Wilbur actually did embrace the far left as a college student, and he got into a bit of trouble with military intelligence about it. However, the far left was embraced by many college students during the depression. Most drifted into the New Deal mainstream later, though some became more radical while others became conservative.

Once upon a time I published poems and reviews in Chronicles. Eventually I had to step back because of the loony factor. I continue to get New Criterion because I love the cartoons. And I get The New Yorker because of Pauline Kael. I read both exclusively in the bathroom. First Things is beyond my religious pale, which could stand some neighborly help in mending it to good again and keeping my apples from straying.

The title above Quincy's links is all the introduction his thread needed. His reputation precedes him here. He could have said, "Well, here is some stupid crap" as a preamble, I suppose.

Sam,

At first glance I thought CHUD stood for Cattle Hosting Udder Diseases; but then I remembered I was reading Eratosphere, and not Hoard's Dairyman.

Did you make a promise to her before she died?

Re Sam's post, I really think it's hard to define "far left" anymore within American (US) culture. The far right is becoming clearer and clearer (as if it needed that). But I'd like someone to really define what "far left" means. We've drifted so so far to the right I'm guessing "far left" could mean any number of ideological stances.

Left blood? Well, my stepmother knitted socks for the good eggs in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. And my father got the Manchester Guardian in the 1950s.Some of that must count for something.

Roger Slater, the short answer is "Yes, I did." But reports of Kael's death are untrue. She continues to write, albeit under the name of "Anthony Lane."

"Far left" for me would be remaining an admirer of Stalin after the purge trials, but he was our "trusted ally" only a few years later. The only "far left" position I can think of today would be Anarchism, but that's just Libertarianism with brass knuckles. Maybe there are still some Trotskyites around.

In what way is recent anarchist thought related to Libertarianism and brass knuckles, Professor. Like butterflies are related to dairy? Name some actual recent works you have read by serious anarchist thinkers, or anarchist thinkers ever. And relating the far left to Stalinist apologists when so many of them saw him coming, called the sh*t out before it hit, and died for it is pretty much some stupid. Maybe your just working on a description of the regional scene?

Butterfly milk is a living for some, you elitist Andrew. My overall thrust is that the far left, again, in the states, is imaginary. Talking points from the right. Anyway, whether I'm right or wrong, clearly the US is far more at risk from right wing "activists," than anything that exists on the left. It's been like that for quite some time.

Libertarians are white men in four-piece suits. That is all I know on earth, and all I need to know.

All Kudos to you, Andrew M, especially for your wonderful post #40, which says it all and pretty much sums up a substantial reason our false flags of left & right are much ado about how best to continue to destroy our planet and all that's in it indiscriminately and to our own destruction as well. To that end, I've seen a few good formal poems in the New Criterion, noted to be conservative but in which I haven't actually read anything but poetry.

As to why many formal poets have notoriously right-wing views, maybe it's the idea that formal poetry is "traditional" whereas free verse, which is now the dominant type of poetry, is still oddly considered closer to experimental or "contemporary" -- like pop music maybe. I always thought it was an affinity for music that would cause a poet to lean towards meter & rhyme rather than politics. But maybe people really are influenced by the power of suggestion, read a word like "traditional" and feel attracted to it (just now I sort of dozed off and found this space filled with the words "amassed zombies"— must be the Mysteries of iPhone trolling me again)... or maybe conservatives like doing things the hard way. :) Whereas the mass of "pop" people prefer to just write some stuff out with line breaks and hear the oohs and ahhhhs pouring in. Let Andrew and Quincy be living proof that formal poets can also be strong voices against oppression in all its manifestations, whether "traditional" or "progressive."

"As to why many formal poets have notoriously right-wing views. . ."

Eratosphere, as far as I know, is the only online forum specifically for formalist poets. It should be obvious from reading the posts here that many of these poets "have notoriously right-wing views."

I have a list of over 200 names of Eratosphere members who have notoriously right-wing views, and I will be happy to share it.

I would put a smiley face but that would be too few characters.

As Sam points out - more subtly than I'm going to - this is getting sillier and sillier.

The Sphere is massively left-of-center, and so are gatherings like WCU. (By almost anybody's standards but Quincy's.) I would guess that participation in both is less than 10% right-of-center.

I would also guess that most Sphere participants (it's true for me, so it has to be true) associate with very few people whose politics are not similar to our own. There are very probably more right-wingers, as a percentage of the whole, writing formal verse than free verse - but it's still a very small percentage of the formal poetry world.

