I had intended this week to write about gratitude. To express my thanks to all the new readers of Poetry Wire and The Rumpus and to wish you all a pleasant Thanksgiving. I wanted to say something about the necessity of thankfulness in art and poetry, to say that this week I rededicate myself to having kind thoughts, to not get angry or think badly about others, to work to the benefit of others as much as I can. In poetry and in life.
But then, on Sunday, I awoke to news that, after he received a generic invitation sent to thousands of others merely to “like” the Pine Manor MFA program from its director Meg Kearney, poet Franz Wright attacked Kearney, among others on his Facebook page.
And, well, gratitude gave way. I’m sorry. Here’s Franz Wright’s vitriolic Facebook post:
More of these pugilistic posts have followed on Wright’s FB page. But, for now, here are some thoughts.
First, Jesus! Here we go again, Franz Wright getting his drawers in a twist about poetry and throwing a temper tantrum (more on that below).
Second, even though Wright attacks Kearney for generically Facebook-inviting him to do something benign like “like” her program, and even though he then writes this absurd tirade against her and the MFA establishment, it turns out that, in the past, Wright has given two readings at Pine Manor’s MFA. I mean, c’mon, if you felt this way about MFA programs, Franz, you shouldn’t have accepted the invitations to Pine Manor, nor taken the honorariums. (In an interview, Meg Kearney confirms his participation in the program.)
Before I go on, two disclosures: I think Wright’s minimalist poems are best when they address the other, the odd, the foreign. They are less interesting to me when they address himself and collapse into self-indulgence. As a confessionalist, he aims for pure unleashing, but ends up, more often than not, simply self-aggrandizing. His poems masquerade as sensual but they are manipulatively moralistic. None of this bothers me really. Like any poet, Wright is welcome to write whatever kind of poems he wants.
Another disclosure: I have never met Franz Wright. Or, to be precise, we did meet, sort of, nearly thirty years ago in the middle of the night when he burst into the Boston apartment of a girl I was then dating and launched a screed, a ranting monologue, against her roommate (who, at the time was his paramour, or something). I forget what the folderol was about, but I’m guessing it had to do with unrequited love. Now, on his behalf, this was the 80’s. We were all young. But when the fulmination seemed like it wasn’t going to subside, I got out of bed and padded into the living room, feigning something about not being able to sleep and offering to make some coffee. Want some? No. Then he left. I have never forgotten this last detail: The exposed bully, Franz Wright, walking out of the apartment and leaving the front door wide open behind him for somebody else to close. Some things never change. I was told that night that he was the “son of a very famous poet.” Years later, when I began to see his poems in print, I put him together with his father, James Wright.
Though I didn’t recognize him then, I do recognize him now as a veritable Rush Limbaugh and bully of American poetry.
Like Limbaugh, Wright believes in a golden age. Limbaugh’s lodestar is the anti-tax conservatism of Ronald Reagan, while all the while ignoring basic historic fact that Reagan raised taxes seven out of the eight years he was president and that the size of the federal government, long despised by conservatives, ballooned. Wright’s lodestar is the outsider French surrealists and the semi-romantic notion of poets as devotees of poverty, despite the basic historic fact that the French surrealists have been de rigeur in the academy’s MFA schools Wright so dislikes. More to the point, those French poets weren’t so ascetic: Arthur Rimbaud was from a stable middle class family, Charles Baudelaire was the son of a senior civil servant, Paul Verlaine’s father was affluent, and Stephane Mallarme was, throughout his life — oh, my God! — employed in that most dreaded Meg Kearneysque profession as a schoolteacher.
Like Limbaugh, Wright bullies in order to aggrandize his own choices. Reread his FB post again, and you’ll see the Limbaugh spirit: I’m right, you’re wrong.
Like Limbaugh who sides with outsiders and uses false airs of victimhood to rally his ditto heads into a narrow interpretation of lived experience, Wright plays the outsider as well — mind you, that’s the son of poetry royalty outsider, a poet published by a New York corporate publishing house outsider, a Pulitzer Prize winning outsider. You know, he’s an outsider they way Ted Kennedy was an outsider. Wright’s followers, his fellow “outsiders,” love Wright’s anti-MFA diatribes, including the Limbaughesque shorthands: “Femi-Nazi” is to Limbaugh as MFA “Prograsms” is to Wright.
