Hello Again & Harriet & Comments

Well, it appears that we've fallen right into Jack Conway's trap.\r

Who really gets the last laugh here, re: 'censorship'?\r

What is that now, Jack...seven, eight sites you've completely trashed? I can't figure out if you're actually fighting for freedom of speech or working for the 'thought police'.

Thanks to the Harriet staff for making the policy transparent. The approach to moderation seems eminently . . . moderate!

Censorship is an action of the state or other agents who can actively suppress speech. The Poetry Foundation cannot do so. There is no "right" to post anything you want on the Poetry Foundation website. That's not what free speech means. If the PF deletes what you wrote, you remain free to write it & distribute it elsewhere. Likewise, I do not think it "censorship" that Joshua Clover does not accept comments on his blog. I am allowed to start my own blog & write whatever the hell I want. That means that there is no censorship issue here. Why on earth don't people understand what the word "censorship" means? When police agents seized all copies of Howl, that was censorship. When someone deletes some idiotic comment that insults people on a poetry blog, that's just an insistence on certain norms of civility that remain untouched by questions of government interference in free expression.

Okay, then, Michael...not 'censorship'.\r

Let's just say suppression, repression, elimination, abolishment, silencing.\r

Jeez, dude.

Well, it isn't any of those things, either, for the reasons adumbrated above. No one's "silencing" or "repressing" you if you can go around the corner & say whatever you like.

Well, I know I can't win this one because I'd be closing in on hypocrisy territory. I get very indignant when authorities tell private pub owners that they aren't allowed to permit smoking in their own establishment when the anti-smoking crowd could simply go elsewhere. I guess the same principle applies here.

"Censorship" often has connotations of being implemented by the state, but no one has suggested that state-sponsored censorship is taking place here.\r

Not to be totally rude, but since you're stressing out about people not knowing the definition of a word, I'd suggest opening a dictionary and finding that the word "censorship" can really just be any instance where there is "suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive".\r

Sure, the PF has no legal obligation to allow you to say anything,\r

but then I have a little more egalitarian view of "free speech", rather than your pretty libertarian one, so this may be where the disagreement lies. Saying someone is not being censored just because you can leave a large public forum and whisper whatever you have to say on a personal blog that no will read just seems a little disingenuous. But then I'd agree that Gary's comment was a little dramatic.

Michael,\r

"Howl" was not censored. There was merely a smut trial brought by the U.S. Post Office, which made Ginsberg famous. \r

The same thing happened to Joyce's "Ulysses" when it was being published by Margaret Anderson in her "Little Review." \r

This was before Sylvia Beach, who typically gets all the credit for "bravely" publishing "Ulysses." Actually it was Margaret Anderson, publisher of the "Little Review" who took the real risk when she was arrested for obscenity via the U.S. Post Office. The London editor for Margaret Anderson's review, who got "Ulysses" in the magazine was, you guessed it, Ezra Pound.\r

Getting your book banned for obscenity is probably the surest way, everything else being equal, to get into the canon.\r

Getting banned from a poetry site, however, does nothing for one's reputation, because implicitly the sense is that you have NOT been banned by prudes from the middle class, but by poets who read Allen Ginsberg in the bath.\r

Those who say Harriet has the right to censor because they are private and can run their salon any way they wish, sure, of course, no one is disputing that, or has ever disputed that.\r

"There is something that doesn't like a wall." There is a spirit (and not always an unpoetic one) that hates all rules, by principle, and that will 'have its way,' no matter what. This spirit can be good or bad, but there it is; it will always exist, and when it finds expression it can be extraordinarily wonderful, or it can be horrible. "A lilly that festers smells far worse than weeds." Keats said, "Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel." \r

Is politeness a rule, or a state of being? You have been rude to me, Michael, ever since I arrived here. I thought, "cool, there's freedom, here." Because I wouldn't want you to suppress your true feelings. I found your expression of rudeness here to be virtue, beyond my personal feelings of: 'ugh, someone's being rude to me.' I found your rudeness somewhat alarming, but the pain I felt was mitigated by a sense that freedom of expression was OK here. So when you wrote, more or less, "Don't listen to a thing Thomas Brady says, he's a fool," I thought, if I've created some electricity merely by putting forth aesthetic ideas, perhaps I'm doing well. \r

However, I'm prepared to accept that I'm wrong, and that I wasn't doing well. You did not convince me that my aesthetic ideas were wrong, but perhaps Harriet is correct that rudeness is unacceptable and that it is never a good thing.\r

The whole subject is mostly perfunctory. \r


Thomas

The anti-smoking crowd? You mean the not-wanting-to-breathe-toxic-cancer-causing-chemicals crowd?

