The Return of Professor 1984

[alan]

Today's Al-Jimzeera talking points include discussion of the great F0etry scandal and a link to this post from our old Foe, Janet Holmes, who says to Moby,

Well, I've said my piece. You can feel free to run or supress [sic] it; I can probably find another place to get the message across.

-- Janet Holmes

There are so many fun things I could say in response to her exchange with DLJ.  Let me mention just a few of them:

Because I have access to most of her email (Boise State is holding out on a few crucial documents) since the early days of Foetry, I can tell you that Janet is the master of suppression.  

Her efforts to silence this site included running a mailing list trying to raise money to out me.  Would she have been eager to create a legal fund for anyone else if she weren't involved?  Doubtful.

She "outed" multiple people she thought to be the person behind Foetry with libelous claims and nasty innuendo about many poets, including her own author, Aaron McCullough.  Nice editor you got there, Aaron.

She has lashed out at nearly every journalist that covered the Foetry story.  (The funny thing is that the media attention came about BECAUSE of her outing me).  

She is the only person to have blocked all emails sent from foetry.com from reaching officials at her employer: Boise State University.  She claims emails called for her "firing."  I have copies of all emails sent before she ordered the techies to bounce them.  I don't think even one of them called for her firing; several people called for her to step down as Ahsahta's editor.  At least Ramke had the decency.

There's more, of course, but I'll save them for later.

But let me say this:
One thing that delights me to no end is the blossoming friendship between Michael White and Janet Holmes.  They are perfect for each other, but I'm concerned that someone's gonna get hurt in the end. :twisted:

[jimmy]

Is the devil dude making a comeback? I never liked the devil dude.

xxxjimmy

[alan]

:shock:

[jimmy]

Now, see, that dude I like. He's all-purpose and always good for a laugh.

 :shock:

xxxjimmy

[mallie]

My favorite was the always the hatchet dude -- ideal for chasing sophists around with. We don't have access to that dude any more; what are we going to do if Tripiv or Craven come back? Better fill up the arsenal with the correct emoticons just in case.

[alan]

Not exactly an emoticon, but I always loved Janet with the flashing eyes the best.

And the mooner.  Those were the days.

Anyway, speaking of suppression, turns out Janet didn't post the entire exchange of emails with Moby.  Come on Janet!  Stop the hatin' and the suppressin'! [insert hatchet emo]  

Help us to understand your rules about freedom of information :roll:

[mirsk]

But the email exchange she does post on her blog is amusing. I especially like the use of the word "erm". I tried and tried and tried and tried to download your interview, alan, and today's as well. My computer is recalitrant. It is scheduled for a major upgrade later this week, so maybe then.

[Monday Love]

It seems that one is either a super-polite professional poet/teacher with a prize book and blurbs from Robert Pinsky and Mary Jo Bang, who publishes obscure poems of mice skeleton delicacy for The Boston Review and LIT, or one is an anonymous bully with low self-esteem in a "lynch mob" on Foetry.com.  There is no in-between.

The "bullies" are far more exciting and necessary for poetry today, but let us give the devil his due and admit the worth of the super-polite professionals who write obscure poems of mice skeleton delicacy.  They make a pretty good snack.  They avoid the "bullies," but when a message posted on Foetry.com hits too close to home, and their guilty conscience gets the better of them, and even in their placid state they are no longer able to hold back, they poke their indignant and intelligent faces into Foetry.com to protest the villainy of the "lynch mob" with the rhetoric they learned in the ivory tower.  What follows, in 99 cases out of 100, is awful to behold: the visiting fop is devoured in several bites.  The error the fop makes is this.  They assume the dichotomy described above is the true state of things.

But as Steven Ford Brown makes so eloquently clear, the issue is one of academic and intellectual freedom and Foetry.com happens to be on the right side of this issue.  Those like Janet Holmes, found to be foetic, cry the loudest against Foetry.com.  People like Holmes say they agree with Foetry.com's general complaint, they just feel the complaint should be made more quietly and less specifically.  

Shhhhhh.  Oh yes, we understand.  OK.  We'll be good.  Sorry, Janet.

Janet Holmes wants poets to be a 'little bit free.'  Not too much freedom, now.

Poets, take heart!  There will not be too much freedom.  The status quo will continue to feed the little poets who say the right things to her!  

The "bullies" will be exposed, and everything will be super-polite again.  You poets will not have to appeal to more than a handful of people who happen to be your friends!  And if you know the right people, then you will be free.

[jimmy]

I liked "erm" too--reminds me of a cartoon of Rorsarch of THE WATCHMEN I did last week but haven't posted yet, maybe I will now...

xxxjimmy

[alan]

My favorite was the always the hatchet dude -- ideal for chasing sophists around with. We don't have access to that dude any more; what are we going to do if Tripiv or Craven come back? Better fill up the arsenal with the correct emoticons just in case.

 :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:  :axe:

I brought back your favorite emoticons!!!

[jimmy]

Do you think the dude with the axe ever catches the other dude, or do they go on and on til infinity?

[alan]

Do you think the dude with the axe ever catches the other dude, or do they go on and on til infinity?

:shock:

[Wilson]

The axe is tipped in red.  I think he\'s been caught.