We've all read the news accounts of one fake memoir after another coming to light: fake gang members, fake Holocaust survivors, fake soldiers, fake Native Americans, fake ex-cons. Publishers are so desperate for sales that they are attracting record numbers of unscrupulous authors who will concoct the most grandiose claims in order to achieve success. Customers are up in arms, publishers cry innocence, editors shrug and the authors are unavailable for comment. The debate rages: who's really to blame.......... CONTINUED...........
First go here -- where you'll find a "spirited" debate on the current state of poetry -- for the backstory.
I think that you have to look at Myspace poets as a movement at this point. There are a lot of them, though due to the nature of the poet -- the tendency of self-examination, looking at the world and expressing your place in it -- the role of the individual vs a group ethic is easier for them to see. Add that to the fact that many poets are artistic anarchists and you might as well try to juggle balls of mercury as get outsider/underground poets together in a cohesive unit.
Once hacktastic wunderkind, now wizened SF shit-stirrer Harlan Ellison would like to say a word or thousand about the settled writers strike. Enjoy. (And If you like controversy and a bit of the old back and forth -- and sometimes froth, often about writing -- go to Unca Harlan's Art Deco Dining Pavilion.)
HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:
Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.
Click below to learn more about OW's first book and the winner of the Jack Micheline Memorial Award.
About OW!
Outsider Writers have been distributing chapbooks in dark subterranean caverns for too long. The corporate presses and literary institutions have no vision. The media is irrelevant. It's time to rise into the sun!
Our Goal: Unite the write! We will join forces where we are strong, eliminate duplication of effort where we are weak and put the power and authority over literature back into the hands of the only legitimate owners: the authors and the readers.
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The Naked Opinion 
