[Quincy Lehr]

As my friend Janet Kenny rightly points out, "Windschuttle’s attitude to the stolen generations is the equivalent to Holocaust denial. It is no small matter."

[Rory Waterman]

Like Janice, I've published a poem in a magazine that I didn't realise had a strong bias towards views I dislike, and I wouldn't give them anything now. I don't really regret it - too late for that anyway - but I did learn a mini-lesson and I certainly do think it matters. Well, it matters enough, anyway.

New Walk aims to have no political bias, and is not a political magazine in anything but the very broadest sense. Our willingness to publish different types of dissent or opinion (when we have the opportunity) gets me bollocked now and again, but I wouldn't fundamentally change that. In fact, we're branching out. However, if someone submits a poem called 'I Loves My Glocks' I'm probably going to come to the reasoned conclusion that it's a bag of mince.

Stating a refusal to consider poems by a poet publishing in a certain other venue seems a fairly silly way to go about attacking the editor of that journal, however much they deserve it.

[John Whitworth]

Glad to hear it, Janice. Love you too. If there is evidence that the Holocaust is exaggerated, then I will hear it. If there is evidence that the stolen generations were not stolen, then I will hear that too. And if there is evidence that the twin towers were destroyed by the United States Government with the connivance of Tony Blair then I will hear that too.

And if there is evidence that there are fairies at the bottom of my garden ... well, you know about the Cottingsley firies, don't you?

What I am trying to say, perhaps clumsily, is that nothing should be off limits if one is genuinely seeking the truth.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

And if there is evidence that there are fairies at the bottom of my garden

John,

I hate to break this to you, but there *are* fairies at the bottom of your garden.

And may I recommend this excellent film on the subject? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119893/...?ref_=tt_ov_pl

Thanks,

Bill

[John Whitworth]

Well now, didn't I say? Thank you, Bill.

[Richard Epstein]

If I were blacklisted by a holocaust-denying journal, I'd add the fact to my CV.

RHE

[John Whitworth]

I really don't think Mr Windschuttle denies the Holocaust. I would guess he's fairly pro-jew, perhaps more than the opposition. It may not be so in the USA but over here the left is often quite anti-semitic in a very old-fashioned way. You know: jews = bankers = wickedness.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Poets who believe that words don't fuel either the murder or the resistance are, at best, traitors to the magic or priests celebrating the mass of their own irrelevance. At worse something else entirely. If your still listening to the evidence for genocide or species annihilation decades in, it begins to seem like your listening for something alright but clearly not the voices from inside the barbed wires.

After a while its not censorship to say, "Shut the hell up.
We see where you are heading with this. And we are on opposite sides."

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

What am I after all but a child, pleas'd with the sound of my own
     name? repeating it over and over;
I stand apart to hear—it never tires me.

To you your name also;
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
     the sound of your name?

W.W.

Truly, there are poets entirely convinced of their own relevance amid the stars. A poem about fairies and bunyips would no doubt start a revolution from which Australia could never recover; having one's own good name attached might inaugurate unending woe. Oh, the bloodshed.

[Norman Ball]

The fact is it's 1933 in Europe all over again. The ascendant arc of fascism is undeniable: debauched currencies, concentrated wealth, looming trade wars, job-destroying deflation, collapsing international trade agreements, a teetering petrodollar, near-insoluble banking crisis, xenophobia, ultra-nationalist movements in Greece, Ireland, France, Hungary et al, et al.

Some endemically American features? A clunky and obtrusive security apparatus, vibrant military complex, the normalization of surveillance. If only the proto-fascism of the American Tea Party was an anomalous, parochial development. In fact it is a deeper --and thus far more troublesome-- phenomenon precisely because variants of it can be observed the globe over.

The short verdict is that globalism failed to knit it all together (or, depending on your view, hastened its approach) in time to avert the next big conflagration. Existential banker greed played a central role, but there are many other contributing factors. World growth in the 1500-1820 period averaged 1.7% per century. Our entire system is premised on growth. Sustainment isn't an option. Predation is the only way forward.

The point is this broad failure all but neccesitates a third world war after which, God willing, a fresh round of global rapprochement might ensue. For all intents though, the window within this cycle appears to have been missed. Ominously, every missed cycle ensures a rendezvous with increased military lethality. So it gets harder with each successive cycle.

This then is the world we live in, a world where poets presumbably live too. Air-brushing out the inexorable voices of all those who displease is a curious form of engagement. Perhaps poetry with its internecine struggles, pet peeves and ghettoized anthologies and communities that seem to avert whole neighborhoods of ideology is mimicking the macrocosm. That would make poetry no better. That would make perfect sense. Or maybe it is time to closely monitor one's affiliations and 'mimic the world'. Tough to say.

Just yesterday, poet Sam Hamill posted on Facebook:

"...why are American poets so isolated in their poetics? Little formalisti, little neo-formalisti, little support groups, little language groups... Little workshoppers... Reading Benedetti again, I'm reminded that my first obligation is to be a poet in the world."

Big Politics has been a somewhat recreational pursuit for a spell such that many poets have been able to indulge petty squabbles in its stead.

The era of indulgence may be ending.