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current Monday
Report below!
This week's report by Jack Saunders, ULA
I Will Not Become a 501(c)(3) Not-For-Profit Corporation
The Literature Panel was meeting in Tallahassee for two days, to award
grants to arts organizations and to individual artists. The meetings were
open to the public, and time was set aside for public comment. I wrote some
comments down. I was a member of the public. I had comments.
I drove over to Tallahassee for the meetings. The first day was arts
organizations.
It was interesting to put faces to names of people I had written to, the head
of the Division of Cultural Affairs, some grants specialists and arts
consultants. None of them had written back, although once I got a form letter
from Evelyn Ploumis-Devick, PhD, saying that Secretary of State George
Firestone thanked me for my contribution to the arts and encouraged me to
apply for a grant again next year.
The first business was giving grants to little magazines associated with
university writing programs. These were house organs for careerists with a
union card, and contained nothing anyone would want to read. They were
also a closed shop to anyone who didn’t teach in, or pay to take courses
from, a writing program.
Then Les Standiford, the head of the writing program at FIU, defended a
grant to host a writing seminar at Seaside, one of the richest communities in
the state. He had the gall to pitch it as economic outreach, as Walton County
is among the poorest counties in the state. I wanted to ask him how many
scholarships he gave to writers from Hogtown Bayou.
Of course the answer was none, but they got the grant anyway.
Then a woman spoke for a grant to give at-risk teenagers in the Juvenile
Justice System an outlet for their rap lyrics as street poetry. It might not be
high art—it was doggerel—but one should not be elitist in the distribution of
arts money.
Should not what? Arts grants were supposed to be based on merit, and
reward only the best, not the unqualified, because they thought they should
get a grant, too.
Even though poets got little enough of the arts money, some was diverted
for this project because the application was written in Total Quality
Management (TQM) jargon, with implementation of goals and measurable
objectives and fiscal accountability, and diversity was an important
consideration, and quality was subjective, and there was an educational bias
built into the guidelines, that discriminated against uneducated hoodlums,
juvenile delinquents, repeat offenders, and so forth.
Then it was time for public comment.
I said that, while I had been publishing my own work for 20 years, and had
never made a dime at it, and never would, since you don’t make money
publishing poetry and experimental fiction, you lose money, my small press
was not allowed to apply for a grant as an arts organization because I would
not become a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation.
I would not become a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation because (1) I was
for-profit, and expected to make money from it, some day, and (2) I did not
want a board of directors second-guessing my artistic choices. Money wasn’
t important, art was. I didn’t want someone else telling me what to publish
based on how much money it would bring in. Or what not to publish,
because it was controversial, or too artsy-fartsy.
I said that putting money before art was the tail wagging the dog, or putting
the cart before the horse. I thought the rules should be changed to allow me
to apply for state support. As a small press.
Look at what the 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporations (a little magazine
associated with a university did not have to be not-for-profit, since the
university was an educational institution) were publishing. Navel lint. That
wouldn’t disturb a butterfly.
There was an awkward silence.
I was thanked for my input.
Nobody else had any comments.
Then it was time to discuss individual artists.
As the panelists discussed individual artists, by number, so as not to reveal
their identity, and gave a grant here, declined a grant there, I heard what
sounded like bullshit, to me. Cant. They talked about what was good writing
and bad writing in a way that I did not agree with. The way academics talk
about writing. This was both the reason I was not an academic and the
reason I did not get a grant. It was also the reason all the people who got the
grants were academics. The people who were giving them were academics.
When it came time for public comment I objected to the blind judging
requirement, that would not let me enter a sample of writing that contained
my name.
I said that would have eliminated American writers from Thoreau and
Whitman, to Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, to Hemingway, Norman Mailer,
and Truman Capote.
I should be able to enter autobiographical work, work in which I was a
character in my own books.
I said blind judging was a canard, anyway. The judges always knew how to
get the money to their teachers’ pets.
This sounded like the griping of a disgruntled applicant, to the panel, and the
arts professionals, but I asked them if they thought it was fair that the same
people got grants every year and the same people were excluded, year
after year.
I was thanked for my comments.
There was an awkward silence.
Nobody else had anything to add.
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