Call to Fingers
Greetings from a gray-blue planet. Anyone who is reading this is invited to send poetry submissions to www.WordCatalyst.com. Send them NOW! Send your submissions to the attention of Shirley Allard. It's a great online magazine that provides you with airspace and reaches a readership that you had little access to before. We need to send a message to the world that there are real-life poets in the world who are ready to be read.
Which brings me to another point... I came across an article about a law professor who is representing the prisoners in Guantanamo. A worthy effort. He has put together a book of their poetry and it's being published by the University of Iowa Press. A questionable effort. If that's not insult enough to those of us who are trying to be published, it goes on. Robert Pinsky, a former US poet laureate, is writing the cover pr. I hope he's being paid well. If you wish to sample a few lines of the "poetry", it is quoted in a June Wall Street Journal article. You can draw you own conclusions of the verse. I am sure that in this group of men there is most likely a good candidate for a poet. I am also sure that there is probably a really good poem in the collection. However, just because you have lost your human rights, does not make you a great or even good writer. I know this makes me sound like a racist-bigot-nationalist. I am as left leaning as I can go without falling over. It's a matter of talent and pr. I also hate the "poetry" of Rod McWhatever-His-Name-IS. It's just awful drivel. But, he became famous for being famous. Could you image if Lowhand or Spires or Hilten became poets? They'd sell a ton, but it'd be just more cultural pollution. Contribute your stuff. Send notes to these cultural dunderheads. Act.