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| Read the current Monday Report below! |
The ULA Monday Report!
This week's report by "Scofflaw" (FDW)
Letter To The Editor,
Philadelphia Daily News
To the Editors and Mr. Timpane,
Inquirer staff writer:
As pertains Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer, Sunday April 19th ,
Arts And Entertainment Section, “City’s Poetry Scene Offers
Variety Of Venues," John Timpane, an Inquirer staff writer and
as we later find out a member of one of the writer’s non-profits
prominently pushed in this relatively sizable piece of “yellow”
journalese.
Having had been a working class street- poet in Philadelphia off
and on for more than thirty years, I usual prefer to glean and
then pass on commenting on the Inquirers periodic’ly trundling
out a “poetry scene article every few decades.
But this particular time there are especially arrogant repressive
and embarrassingly unqualified fawning “spin” calculated
throughout in Mr., Timpane’s feature that, during critical socio-
economic times such as these when, like it or understand it or
not, the city’s populace and the reading/ writing/thinking
American public need their grassroots, populist, artists and
poetic- voices, recognized and mobilized. Well, such are here,
have been here, and this is why I feel it necessary to “step up” to
the plate. Even more so since I am an active- member of the
locally, nationally, and internationally, “infamous” Underground
Literary Alliance: an independent DIY grassroots cooperative,
for instance, and therefore pretty much without financial means
or official systemic “authorization” --- something that all of the
groups (re: ponzi- schemes or “fronts“), non- profits, magazines
and journals, etc. touted in this article certainly do have and in
some cases have too much of (taxpayer money and
academic/corporate favoritism, for instance) given the standard
that President Obama and his “posse” articulates, namely,
beneficial on practical as well as ideal levels for the people
especially those under present conditions in need of succor.
Whereas the ULA, and myself most pointedly as one poet ,an
equal among equals, in the Philadelphia underground culture,
where verbal arts and public performance’s concerned, have
shown all those attribute such as excitement, entertainment as
but a surface in play, inspiration by “example” etc. and social-
cultural populist interaction that the underground culture has
founded, cultivated, shared , for decades, which Timpane has co-
opted and assigns to “his scene” on order of entrenched and
hostile monopoly (s).
Fact is simply that poets especially American poets are
historically as well as traditionally advocates and catalysts of not
just change but of shifts in paradigms, and “mirrors” that the
democracy can therein see itself reflected and lifted up to full
potential through the medium of communication and the
conducting of life.
Mr. Timpane’s article has either deliberately or else misdirected
by “controlling” third parties because he don’t know no better
left out every stitch of evidence of the fact that the City has an
important populist underground literary scene made up of
individual poets, performers, and literary bohemians who
struggle to gain access to the people from which are linked to by
point of origin and experience, who are radically independent
and generous in the pursuit of sufficient livelihood, and who come
together to effect “truth and beauty” in action as a matter of
social conscience beside raising common everyday speech of the
street, of the authentic neighborhoods, to the higher emotional
intellectual states.
None of this or these are mentioned or referred to in this
article--- but this is consistent in a paper that as of late suffered
dearly for its sticking to profit and bottom lines and submitting to
the agendas-- locally-- of the “ruling” corporations and
institutions some of the most powerful ones in fact pulling the
strings of this article behind and “above” the scenes.
Again, this why I have in the end decided to write it this letter,
attempted to see if might see the light of day on the city’s great
editorial pages, and finally sent it to the Daily News as its
intended style and content are of a more public and populist
(and hence local) concern compared to those of the Sunday
Inquirer.
