More Lame Snark: The Chronicle's Hit Piece on Foetry
OK, it's not really snark--it's trying to be serious criticism--but it is lame. Two people who I've never heard of have taken it upon themselves to make this pronouncement about Foetry in the Chronicle of Higher Education: "we need to carefully consider how we arrived, as a culture of creative people, at a moment in which a Web site as reprehensible as Foetry would find an audience at all."
Give me a fucking break. Oh, we're such a "culture of creative people," let's feel really superior now as we contemplate how reprehensible Foetry is. Oh that foul beast! I sniff upon Foetry and their recommendation that poetry contests do the same thing we are recommending they do! The careers they've ruined! The sterling reputations they've cast into utter disarray! How will these contest judges survive such ignominy? A pox upon Foetry! The Chronicle of Higher Education hath uttered its decree.
And I thought Foetry took itself too seriously. Foetry is guilty of some things: occasional self-pity and whinyness are two that come to mind. But at least Foetry doesn't ponder a question as stupid as why a site exposing fraudulent contests has gained an audience. Let me give "Casteen the Fourth" (that's his real name!) and Genoways a clue about why Foetry became popular: because cheating people out of their money sucks ass! Asking why Foetry found an audience is either staggeringly naive or snivelingly pompous, depending on whether these two really believe in what they're saying. A far better question than why Foetry is widely read is why officially-sanctioned academic outlets like the Chronicle are only now acknowledging the stench that's been under their noses. Maybe if organizations like A.W.P. and the Chronicle of Higher Education had been doing their jobs in the first place, Foetry wouldn't have gained the audience that so astonishes these two writers.
posted by Snark @ 10:13 PM
3 Comments:
I like the fact that promptly upon admonishing the goal of foetry.com (to illuminate & mend the practice of fixed contests) as absurd, unverifiable, & ineffectual, the Chronicle turns around & suggests the formation of what amount to contest ethics committees. But it has nothign to do with foetry.com, of course.
Good people,
Foetry.com, no doubt, unveiled a whole world of academic hanky-panky. But, that's not going to do much to revive an ailing art form (poetry) that was long ago subsumed by prose, popular music and film.
Give up on poetry.... There's no future in it!
Ever and anon.
I shall wake it up with my jar of vaseline, my blow up doll and my tear-stained copy of "Leaves of Grass."
But, seriously.... Who said anything about money. The audience for poetry is teeny tiny and the only reason that all of those books of verse are published is because of the MFA machine. I regret that I spent a few years of my youth taking modern American poetry seriously at all...although I do still have a place in my heart for the pre-20th century lyric.
80% of what's of value in modern American poetry is the pure snark and hoaxy weirdness of it, which is why this Website hits a chord.
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