Finally, like Limbaugh who seldom exhibits public grace, humility, and fairminded-ness and so undercuts his right wing philosophy of stability and continuity, Wright’s public screeds undercut his own best art, diminish the vision he has sought to bring to his poems, and reduce his stance to the rest of the poetry world as a single, unattractive position: Get off my lawn. Hmm? Your lawn, oh, outsider, you?
Poetry like politics is populated with enough cranks. Limbaugh was set back recently, as you know. After he attacked University of Georgetown undergraduate Sandra Fluke, advertisers withdrew their support of his program, costing Cumulus Radio millions of dollars. Will poetry readers do the same to Franz Wright? Already the Facebook de-friending is underway. Will we stop buying his books, too? What is he attacking Meg Kearney for? Or all the others, mostly women, in this post? I mean, Kearney is guilty only of working for a living. Is it right to support Wright when he wrongs others?
I can only imagine now how furiously Wright will now attack me for this post. He’s long shown that he will say anything in public to bring attention to himself. I expect he will do so again. Hypocrisy, contradiction are not impediments to his long history of invective. Who can forget his threatening to beat, yes, beat William Logan? Or his series of Letters to the Editor blowups in Poetry magazine?
In the meantime I take a back seat to no one, including Franz Wright, in defending the idea and ideal that the poet holds a special place in the human tribe. To be a poet calls one to be an illuminator and a seer. It calls on one to reflect on time and history and the future. It calls on one to invent and to bring into relief clarity and metaphor and insight. It calls on one to reveal the evidence of living. It calls on one to be geometric and sensual. It calls on one to synthesize lunacy and truth. It calls on one to look at the world, as Wallace Stevens says, “the way a man looks at a woman.” It calls on one to breath experience into language. It calls on one to transform pain into pleasure. It calls on one to make new myths.
But, here’s the deal, it never calls on one to be a jackass.
146 responses
Thank you, David. Well said, and necessary.
If you’re a poet in the USA, you’re an outsider. Wright needs to get over himself.
Thanks for writing this. I used to love Franz Wright’s poetry, and then I became friends with him on Facebook and saw what a mean person he was. He even attacked me once, though I cannot recall what it was for. It was something so absurd that I have since forgotten the details. After that, I de-friended him and got rid of his books and will never read him again.
I was the target of this rage once. It went on for quite some time until I blocked him. I can’t even quite remember what triggered it, but I do remember being amused by his belief that he’s the only one who has ever experienced hardship. It just doesn’t occur to him that *any* other poet could possibly have felt enormous grief or pain or loss or poverty or been victim to anything (other than their own pettiness, of course). He’s the sole carrier of the suffering torch for all writers and you damn well better acknowledge it or else be prepared to be the recipient of a screed like the aforementioned.
I think we would do well to remember that much of Wright’s instability and irritability are likely due to mental illness. I think he’s a powerful poet — one of our most interesting, in fact. I just don’t let his negative behavior (which I’ve witnessed, from a distance, more than once) affect my appreciation of his art.
I’m grateful when people stand up to bullies.
He really couldn’t sound more ridiculous. Thanks for responding to him. Although it’s probably an exercise in futility, it needed to be said.
Amen. Wright’s screed is nothing but thuggery masquerading as romantic idealism.
Seems like Franz Wright has more in common with Al Gore than Rush Limbaugh in that Al Gore spent most of his adult life in politics trying to emerge from his father’s long shadow (his father, Al Gore, Sr served in Congress for 32 years). While Franz Wright is notable as a contemporary poet, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to understand his frustration with the poetry world in general as he struggles to outshine his father’s legacy. Of course, this doesn’t excuse obnoxious behavior but context is everything sometimes.
Perhaps a little Bourdieu should be on the esteemed poet’s reading list in the future….
Hardly the first or, sadly, the last entitled dude to act like a turkey on Facebook; but getting rid of all his books seems excessive. If I got rid of all writers’ books who’d been publicly hostile jerks, my bookshelves would be quite emptied. Wright has written some great poems; his behavior is unfortunate and obviously shouldn’t be condoned. Really, if anything, he’s proving not that the MFA programs has ruined poets but that social media might have.
Erratum: the MFA programs = the MFA program
I don’t think the comparison to Rush Limbaugh works.