From our vantage of under-standing whether Mr. Timpane is
aware of it, this article is military- industrial complex
propaganda in the service of a small group of special interests as
evidenced especially since the individual poet/ writer/ producer
is spoken for but nowhere directly referenced and, whereas the
ULA’s whole resistance to this complex reflects our advocacy of
the rights, public accessibility, and independence of individual
writers, poets, and artists is primary as it is with individual
artists themselves, and not dominance of administrations and
conflicted bureaucracies. What a coincidence that Mayor Nutter
was lobbying (for stimulus bucks) just the week before or so
Sunday the 19th tight along these same lines and agendas
referring to ”the culture and arts industry” and the “six
thousand” people therein involved. No doubt all of them
administrators and board members as well as the same invisible
operators pulling his strings. Provencial academic cartels and
insiders with the University Of Pennsylvania and Temple
Universities close behind ”cooking the books” and “loading the
deck” in order to justify their MFA writing factory systems ( and
that be’s only half of it! ) while pacifying the greed for power and
profit of the monolithic publishing concerns concentrated in
nearby Manhattan (so that the complete “ivory axis of evil” of
Columbia and Princeton should be throw-ed in here also!).
These are the big head of the octopus, while governmental/
corporate entitled literary pogroms and tentacles bring up the
rear. Similar to Immanent Domain and “red- lining”, we have for
ourselves here a sorta cultural cleansing of the underprivileged
and undesirable unaffiliated un-coopted poet and writer in the
name of gentrification and hegemony. The same agendas that
have brought the Inquirer in kind “down” in the last few years,
and, along with Mr. Timpane and the institutionalized elites,
“up” behind the cultural-economic divides and their “hear-say”
reactionary flim-flam in West Philadelphia and Center City.
Finally I can easily delve into specific and publicly name names
on both side of this vital equation this letter implies but will not
unless asked nice. Furthermore I and, with solidarity, the ULA
challenge the Philly newspapers to concoct a likewise
investigative feature article this other side, this cultural outside,
advanced out of fairness and for reasons of living literary history
which no one “owns”. Then again, for the literate public I beckon
them to partake in all our culture in- the- flesh at Germ Books
And Gallery on May 16th, in the Fishtown Kensington ‘hood,
and decide for themselves where their “stimulus” tax-payer
dollars might be better served.
===============================================
The Letter penned by Scofflaw aka FDW (Frank Walsh)
===============================================
CLICK HERE TO READ THE PREVIOUS MONDAY REPORT!
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
This week's report by "Scofflaw" (FDW)
Letter To The Editor,
Philadelphia Daily News
To the Editors and Mr. Timpane,
Inquirer staff writer:
As pertains Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer, Sunday April 19th ,
Arts And Entertainment Section, “City’s Poetry Scene Offers
Variety Of Venues," John Timpane, an Inquirer staff writer and
as we later find out a member of one of the writer’s non-profits
prominently pushed in this relatively sizable piece of “yellow”
journalese.
Having had been a working class street- poet in Philadelphia off
and on for more than thirty years, I usual prefer to glean and
then pass on commenting on the Inquirers periodic’ly trundling
out a “poetry scene article every few decades.
But this particular time there are especially arrogant repressive
and embarrassingly unqualified fawning “spin” calculated
throughout in Mr., Timpane’s feature that, during critical socio-
economic times such as these when, like it or understand it or
not, the city’s populace and the reading/ writing/thinking
American public need their grassroots, populist, artists and
poetic- voices, recognized and mobilized. Well, such are here,
have been here, and this is why I feel it necessary to “step up” to
the plate. Even more so since I am an active- member of the
locally, nationally, and internationally, “infamous” Underground
Literary Alliance: an independent DIY grassroots cooperative,
for instance, and therefore pretty much without financial means
or official systemic “authorization” --- something that all of the
groups (re: ponzi- schemes or “fronts“), non- profits, magazines
and journals, etc. touted in this article certainly do have and in
some cases have too much of (taxpayer money and
academic/corporate favoritism, for instance) given the standard
that President Obama and his “posse” articulates, namely,
beneficial on practical as well as ideal levels for the people
especially those under present conditions in need of succor.
Whereas the ULA, and myself most pointedly as one poet ,an
equal among equals, in the Philadelphia underground culture,
where verbal arts and public performance’s concerned, have
shown all those attribute such as excitement, entertainment as
but a surface in play, inspiration by “example” etc. and social-
cultural populist interaction that the underground culture has
founded, cultivated, shared , for decades, which Timpane has co-
opted and assigns to “his scene” on order of entrenched and
hostile monopoly (s).
