Friday, December 22, 2006

Tupelo Press and Ann Rabinowitz Sell Souls to Satan

So I just got this email that seems like a perfect symbol of where poetry is at as an institution. So desperate are publishers for a return to some mythic time when poetry was a mainstream art form that (formerly) respectable presses will crap themselves at the slightest hint of mass market acknowledgment. Just a whiff of the stench of mainstream media sends them quivering away. It doesn't matter if such acknowledgment comes from the most despicable source of American "journalism." It doesn't matter if the editors themselves would never watch the program pimping their book. The slightest nod from corporate-sponsored bobble heads equals "a coup" for poetry--and those are their words, not mine.

So Fox News is trying to bring a highbrow touch to their nut-job pandering, faith-based news by trotting out a real live poet! Hmmm ... let's see, what type of contemporary poetry would be acceptable? I know (Gretchen Carlson scratches head) ... something Christmasy! Let's see, a book of Haiku about Rudolf? Santa sonnets? Maybe a book about the birth of baby Jesus?

Well, they couldn't find any contemporary poets writing those poems, so they got the next best thing--a book about the Virgin Mary! That's right, Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" has invited poet Anna Rabinowitz to come on their show and talk about her new tome, The Wanton Sublime. I wonder if Gretchen will be able to restrain herself from asking what it's like for a Jew to write about Jesus's mom.

Tupelo Press, breathless with joy, dashes off an email that reads like a press release, informing us of the news, citing blurbs, and concluding with this statement:

"What a coup for Anna, for poetry."

Uh, Yeah. Poetry is big time now, baby ... Fox News big! Maybe Laura Bush will invite Ms. Rabinowitz to the White House to give a reading! Then we'll know that poetry is truly right with the world.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

And there won´t be snow in Africa this Christmastime . . . this is clearly a meeting of the minds. Tupelo+Fox=Apocolypse

3:18 PM, December 26, 2006  
Blogger CLAY BANES said...

thanks for the weird news. i really can't say anything about tupelo's preening, because anybody who's taken a look knows. but, but, perhaps incidentally: the wanton sublime rocks.

12:40 AM, December 29, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Snark,

I will expose you.

You know what I am talking about.

Think back...2000

1:08 PM, December 29, 2006  
Blogger kav said...

haha, hilarious

7:18 PM, January 02, 2007  
Blogger Snark said...

Anonymous,

Too late. Already been exposed. Hell, I expose myself every chance I get. I've been arrested five times for such exposure. Nobody love exposition more than I do.

You can remember 2000?

12:53 PM, January 10, 2007  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Snark,

I've been reading your blog for some time now. I appreciate what you do, for what it's worth. I've bounced around your blog a bit. Maybe I read it earlier, maybe I couldn't find it... Do you have a manifesto? I appreciate your criticism (you're like a little Eliot), but worry you might be a little like a Pound, too. I just feel that it's too easy to pick apart other poets on almost any ground you fancy. Of course many are flaked as possible, many's the reading when I feel like I'm in a cult, then leave I leave it. I suppose what I'm asking is What is the high standard, what level of poetics/personality must a poet achieve to be cleared for flight by Dr. Snark? I know the simple answer might be that the purpose of this website does not aim to address goodness in poetry. But you're a hell of a critic, honestly, and it would be fascinating to see a contrast between what you snark vs. what you enjoy. You know, negative criticism is easy (you do it well), but how about the good. Even a small manifesto would be appreciated.

Here's something about the Rabinowitz appearance: (did you see it?) those rightists might be crazy, but they aren't beyond conversion. Most are Xtian converts, we assume. With that in mind, perhaps those rightists will buy the book and consequently buy more poetry and begin thinking differently about interactions, individually, and at the ballot. Point is, is it always bad, Dr. Snark, really? I don't eat cheese wiz, jerking off, and call it a great world, but surely there's something here, some Snarkian ideal worthy of defending.

Also, a question to everybody out there in blogger land: Does Murdoch own the regular fox (noncable) television channels too? I, like others, enjoy certain animated programs on regular fox. How bad is my involvement with Sunday evening programming on fox? It would be a wrought tactic for the conservative FOX to air liberal programming.

Keep up the (good) work,

D

9:02 PM, January 11, 2007  

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