response to my writing

"I do not know what to do with this. Pick any point on the compass...in that direction madness lies. "

Ah, how illuminating. Truely, what did i expect? Praise? Congradulations? I mean, it is obvious that i am seperated from most of the writing community, if you could call the smattering of published and unpublished writers across the nation that. It first came to me during my brief and disasterous internship for Pacific University's MFA in Writing program over a few too many glasses of wine. Writers defending warfare, writers defending corporations. A compendium of conservatives, writing cute little slice of life poems and essays detailing the minutae of installing toilets amid incense. Then a fictional story about fighting the Taliban and Al Queda, glossed with Republican justifications for aggressive occupation and civilian casualties. Pretty blatent pandering to establishment vanities in the hopes of recognition.

Another problem, the adherence of writers to the strict history of the art. I mean, it is fine to admire the writing tradition, but to expect people to adopt the structure of Tennyson? Of Whitman? Well, as Vonnegut's artist friend said "There are generally two types of artists, those who respond to the history of their art and those who respond to life itself." Perhaps i should be writing a Victorean novel to illustrate how ridiculous adherance to tradition for the sake of tradition is. Even following contemporary styles is a dead end. Who wants to read writing journals stuffed with tepid journalism masquerading as poorly researched sociology, in the classical form of the short story? "He left her after she had the abortion. She cried out his name into a telephone that was off the hook. 'John, John, I'm sorry." Bleh. Life is all there is. Communicate with it. Do not speak to the dead or for the dead. They left what marks they could in the atmosphere of their times. Deconstructing Holocaust literature should be a crime. Let us remember to sing our own songs, to intimate our own musics, to abscond from criticism if we do not create.