[Matt Q]

On a slight a tangent, I was just looking at the submission guidelines of "The Society of Classical Poets", a venue for metrical poetry.

We accept submissions on any theme you may choose; however, we recommend:

(1) The negative effects of communism and socialism on the West: Communism, including its first phase (socialism), is an ideology based on destroying harmony among social classes and eliminating traditional beliefs and moral values. It has led to over 100 million deaths—more than the first and second World Wars combined. Despite this, the ideology continues to manipulate America, Europe, and the West in general, and its crimes have still not yet been fully exposed or understood. We encourage poetry that exposes it in any of its forms.

The other recommended topics are: (2) the crimes of communist China, (3) the beauty of classical art, (4) beauty in general, (5) riddles and puzzles and (6) essays and translations.

I didn't know the venue and was a little surprised by how strongly and explicitly anti-left their editorial stance was, and so I had a scroll through the past couple of months of their Facebook page to see how this was reflected in the poems they published.

Most prominent on the political front are poems against the Chinese regime.

Next most frequent seem to be anti-abortion poems (mostly by men),one of which, in very clunkily-constructed verse, describes abortion as a 'socialist pogrom'. A certain Quincy Lehr had posted a 'C.H.U.D'-related comment under this one.

There were a couple of historical anti-communist poems, for example, one which addresses the crimes of Stalin, and those old lefties, the National Socialists.

I also found two poems in praise of the far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, the first which of, has a stirring evocation of the Crusades:

Invading hordes shall not replace
Us lionhearted British folk,
Nor shall a German despot place
Our neck in Europe’s Muslim yoke!

This one (same poet) was even more fun, and so it seems to warrants a longer extract.

Would you embrace their Novus Ordo plot
To make you into something you are not,
Abandoning your martyrs’ ancient faith
In globalist apostasy to bathe,
Or sanctify Mohammed’s violent hordes
Who now seize power from your local lords?
Your government, a servile rubber-stamp,
Transforms your world into a migrant camp.
Already London teems with Saracens,
But will not welcome us Americans!

Full many are the masks that Satan wears:
Take Corbyn and his self-anointing airs,
Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May,
Who nourish Brussels while your towns decay.

I was quite pleased to discover that the poet is American, not British. I'm sorry to hear he wasn't made welcome in London, he sounds like a lovely bloke (though, I'm wondering that bit might be a reference to the reception Trump got when he came here).

Finally, another lovely little ode, with more references to Satan, this time by Evan Mantyk, who is President of the Society of Classical Poets:

Without a conscience, we grow cancerous:
Transgender, gay rights, gangs, and drugs, what’s next?
Such shameful acts destroy the souls of us;
While freedom is another beast pretext.

So, there you go.

-Matt

[John Isbell]

Wow. And since that’s too short for a comment, I’ll say wow again.

Cheers,
John

[Ann Drysdale]

Ouch! My heart bleeds for a fellow-Spherian who, in all innocence, has just announced on Acc. Mem. that his first poem has been published in the aforementioned venue. It is a charming poem with no underlying unpleasantness, witty and well-wrought and clearly fitting their criterion #5. I stand in solidarity with him, because I had several poems (previously published and solicited by the editor in person) in another journal that has since been exposed as having views that I do not share.

So many lists of where to send poems of particular types include journals such as these without reference to their political affiliations. It would not occur to many of us to investigate in that direction.

Let's have another tangent. I looked up something (in connection with A M Juster - about him, not by him) in the journal I had come to consider the worst of them - The Pennsylvania Review - only to be confronted with "This Account has been suspended". Can anyone shed any light on that?
.

[RCL]

Mike might have belatedly noted just how right-wing slimy it is. I've gasped at some of the garbage it publishes.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

Let's have another tangent. I looked up something (in connection with A M Juster - about him, not by him) in the journal I had come to consider the worst of them - The Pennsylvania Review - only to be confronted with "This Account has been suspended". Can anyone shed any light on that?

Annie, I believe the magazine's website is suspended/defunct because (if I recall correctly) its publisher was Leo Yankevich. Leo passed away last year. I'm guessing no one stepped in to keep the magazine alive, which is a good thing.

[James Brancheau]

Juster has done a hit-job on anyone he doesn't find suitable poetically, or otherwise. Especially Lowell. Give me a break. He did inspire me to give Billy Collins another chance.

[RCL]

Leo Yankevich edited The New Formalist, defunct since he died. Isn't Salemi the editor at Penn Review? Leo, in my early days here, often had fun hacking the board and attacking Jews and Gays.

[Ann Drysdale]

Thank you, Maryann. I am not sorry not to have found the thing I was looking for and I am glad that nobody else will.

And Ralph, I think the Penn Review is a different thing entirely, based within the University and happily unaffiliated to the journal that I now regret having mentioned. I did so as a hamfisted diversion. Let it pass, eh?
.

[James Brancheau]

I think we should discard the term "editor" in the cases you mention, Ralph. "Editor" seems to glorify them.

Note: Edited the above. I needed to be clearer about that.

[Andrew Frisardi]

To throw yet another ingredient into the mix of this thread, there is always Camille Paglia, who has recently been criticized by students at the University of the Arts in Phillie, "for sharing wrong opinions on matters of sex, gender identity, and sexual assault."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...atform/587125/

She raises some questions similar to the FT article that opened this thread, but does so more perspicaciously and without the doctrinal baggage. And of course she herself identifies as transgender, so she's not even remotely transphobic.

I suppose she'd be one of the "radical feminists" McCloskey criticizes in his memoir.

No matter how one might feel about Paglia, it's hard not to admire her feisty refusal to be pigeon-holed.