I'm retired, so I don't even have contacts at work, I associate with people I want to associate with; and except for some good friends who are members of my local poetry group and a couple of in-laws (whose mother can often be heard on the deck, evenings, crying "Where did I go wrong") I barely know any conservatives. And I don't think I'm that exceptional. Yes, there are more notoriously right wing poets writing formal poetry than there are in, say, the Sons of Trotsky - but it's still a low percentage.

Mike should have also pointed out that some of those notorious right-wing poets have been banned from the Sphere, and it has also been decreed that one may not even mention several names here. Of course, some other notorious non-right-wing poets have also been banned.

By the way, Andrew Mandelbaum, can you give me the name of any state that was founded upon and governed by Anarchist principles? I am always interested in reading about historically successful states and their ruling principles, but I've drawn a blank here.

Sam, you made a stupid assertion about a political spectrum you clearly don't know anything about and now you double down by showing your total confusion between the fact of the nation state's monopoly and what that monopoly has cost and will cost the species. It doesn't suprise me that you see the history of the the struggle for less hierarchical forms of organization from the view of your trainers, or that the many hundreds of ground-up associations in the country right now working on facing down the myriad of issues we have inherited from the successes of the past read to you like Friedman with "brass knuckles". That you draw a blank seems totally believable. Really. Now, go run along and convince someone that calling out your shallow dismissals of folks neck deep in the water from your pretty little hill is ad hom.

I asked for a list, Andrew. Can you provide me with one so that I can enlighten myself about the history of successful anarchist states? I was not aware, for example, that a "myriad" of small political organizations in the U.S. is in the process of being ground up. Who could approve such butchery? I don't mind ad hominem comments as long as they are directed at me.

Michael is of course quite right—my implicit question is why one would want to appear in such journals, with the assumption that the answer usually isn’t “because I agree with them.” Per the far left, I’ll leave anarchism and the defense thereof to Andrew. As for the socialist/Marxist left, the DSA and Socialist Alternative have shot forward in membership (the DSA has 1,500 in Los Angeles alone), and the actual left (anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist) never really went away. You don’t actually think the huge anti-war rallies in 2002 and 2003 were organized by Democrats, do you?

Looking (as I must admit that I occasionally do) at the masthead listing poets who have appeared in one of the most notoriously conservative on-line poetry magazines, I do see a couple of names of present or past Eratosphere poets. Who, I wonder with Quincy, are so desperate to publish that they would want to appear in such a (metaphorical) "rag"?

Is that the one beginning with "T", Sam? I was in that. Quite often. Because of polite solicitation, desire for publication and genuine political ignorance.

Until. No more. Though I am still not clear whether the because of that is mine or yours. To some extent I remain a child on a bouncy castle, launching myself on a whim onto a patch of coloured canvas, without having regard to the provenance of the blown air that keeps it aloft. I suppose that makes me a victim of my own insouciance. Tant pis.

But there are also elements of wanting what I write to live, of wanting to step into others' territory, to be above right and left, desirous of sheepish goatliness. Of wanting Les to love me on the page as he does when we meet, a great guffaw and a hug and my face buried in his woolly sweater...

While I was trying to think this through, I reminded myself that my political views, such as they are, are manifested most bravely in Drills and Amusements.

I am still smiling as I remember that the seriousness of what Quincy was trying to convey nearly foundered on his mysterious acronym. How I scurried to Google and played in the waves of it before finding the message left higher up the shore when the novelty receded.

Now I will pull up my chuddies and seek further enlightenment. I am determined to explore the deeper mysteries of the murderboner.

Good Heavens Michael, you barely know any Conservatives? And yet I know lots of Socialists (known as Corbynistas) as we call Liberals over here. My two esteemed daughters for a start. I love them dearly. Of course most people over here are Conservatives and we are not all bollock stupid. Really not.

What are these right wing magazines in which no decent person would appear? Quadrant? First Things? The Spectator? Alas these are the magazines in which most of my poems appear? Apart from anything else, they pay you see. Few left wing magazines do that. In fact I can't think of one. They can't because few people buy them.

OK, now I know what a murderboner is.
On the other hand, nobody in this thread has mentioned Hitler yet.

No, John, not those. I am thinking of a mag (or perhaps two mags) run by one so vile that He may not be mentioned here. Here are some "characters" (in the Oldbury sense) who appear in one of its satirical poems:

traipsing tranny freak
hairy lesbo b----h
“Black Lives Matter” c--n
little foreign greaser
jilted coed c--t

It depends on the company one wishes to keep, I suppose.