Saturday 8 February 2014

Thanks, But I Prefer It My Way

Michael Lista's recommendation that young poets "Wait. Read more. Write more. Get better" hits a nerve.

6 comments:

Rebecca said...

may all poems be so utterly self-conscious as to have no nerve at all

Julie said...

Attacking a writer as a "poseur" is akin to 13 year olds attacking other 13 year olds in ties circa 2002. This is kind of disgusting and immature for what many consider a well respected publisher.

Paul Vermeersch said...

This is beneath you, Carmine.

Jake said...

Unsurprisingly, the Creative Writing™ industry's middle managers take offense with a call to publish less - Lista has impugned one of their best advertising strategies, the totemic and irrelevant first collection.

Cam said...

"This is beneath you, Carmine." - PV
I'm tickled by how often your colleagues admonish you to this effect; it strikes me as extremely generous on their part.
From where I stand, outbursts such as these are no more or less than what we should expect.

Gillian Wallace said...

Clearly I share Michael Lista and Carmine's approach to poetry. I am so grateful that my earlier work wasn't published and I didn't rush to quickly put together my first collection even though others encouraged me too. I am still working on the poems.

I don't understand Jon Paul Fiorentino's responses in the slightest. At no point did Michael tell any young writer to do it his way. He simply recommended that they "Wait. Read more. Write more. Get better". Many of you on here are attacking Carmine and yet it's Jon Paul who was falsly maligning Michael on all points.

Also, when it comes to name calling, if Jon Paul doesn't like being called a poseur, he perhaps shouldn't have dismissed Michael as a "White middle aged poet dude" when tweeting about his article in the first place. As one of his correspondents said: "what a silly way to try to delegitimize an insightful piece" (Daniel A. Nicholls ‏@nomopoetry).