For the essay, read more...
Blackballed Albatros (ContraOstrich Press, 2001)
TOTAL CHAOS: Behind the Scenes of a National Blue-Ribbon High School. 2001. People's Press. 315-page autobiographical novel. $12. For an excerpt, read on...
No Lite
Testing the Waters of Democracy
The following organizations, alas, only represent a sample, as personally tested by the editor over the years. Each proved either indifferent or outright hostile towards the editor's exercise of Freedom of Expression. Because of that exercise, the editor was permanently banned from Sturgis Library, spent a day in a Concord jail cell, was trespassed for six months by Watertown Free Public Library, was banned from commenting on the Academy of American Poets web site forums, and lost jobs and job possibilities. Just the same, if I could do it all over again, I'd do it the same damn way! FREEEEEEEDOM!!!
American Library Association
Academy of American Poets
ACLU Massachusetts
Adjunct Advocate
Alehouse Press
Alternate Press Review
American Association of University Professors
American Public University System
Arts Foundation of Cape Cod
Barnstable County Human Rights Commission
Barnstable Town Council
Bass River Press
Bennett College
Boston Poetry Union
Briar Cliff Review
Cape Cod ART
Cape Cod Museum of Art
Cape Cod Times
Chronicle of Higher Education
City Lights Book Store
Clams Library System of Cape Cod
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Concord Cultural Council
Concord Festival of Authors
Concord Poetry Center
Concord Journal
Contemporary Poetry Review
Cultural Center of Cape Cod
Davenport University
Divide
Elmira College
Festival International de la Poésie de Trois-Rivières
Fine Arts Work Center of Provincetown
Fitchburg State University
Foetry
Georgia Review
Grambling State University
Inside Higher Ed
Martha's Vineyard Regional High School
Mashpee Public Library
Massachusetts Cultural Council
Massachusetts Poetry Festival
Mid-Cape Cultural Council
National Endowment for the Arts
National Coalition Against Censorship
New England First Amendment Center
New Pages
New York Quarterly
Pen New England
Poetry Foundation
Poets House
Poetry Society of America
Poets & Writers Magazine
Provincetown Arts
Pulitzer Prize
Pushcart Prize
Rattle
Robert Creeley Award
Stone Soup Poets
Sturgis Library
Suffolk University Poetry Center
Tufts University Experimental College
University of Massachusetts
Walden Pond State Reservation
Watertown Free Public Library
Writers-at-Large
Democracy in Peril—PC Ideology
Unsurprisingly, The American Dissident has been dismissed as sexist and racist by PC ideologues. Read more...
Democracy in Peril—Islamization
In the New York Times, Washington Post, Time magazine, and other PC publications, the increasing foothold of Islam (Sharia law) in Europe, Canada, and even America is rarely if ever reported. Read more...
Links
Examine links to sites purportedly devoted to Freedom of Speech. Check 'em out...
Recent AD Blog Posts
Check out the blogs on Anita Walker (MCC), Gibor Basri (UCal), John Sexton (NYU), Keli Goff, Joan Houlihan (Concord Poetry Center), Hanna Pylvanien, Mark Gonzales, Becky Tuch, Lucy Loomis, Jon E. Travis, Mary Jo Bang, Betsy Newell, Stephen Burt, etc.
Read about these characters here...
Unusually Critical Essays
The essays in this section help illustrate the raison d'être of
The American Dissident. Each was written by a known author (e.g., Orwell, Emerson, Camus, Thoreau, Goytisolo, and Solzhenitsyn). The editor culled them from extensive readings over the decades. Such essays are rare.
Read more...
Unusually Critical Poems
The poems in this section help illustrate like the essays above the raison d'être of
The American Dissident. Each was written by a known author (Villon, Byron, Jeffers, Saro-Wiwa, Bukowski, Mandelstam, etc.). The editor culled them from extensive readings over the decades. Poems of a critical nature are very rare. The idea of a critical poem almost seems taboo.
Read more...
Sixties Sellouts
During the Sixties, we'd call those who subverted their principles for money and power SELLOUTS. Unfortunately, the term became conveniently outmoded as the sellout phenomenon generalized over the years. Read more...
Student Comments
One of the most positive things regarding
The American Dissident was Professor Dan Sklar's inviting me to speak to his creative writing students at Endicott College. Sklar is a rare, very rare bird in the academic nest.
Read more...
Contributors to The AD
Without the generous support of contributors, The American Dissident would not be alive and kicking today. Both Dolores Granger and Russell Streur, especially, have been notable benefactors. Not one cultural council from the NEA to the Concord Cultural Council and Mid-Cape Cultural Council will accord the journal grant money. Examine some of the essays, poems, and reviews published in The American Dissident. Read more...
Issue #38 Front Cover
A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Alberto RIos, is depicted, as inspired by his statement on poetry and pirates. Unsurprisingly, student editors Sabine Galvis and Kim Rapanut at Arizona State University, where Rios teaches, did not respond, nor did RIos or any of the chancellors contacted. Silence has become quite golden in academe...
Issue #37 Front Cover
Issue #37 front cover features New York Quarterly staff, as well as poet Gary Goude and P. Maudit. The general criticism presented regards the establishment poetry modus operandi of unbridled self-congratulating and backslapping.
Issue #34 Front Cover
Issue #34 front cover features InsideHigherEd editors Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman as Hon. Censors. Also featured is Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire, arguing in favor of censorship of the editor's comments regarding her IHE article. See to the left Inside Higher Ed for her actual email.
Issue #29 Front Cover
Issue #29 front cover features the massacred cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, as well as Islam apologists Obama and would-be Hillarius the First. Tout est foutu means everything is fucked...
Issue #26 Banned
Now, what in the last issue of The American Dissident would have made library director Kathleen Mahoney wish the issue to be censored and banned from the library system? Mahoney had agreed to subscribe, had me fill out a tax form, and send her a copy of the journal. Read more...
Issue #22 Banned
In fact, issue #22 was presented to Lucy Loomis, director of Sturgis Library, as a free subscription offer. She rejected the offer. Months later she permanently banned me from Sturgis w/o due process for a speech crime (an open letter disseminated to the library directors of the Clams Library System of Cape Cod). See Sturgis Library on the list to the left for details.
Caustic Cartoons by P. Maudit
P. Maudit cartoons are featured on The American Dissident blog and elsewhere on this website. Read more...
Reviews of The American Dissident
The editor has had to pound on doors to get The American Dissident reviewed. Library Journal and American Libraries Magazine (American Library Association) both, for example, simply refuse to review it. Read more...
The Editor Interviewed
The editor has had to pound on doors to get interviewed. Read more...
The Editor Criticized
Established-order proponents and apparatchiks, as well as most others, when criticized by the editor have dismissed The American Dissident almost always with ad hominem. Read more...
Literary Letters from Issue #29 & #23
Each issue of The American Dissident contains an ample selection of letters questioning and challenging free-speech scorning academics, literati, editors, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians, etc. Read more...
Parrhesiastic Writing
"The Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack" is a lengthy essay written by the editor on democracy and literature and the case for parrhesiastic poetry, writing, and art. Read more...
Caustically Critical Reviews
The editor is not an aficionado of backslapping and self-congratulating, pervasive, to say the least, in the literary milieu, both high and low brow. Only a fool, "brilliant" or whatever, would run out to buy a book or literary journal because someone "brilliant" or whatever endorsed it with the usual suspect vocabulary "brilliant," "cutting edge," "great," "original" "one of the world's most significant," "one of the best," "stunningly beautiful," "innovative," etc., etc. Read more...