Although I’m enjoying (rather meanly) all the hooplah about FW and love DB’s saying he’s the Rush Limbaugh of poetry, I’m wondering if maybe FW has Alzheimer’s or some other personality-destroying (sometimes) disease. Not that that would make his diatribes any easier to take, but at least it might explain why he’s behaving like such a jerk.
Frankly, I don’t see the point of this piece. If you don’t like what Franz Wright says (or rants) on FB, then don’t friend him–or simply unfriend him–or send him a message about it. Don’t take to a public venue to denounce him for something he said in a technically private outlet. If you were Meg Kearney herself, I might judge your commentary less harshly, but still…Mr. Wright is certainly not the only writer to feel that MFAs are highly overrated.
I don’t think the Limbaugh comparison works either. I suspect it’s being used to incite further wrath. I’d bet that FW detests Limbaugh and will bristle at the comparison.
I’ll copy my response to Wright here:
I dreamed I wrote a counterpoint to Franz Wright’s evisceration of Meg Kearney,
I’ve met Meg, she’s beautiful, her hair, and I loved her dog, black, it only had three legs, we were at Robert Frost’s barn, himself a curmudgeon but safely dead, there were bats, her dog was well-behaved, I’ve never had a dog who could sit through a poetry reading without lunging at something, Franz, I said in the d
ream, the unnecessary vitriol!, and I used an exclamation point not for emphasis but because it looked like the ramps that grow around my place in the spring, wild onions with long green hair and too much smelly pungency for their own good but I eat them anyway because I’m hungry,
Franz, I wrote in my dream, I’m with you in Rockland, for I do not have an MFA and no dental insurance and the bathtub is falling through the floor of the bathroom into the basement where there are giant vats of Petoskey stones from the previous owner of the house, and driftwood, for he, too, just couldn’t let anything go, my kitchen floor is abstract expressionism, Franz, and not in a good way, none of it good, for I have sought solitude, not group therapy, or solitude sought me for no one could live with me for long without bringing the rat poison up from the basement, even my son, whose “soul progress in solitary devotion†involved heroin and guns, a boy a lot like Rimbaud whose body I would have liked to place into the arms of someone like Meg Kearney, or Meg herself, whose students, I just know it, write to her years later and say Dear Meg, poetry/you saved me, and some of the salvation may have involved a salary and health insurance,
in the dream, Franz, we are in France, for dreams rhyme in silly ways that would make you spit venom, a substance born of fear and too much—who?—William Burroughs? you wrote a poem in which you dreamed of him, it was published in the New Yorker, and I wrote a counterpoint poem, for I knew Burroughs and he put the needle in my boyfriend’s arm, who later overdosed, his body buried in Sag Harbor, though my poem was in Hanging Loose, not the New Yorker, meaning, I guess, you are closer to Keats than I am though Burroughs liked my porn,
so what scares you, Franz, that the masses have crashed the banquet, and none of them Keats, who may have traded Beauty is truth for health insurance and all it represents, for paying for my son’s stints in rehab and psych wards bankrupted me, and bankruptcy is only tangentially related to poetry, and not in a good way, it’s a Republican view, yours, isn’t it, exclusivist, backward-gazing, nostalgic for a time when there were three great men sucking at poetry’s tit-sack and not a million, some of them like Turcotte finding their way to poetry by way of the reservation, or like Juan in Pueblo, or John in Detroit whose brother’s head was blown off in a dice game, or some not men at all,
Molly in Tucson carrying the body of a dead illegal out of the desert, or that girl with numerous piercings in my workshop who goes by the name Chencha and writes shyly, in Spanglish, Franz, there is something at the core of your argument that seduces me, like the pea beneath the hundred mattresses that vexed and intrigued the tender princess, which is why I dreamed of you, which is why, in the dream, I tamed you, for your meanness scares me as does my own, for your wish to believe in the tyranny of genius calls to me, it is purist, as is all tyranny,
in the dream you said we should stick together, you said we are simpatico, we should be comrades, we were in Paris, there was a banquet, all of the bigwigs were there, I was among a cluster of middle-aged women, a group who was trying its hand at poetry, none of which would amount to much in the scheme of things, they stood on the margin in awe of the greats, too fearful to step into the circle, having learned, from early on, their place, but you pulled out a chair for me, you were a little chastened, a little in love, and I was lured, despite the mess of your hair, still I said where’s Meg and you said never mind Meg and I said no, Meg, in the dream I couldn’t lower myself into that chair without Meg and her three-legged dog, who sat at the very back of Frost’s barn and listened so attentively to poetry
“Don’t take to a public venue to denounce him for something he said in a technically private outlet.”
