Vitriolic old cuss that this fellow can be, some old grudges are less reviled than others, and there are even unpleasant experiences that should be carefully preserved, stored in a red velvet lined cedar chest, to keep the moths from eating them. I was, one year in the early 1990s, relegated to underdog status at a poetry reading workshop. Like it was football, this grudge is best explained in play by play form.
Firstly, this very marginally known poet read his scribbles, per procedure, at the workshop. The circle of participants responded just swell to my first reading, and to my second reading, the next week, and the main honcho, a fine and defensive soul, expressed most positive regard for my stuff. Twas the third reading, a week forward, that some gentle souls were pulling out the hardware. Someone in the group objected to my work, and, I think he also objected to my entirety. Seems I didn't measure up to this person's dearest of calibrations.
He made a speech, in response to my third reading. First establishing that he was a working practitioner of some type of hot, happening therapy, he advanced his agenda by stating that all art is therapy. He didn't go so far as spell it out, but I got the hot encircled logo at the end of the branding iron. He and his favorites were therapeutic. Their poems were therapeutic. And a freshly smoking mark on my flanks was indicating that I was not therapeutic. My poems contributed nothing to the war on dysfunction. Not one suffering victim of social injustice could possibly achieve liberation by way of the shit I had been typing on paper. My accuser was a therapist, and I was a lousy little prick.
The therapy movement was prominent at the time. It was and stilll is a business. And an agenda. A sometimes overly aggressive, sometimes intrusive, often emotionally manipulative agenda. In the example above, a person was polarizing both poetry and the writers, and at the same time, relegating the medium to a singular, perhaps unwanted, purpose. I don't refute that art has therapeutic value, but that does not mean a therapist's poems are automatically better than mine. The dude was trying to lock in his position in the cultural community, and to lock other artists out. And I got the scarlet letter for being of no use to people who all need therapy.
I am fishing this old memory out of the illusory tar pits that best describe humanity at it's snottiest. My experience is exemplary of an annoying, lingering problem: The use of social agendas for personal gain. The therapy movement was a witch hunt. And a cash machine. And a fountain of leveraged social status. He was doing important meaningful work, and I'm a jack off. But I'm not. He was being a jack off. I'm not really all that pissed about it, but one of my agendas is to resist the misuse of social agendas. It's a globalized big pain in the ass.
Firstly, this very marginally known poet read his scribbles, per procedure, at the workshop. The circle of participants responded just swell to my first reading, and to my second reading, the next week, and the main honcho, a fine and defensive soul, expressed most positive regard for my stuff. Twas the third reading, a week forward, that some gentle souls were pulling out the hardware. Someone in the group objected to my work, and, I think he also objected to my entirety. Seems I didn't measure up to this person's dearest of calibrations.
He made a speech, in response to my third reading. First establishing that he was a working practitioner of some type of hot, happening therapy, he advanced his agenda by stating that all art is therapy. He didn't go so far as spell it out, but I got the hot encircled logo at the end of the branding iron. He and his favorites were therapeutic. Their poems were therapeutic. And a freshly smoking mark on my flanks was indicating that I was not therapeutic. My poems contributed nothing to the war on dysfunction. Not one suffering victim of social injustice could possibly achieve liberation by way of the shit I had been typing on paper. My accuser was a therapist, and I was a lousy little prick.
The therapy movement was prominent at the time. It was and stilll is a business. And an agenda. A sometimes overly aggressive, sometimes intrusive, often emotionally manipulative agenda. In the example above, a person was polarizing both poetry and the writers, and at the same time, relegating the medium to a singular, perhaps unwanted, purpose. I don't refute that art has therapeutic value, but that does not mean a therapist's poems are automatically better than mine. The dude was trying to lock in his position in the cultural community, and to lock other artists out. And I got the scarlet letter for being of no use to people who all need therapy.
I am fishing this old memory out of the illusory tar pits that best describe humanity at it's snottiest. My experience is exemplary of an annoying, lingering problem: The use of social agendas for personal gain. The therapy movement was a witch hunt. And a cash machine. And a fountain of leveraged social status. He was doing important meaningful work, and I'm a jack off. But I'm not. He was being a jack off. I'm not really all that pissed about it, but one of my agendas is to resist the misuse of social agendas. It's a globalized big pain in the ass.
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