Yeah, that's right...the up-tight, namby-pamby wusses.

Drama R us. Gee, maybe that's why I'm a writer. :-)

So, Matt, you resent having to go into a bar or a club where cigarettes are being smoked? Would you go into a gay bar and demand that everyone become straight? No, of course you wouldn't. If you weren't gay, you wouldn't go in, would you? So, if you want to avoid the "toxic-cancer-causing-chemicals", DON'T GO IN!

"Commenters now have the option to either reply to the general thread of a post, or to reply directly to a previous comment."\r

I'm trying to get my head around this. So there are two options? 1. reply to general thread of a post? 2. reply to a reply? Will #1 and #2 sometimes be the same? Can the #2 option break apart and have multiple 'replying-to-themselves streams' or just one stream?\r

Is there a site which has this feature that I can check out?\r

By the way, Gary, I did finally find the Silliman discussion you were talking about. One day I'll engage those Silliman creatures. I'll turn my Socratic ray on those silly post-avants. They won't know what hit them! That should be fun.\r

And Gary, you do make an interesting point re: smoking bans in bars. That's a case where a private establishment is told what to do.

I think you'll get a kick out of my most recent comment on Silliman made last night. I kind of like that term...the 'CoI'. It was inspired, of course, by Silliman's SoQ.

The "reply" button is in place now. Different threads of conversation are separated by dark green lines. We're working on the design of this to make it clearer, but for now, you can either:\r

1. hit reply and respond directly to the person whose name appears on the dark green line to the left of the word "reply" (your post will then appear directly below theirs), or\r

2. just add a comment in the box at the end of the conversation, and your post will appear at the bottom of the comments as it always has.

What we really need here is a 'day after' delete button. I would call it the 'sober now' button for when you review your posts and think "Jeez! Did I really say that? How snockered was I, anyway?" :-)\r

Besides, who could complain about self-censorship?

Thank you, Catherine!\r

Thomas

I sincerely hope that commentary that is legitimately critical of the work of poets that are featured in or affiliated with POETRY will be allowed (and perhaps that POETRY itself doesn't place itself above criticism of its loyal patrons). \r

Because I have serious issues with the past few issues: *snores* (except the manifestos were really good... except for AE Stallings' one which read like something in an elementary school poem contest... regardless of one's opinion on rhyme. i realize she is POETRY's token formalist, but is there no shame?).\r

anyway,\r

thanks.

Of course commentary legitimately critical of poets, POETRY, and poetryfoundation.org will be allowed. That's part of the fun!

Michael Robbins wrote: \r

"When someone deletes some idiotic comment that insults people on a poetry blog, that’s just an insistence on certain norms of civility that remain untouched by questions of government interference in free expression."\r

Ouch, Michael, that's a 180 from your earlier (rather embarrassing) attack on Kasey Mohammad for deleting Kent Johnson's relentlessly idiotic comments from Lime Tree, isn't it?

Ouch, whoever you are, what part of "norms of civility" & "insults" don't you understand? I don't think Kent's posts were "idiotic," but I'd never suggest that comments be deleted simply for idiocy. A number of sarcastic remarks occur to me on this subject.\r

Go read Kent's posts for yourself - oh, wait, you can't, since Kasey deleted them (& all posts in Kent's defense).\r

Here's Kent's account of it: http://www.blazevox.org/072-kj.htm. It's bracing reading.

Well, Michael, I read a number of those comments Kent made, back in the day, and as much as I find myself searching for more accurate descriptions than "relentless" and "idiotic," nothing quite seems to fit as snugly.\r

That Blazevox thing is almost as sad as your pointing to it.

Mr. Nichols says: "Of course commentary legitimately critical of poets, POETRY, and poetryfoundation.org will be allowed. That’s part of the fun!"\r

And who exactly determines what is legitimate? What exactly is the divide between legitimate and illegitimate? It is a fair question, especially since, a new protocol is now in order.\r

Terreson