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  #11  
Unread 03-04-2002, 05:40 AM
Alan Sullivan Alan Sullivan is offline
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I've always thought Salemi was something you put on a sandwich with baloney...

Alan
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  #12  
Unread 03-04-2002, 07:10 AM
nyctom nyctom is offline
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  #13  
Unread 03-04-2002, 01:03 PM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
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Alicia, with your permission I'd like to send your remarks to Mortensen and ask him to post them on his site as a refutation of Salemi's article. You hit all the important points on the head.

Not being a woman, I can't say if your contention that women poets are being picked on is true, but I wouldn't be surprised. I am 51, but when I was in my teens, I had an experience I have never forgotten. I was reading a really fascinating article in a magazine, so fascinating that half way through I stopped to look at the name of the author. It was a woman, and immediately I felt deflated, disappointed and confused. I couldn't deny the excellence of the article, but part of me couldn't believe that a woman had written it. The attitude that women were not as good as men was ingrained in me even though my mother was more intelligent and competent (and caring) than my father was in every way. I grew out of that attitude, but many men do not. I still don't fully understand it. (I should point out that in the 60's women writers were not as common as they are today.)

Even girls are ingrained with that attitude. Again as a teen, my sister and I once compared boys' and girls' names and concluded that there weren't any good girls' names. It never occurred to us that there was something wrong with our attitudes towards the sexes.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited March 04, 2002).]
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  #14  
Unread 03-04-2002, 01:47 PM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Thanks for your remarks, Caleb, but if I choose to send something to Mortensen, I'd prefer to do it myself. The above remarks are just a rant, a venting, off the cuff, and only intended for this informal forum--public though it is. (Salemi may read it here, if he likes.) My remarks are not intended as a letter to the editor. If I did send one, it wouldn't include such wild surmises as gender-bias. That wasn't really my point. It doesn't even have much bearing on this particular review, which is sufficiently problematic as a personal attack.
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  #15  
Unread 03-04-2002, 06:48 PM
Caleb Murdock Caleb Murdock is offline
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Sorry, I should have realized that if you wanted to send Mortensen a note, you simply would have done so.

There's nothing wrong with anything that you said, though, including your musings about gender bias.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited March 04, 2002).]
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  #16  
Unread 03-04-2002, 07:28 PM
Rhina P. Espaillat Rhina P. Espaillat is offline
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I'm having such a good time reading all these encomia--without even going through the trouble of dying first!--that I'm tempted to send Salemi (yes, you're right, Alan, it's eaten spread with mustard) a thank-you card. He's unwittingly provided me with some of the most pleasant mail and e-mail I've received in ages. Of course that was not his intent, but whatthehell.

Seriously, thank you, all of you, Tim and Jennifer, John, Caleb, Alicia, Robert, and you, Len, and those of you who have contacted me at home in very much the same vein, for this front-row seat at the preview of my own memorial. Everybody needs one!
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  #17  
Unread 03-04-2002, 08:37 PM
Carol Taylor Carol Taylor is offline
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Rhina, I'm sure I'm not the only one who dashed off to Amazon to buy the book as a result of all that publicity, either.

Carol
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  #18  
Unread 03-04-2002, 11:30 PM
bear_music bear_music is offline
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Wow,

I'm too new here to have had the pleasure of meeting Rhina, but I do know the poetry. And the lunchmeat guy is way off the reservation here.

I find it curious, even if I accept his formulation that she's moved in a particular direction since the publication of her second book, that he considers this to be a failing of the New Formalism, since he apparently didn't consider Rhina's work a failure before, and she was a New Formalist then too, wasn't she?

And speaking as a poet rapidly heading towards sixty years, I have to say I'd be shocked if she didn't move in these sorts of directions, at this phase of her life.

The whole thing is crap. To the stocks with him!

(music)



[This message has been edited by bear_music (edited March 04, 2002).]
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  #19  
Unread 03-05-2002, 12:10 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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Rhina, I had a similar experience after my review in ECR. AFter the, er, shock wore off, it ended up being very positive--a flood of kind and encouraging messages and condolences. (And sales rose, too.)

So maybe Maya Angelou, as long as she's doing the Hallmark gig, should invent a line of cards: Thank you for your scathing review!
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  #20  
Unread 03-05-2002, 12:31 AM
A. E. Stallings A. E. Stallings is offline
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(A sample: )


Thank you, Professor Reviewer,
For impaling my book on a skewer!
Had you lauded my art,
I'd be lighter of heart--
But the sales of my book would be fewer.
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