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Classical Poets Live with Andrew Benson Brown
Episode 7 Part 1: The Problem with Arts Grants
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Andrew Benson Brown has had poems and reviews published in a few journals. His epic-in-progress, Legends of Liberty, will chronicle the major events of the American Revolution if he lives to complete it. Though he writes history articles for American Essence magazine, he lists his primary occupation on official forms as ‘poet.’ He is, in other words, a vagabond.
Another wonderful expose of the corruption at the heart of the American arts/literature industry. The most painful aspect of it is that taxpayers who don’t want the meaningless rubbish are paying for it. I can say with complete confidence that not much is different in the UK: the talentless and woke are lauded and funded and the real talent has to find its own way through the weeds and thickets. Still, I guess if it were easy – like poetry – how would the heroes emerge? Well done ABB – I have shared my post on FB – hope others share this where they can.
Thanks, James. Nobody else is really addressing this issue—at least on YouTube—kind of flies under the conservatives’ radar given all the other crazy stuff happening in the world. Though many of us in the classical poetry world are inhabiting the cultural ghetto, my hope is that we can eventually rectify this…slowly, slowly.
One thing should always be recognized about the left, the woke, the liberals, the social justice warriors, and all the rest of those who posture as helpers of the neglected and marginalized: they never miss a chance to arrange for themselves to get vast outlays of taxpayer cash.
The NEH and the NEA are now completely controlled by parasitic classes whose interest in the arts and the humanities are purely mercenary.
Well said about their mercenary quality. They have to fund their lavish estate living some way. They’ll eventually run out of other people’s money eventually, but we’ll all be bankrupt by then.
This is wonderfully insightful and entertaining work as usual, Andrew. You skim over the big grant winners and dismiss their poetry (which is similar to poetry you have analyzed in detail in earlier episodes). In case others are wondering about this I’m posting below a noted poem from the grant winner. People may simply judge for themselves. There are a lot of creative and good qualities one might find below, but genuinely taking the poem and measuring the relative quality, historically and in terms of what might speak to average well educated (non-poet) readers, and we find that it simply does not qualify as an exceptional or highly skillful poem.
American Income
BY AFAA MICHAEL WEAVER
The survey says all groups can make more money
if they lose weight except black men…men of other colors
and women of all colors have more gold, but black men
are the summary of weight, a lead thick thing on the scales,
meters spinning until they ring off the end of the numbering
of accumulation, how things grow heavy, fish on the
ends of lines that become whales, then prehistoric sea life
beyond all memories, the billion days of human hands
working, doing all the labor one can imagine, hands
now the population of cactus leaves on a papyrus moon
waiting for the fire, the notes from all their singing gone
up into the salt breath of tears of children that dry, rise
up to be the crystalline canopy of promises, the infinite
gone fishing days with the apologies for not being able to love
anymore, gone down inside earth somewhere where
women make no demands, have fewer dreams of forever,
these feet that marched and ran and got cut off, these hearts
torn out of chests by nameless thieves, this thrashing
until the chaff is gone out and black men know the gold
of being the dead center of things, where pain is the gateway
to Jerusalems, Bodhi trees, places for meditation and howling,
keeping the weeping heads of gods in their eyes.
Thanks for posting this, Evan. Should have dwelled a bit more on the Wallace Stevens prize winners. Ha, if I had known about this 100K-worthy poem I would have read the first few lines on the show for pure entertainment value. Weaver must be experiencing a lot of “pain” as “the gateway to Jerusalems” as he is spending his reward.
“Creative and good qualities?” You’re being too kind, Evan.
I’ll admit there are a few good images and phrases, but only when considered individually. This is just a ranting prose sentence, arbitrarily chopped into lines, with images strung together in a completely nonsensical way. What does it mean to compare hands to “the population of cactus leaves on a papyrus moon / waiting for the fire?” Reminds me of some of Hart Crane’s poetry, just stream-of-consciousness word soup that imitates profundity. Except as far as that goes, Crane did it a lot better.
As always, Evan, you are a generous and non-malicious person and it must have heartened you a heart-beat to see a reference to Bodhi trees, but frankly this is such pretentious, confused and incoherent twaddle that its being awarded $100K is nothing short of breath-taking. The ‘victim’ narrative with which it starts is a marvel of how not to develop a non-poem. It fails to be poetry, but what ‘thinking’ means is to ‘think through’: so this doesn’t even add up as prose. It disguises its lack of prosaic thought by pretending to be a poem! I guess for $100K that is a kind of genius!
Another excellent presentation, Andrew.
Thanks, Cheryl.
I enjoyed the podcast, Andrew and also the interview of C.B. Anderson. Thank you.
Thanks for your support, jd.