Times Tribute

I seem to be getting a new flurry of readers-- and anger-- here due to a 12/28 tribute to deceased "poet" Jason Shinder in the 12/28 New York Times written by Melanie Thernstrom. People googling his name have come to this blog.

The Underground Literary Alliance encountered Mr. Shinder in 2006 during our "Howl" protest at Columbia University. He was decidedly in the camp of literary Overdogs. ULA poet Frank Walsh debated Mr. Shinder on a NYC radio show beforehand. ULA clown Eric Jellyboy stood face-to-face with Mr. Shinder on the Miller Hall stage at the event itself.

Here's the point: Jason Shinder was a literary bureaucrat, and hardly a poet at all. Walsh, by contrast, is a genuine poet who does amazing things with the art form-- wordplay, rhythmn, sound, music, in the great tradition of poets ranging from Dylan Thomas back to the Bard himself.

Why has the literary world accepted absolute mediocrity-- so it's trumpeted in the pages of the nation's leading newspaper?

Isn't it right for those of us who retain our common sense and love of literature to speak up?

The literary world apparently is controlled by well-educated brainwashed puppets.

(Interesting bio of Melanie Thernstrom, by the way. She typifies the Insider's Insider. Harvard grad, married at the Harvard Club to a Rhodes Scholar; her parents a "prominent neoconservative" intellectual who works for well-funded foundations, and a tenured Harvard prof. Yes, there IS a clique of well-connected folks who control intellectual thought in America, and have led it into a dead end of stagnant irrelevance. The proof is in front of us.)