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Unlike most journals, The American Dissident not only brooks but encourages criticism.
It is open to changing its statements and
ideas, though only in the face of cogent logic and/or fact. Anyone critiqued
on this site or in the journal should respond!
The AD will publish the response! Try being original, however, and refrain from ad hominem
rhetoric. Try proving a particular point wrong by citing
facts and employing logic.
Intellectual Corruption
Illustrated:
Academy of American Poets
Adjunct Advocate
Alehouse Press
Alternate Press Review
Bennett College
Briar
Cliff Review
Chronicle of Higher Education
Concord Cultural Council
Concord Poetry Center
Concord Journal
Contemporary Poetry Review
Robert
Creeley Award
Davenport University
Divide
Elmira College
Festival
International de la
Poésie de
Trois-Rivières
Fight
Them Bastards
Fitchburg State College
Foetry.com
Georgia
Review
Grambling State Univ.
Martha's Vineyard Reg. HS
Mass. Cultural Council
NewPages.com
New York
Quarterly
Pulitzer Prize
Pushcart Prize
Stone Soup Poets
Univ of Massachusetts
Walden Pond State Res.
Writers-at-Large
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FOCUS of
The American Dissident
Dissidence,
Literature & Democracy
N. B.: For another slant on the focus of
The American Dissident, read
"The
Cold Passion for Truth Hunts in No Pack: the Case for Parrhesiastic
Poetry, Writing, and Art".
.................................................
Concord, Massachusetts, home of
revolutionary patriots and writers Thoreau and Emerson has not exactly been a
welcoming town for The American Dissident or its editor (See
Concord Battles for
accounts of my attempts to interest local organizations and my arrest and
incarceration due to a minor dispute with a free-speech hating Walden Pond State
Reservation park ranger).
.......................................
The American Dissident provides
what the academic/literary established order egregiously fails to provide:
a forum for vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. What that order
tends to offer is a hierarchy of set icons and a more or less inflexible
sycophantic road map for reaching its summit. It firmly discourages any
questioning and challenging of that map, its hierarchy, or its designated canon.
It is much like... the Vatican.
In
America, citizens have been accorded free speech and expression with legal
impunity, except under certain restricted circumstances. Yet the large
majority of citizens fear exercising that right for all sorts of reasons
(excuses), thus avoid doing so. Poets and professors, for the most part,
also fear doing so. For most, it is as if that right doesn’t even exist.
The dissident, however, makes
it a point to exercise that freedom, especially when such might be considered
risky... not necessarily to life, but perhaps to career and any number of other
things. Those who dare not will inevitably view the dissident in a
negative light, and label him confrontational, egotistical, offensive, rude,
bitter, etc.
Czech playwright Vàclav
Havel wrote:
"The dissident does not operate in the realm of
genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and
does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers
nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin—and
he offers it solely (continue) |
The Academy of American Poets
sponsor of National Poetry Month (safe poems for
high school and college kids) "banned" the editor permanently from participating in its online forums.
What surprises in our democracy is the number of professors,
poets, and other "learned" citizens who
favor censorship, though would never have the guts to outright make
that declaration. For the censored transcript et al (continue).
Milieu littéraire québécois
 La corruption sévit au milieu
littéraire québécois.
À
titre d’exemple, citons le Festival International de la Poésie
de Trois-Rivières et… (à
suivre)
Experiments
in Free Speech
The American Dissident
encourages poets and writers to actively perform experiments...
(continue)
Literary
Autocracy/Corruption
Corruption of the thinking processes—refusal or inability to
respond to criticism with logic—is rampant today. Yet few
even take the time to notice it, let alone decry it.
The American Dissident
makes it a point to do so. Negative critique of the
journal... (continue)
Academic
Autocracy/Corruption
Disregard for free speech and expression
in academe is disgraceful and rampant. The Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education (www.thefire.org) bears witness.
Professors dare not "go upright and vital, and speak the rude
truth in all ways" (Emerson). Instead, most turn a blind eye.
With that regard, read the
News-Star (Monroe, LA)
op-ed summarizing my
experiences in higher education which have always (not just
sometimes) backed the above assertions.
(continue)
Concord, Walden &
Thoreau
For protesting the absence of free speech at Walden
Pond, I was arrested and incarcerated. Did the
Thoreau Society, Thoreau Institute, Emerson Umbrella for the
Arts, Concord Poetry Center, or
Concord Journal give a damn? (continue) |
New On
This Site
—National Endowment for
the Arts
—Where a Poet Ought
Not/Où
c'qui faut pas
Bilingual Chapbook by the editor, 2008
—Counterpoise
Interview
of Editor of The American
Dissident 11/07
—Poesy
magazine interview of the editor of
The American Dissident
4/07
—Literary survey sent to over
130 high-end
literary
journals
—Creeley
Award protest and broadside
Publicly-Funded
Censors
Academy of
American Poets
(National Poetry Month sponsor)
Le
Devoir (Montréal)
Chronicle of
Higher Education
(Art & Letters host)
—National Endowment for
the Arts
Newpages.com
Poetry Foundation
Poetry Society of
America
Poets
& Writers, Inc.
Alehouse
Press, Where "Good Taste"
precludes good
ideas and reason
New Reviews
Best American Poetry
2007
Prairie Schooner
Tales of the Out & the Gone,
short
stories
by Amiri Baraka
Rattle
Raritan
Beloit Poetry
Journal
Corporate Crooks
New
England Review
Academe (Bulletin of
AAUP)
The
Republic of
Poetry
(Martín Espada)
The
American Poetry
Review
(Reviewed by
Mather
Schneider)
Donatello’s
Version
(James Scully)
Open Letters
—Lettre
de Gaston Bellemare
—Open Letters to Thoreau
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