Fact is simply that poets especially American poets are
historically as well as traditionally advocates and catalysts of not
just change but of shifts in paradigms, and “mirrors” that the
democracy can therein see itself reflected and lifted up to full
potential through the medium of communication and the
conducting of life.
Mr. Timpane’s article has either deliberately or else misdirected
by “controlling” third parties because he don’t know no better
left out every stitch of evidence of the fact that the City has an
important populist underground literary scene made up of
individual poets, performers, and literary bohemians who
struggle to gain access to the people from which are linked to by
point of origin and experience, who are radically independent
and generous in the pursuit of sufficient livelihood, and who come
together to effect “truth and beauty” in action as a matter of
social conscience beside raising common everyday speech of the
street, of the authentic neighborhoods, to the higher emotional
intellectual states.
None of this or these are mentioned or referred to in this
article--- but this is consistent in a paper that as of late suffered
dearly for its sticking to profit and bottom lines and submitting to
the agendas-- locally-- of the “ruling” corporations and
institutions some of the most powerful ones in fact pulling the
strings of this article behind and “above” the scenes.
Again, this why I have in the end decided to write it this letter,
attempted to see if might see the light of day on the city’s great
editorial pages, and finally sent it to the Daily News as its
intended style and content are of a more public and populist
(and hence local) concern compared to those of the Sunday
Inquirer.
From our vantage of under-standing whether Mr. Timpane is
aware of it, this article is military- industrial complex
propaganda in the service of a small group of special interests as
evidenced especially since the individual poet/ writer/ producer
is spoken for but nowhere directly referenced and, whereas the
ULA’s whole resistance to this complex reflects our advocacy of
the rights, public accessibility, and independence of individual
writers, poets, and artists is primary as it is with individual
artists themselves, and not dominance of administrations and
conflicted bureaucracies. What a coincidence that Mayor Nutter
was lobbying (for stimulus bucks) just the week before or so
Sunday the 19th tight along these same lines and agendas
referring to ”the culture and arts industry” and the “six
thousand” people therein involved. No doubt all of them
administrators and board members as well as the same invisible
operators pulling his strings. Provencial academic cartels and
insiders with the University Of Pennsylvania and Temple
Universities close behind ”cooking the books” and “loading the
deck” in order to justify their MFA writing factory systems ( and
that be’s only half of it! ) while pacifying the greed for power and
profit of the monolithic publishing concerns concentrated in
nearby Manhattan (so that the complete “ivory axis of evil” of
Columbia and Princeton should be throw-ed in here also!).
These are the big head of the octopus, while governmental/
corporate entitled literary pogroms and tentacles bring up the
rear. Similar to Immanent Domain and “red- lining”, we have for
ourselves here a sorta cultural cleansing of the underprivileged
and undesirable unaffiliated un-coopted poet and writer in the
name of gentrification and hegemony. The same agendas that
have brought the Inquirer in kind “down” in the last few years,
and, along with Mr. Timpane and the institutionalized elites,
“up” behind the cultural-economic divides and their “hear-say”
reactionary flim-flam in West Philadelphia and Center City.
Finally I can easily delve into specific and publicly name names
on both side of this vital equation this letter implies but will not
unless asked nice. Furthermore I and, with solidarity, the ULA
challenge the Philly newspapers to concoct a likewise
investigative feature article this other side, this cultural outside,
advanced out of fairness and for reasons of living literary history
which no one “owns”. Then again, for the literate public I beckon
them to partake in all our culture in- the- flesh at Germ Books
And Gallery on May 16th, in the Fishtown Kensington ‘hood,
and decide for themselves where their “stimulus” tax-payer
dollars might be better served.
===============================================
The Letter penned by Scofflaw aka FDW (Frank Walsh)
===============================================
CLICK HERE TO READ THE PREVIOUS MONDAY REPORT!
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
| Questions, Comments, Submissions? Email to: report@literaryrevolution.com |