Since when is Facebook a private outlet? When you post something on your wall, you’re making a public statement, even if you’re limiting the audience with your privacy settings. It’s not like this was an email he sent to Kearney–he was blasting it on his wall knowing that he would get a reaction. And now he’s gotten a bunch of them (and I’m betting he doesn’t care one bit).
Well, now his FB page is thoroughly private. It’s been deactivated.
First, Franz Wright has battled mental illness for most of his life. Second, he’s an excellent poet who has done his work inspite of every possible emotional catastrophe. Either of these things should have earned him a break. And finally, David Biespiel, Wright didn’t address you. Meg Kearney is very capable of defending herself, on her own, in whatever way she thinks is best. I’m troubled by the contemptuous hyperbole you directed toward a man almost as troubled as he is gifted. It reminded me of what Oscar Wilde said: to look with mockery upon the face of sorrow is an unforgivable sin.
Franz Wright sends angry diatribes to poets big and small. A good friend of mine, who is an emerging poet, was on the receiving end of some of his nastiness in the past. He is mentally unstable, which is unfortunate, and Meg Kearney surely did not deserve, nor I doubt was she expecting, to be on the receiving end of FW’s latest downward spiral. Of course, the elephant in the room is an honest discussion on the state of the poetry MFA program in America today. That type of discussion seems to become more and more frowned upon. After spending thousands and thousands of dollars to get their piece of paper, poets do get defensive about the subject. No matter how much truth there is in the criticisms. I would hope that once the dust settles over FW’s attack on Kearney, that this will lead to further discussion on MFA programs and the myth that one is required to be a “legitimate” poet, which seems to be the new mantra of many younger poets these days. But I’m not waiting up nights.
An honest discussion on the state of the poetry MFA has been going on for decades now, and there’s no indication it’s about to run out of steam.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that FW temper. This essay is on point. Love the last line, which is true throughout the world poetical and the world not poetical. Peace to you Franz Wright.
I just wanted to say that many of you would do well to reread, and more carefully consider, exactly what Mr. Wright is saying about contemporary poetry.
what Margaret Benbow said . . . but I disagree strongly with FW about MFA programs . . . Idealistically I believe that the more poets there are, the more MFA programs where poets can flourish, the better things will be, not just for poetry, but for the greater society as a whole. Too many poets? —Too many gun-manufacturers and too many drone-missile technicians and too many politicians and too many lobbyists and too many PR propagandists and too many clerics preaching death-dogmas, and too many military cadets, yes—— but too many poets? Really? This country needs more poets, not fewer. Let a thousand MFA programs bloom, a million poets, and that still wouldn’t be enough——
I posted a link to Franz’s rant as reported by the Daily News on my FB page, and a discussion followed, essentially in defense of Meg Kearney and labeling the rant as a vitriol. (And I’ve posted a link to here as well.)
Is Franz going into a mental health episode, a downward spiral attributable to possibly a med change? Was he simply drinking at the time? Does he not have a dog to kick instead of Meg? If we go there, into these questions, and say yes to any them, we are not reading what he is ranting.
He was asked to “like” the MFA program. He did not really attack Meg. He essentially riffs off the “like” request to give his rant, a rant it took a poet to write, in the sense that he had to move through his insight, a sort of musing, onto the page, as a non-poet would not be able to. He is looking at the state of the art from the periphery, even though he is within the state itself. I’m not saying that this musing is confoundingly good or outside any of the above responders’ kens. Just that one more person asked Franz Wright to “like” an MFA program, and this set him off.
Be a Chinese dissident, or an American dissident. Problem is, all the good soldiers are in the armed forces of the country you’d be a dissident of. The MFA programs have conscripted all the Charles Simics. But also, as a Chinese dissident, all the benefits you would reap in life would come from the culture you have resentment of. Should it be shameful to be such a dissident, when the very food you just ate was made possible by the system, both in its purchase and by your willing participation. Similarly, to be a published poet, to accept an honorarium, you need to be in cahoots.
This does not mean that I agree with Franz or that I am defending him. I think I am not as opposed as he is to the “MFA system” as it were. It is what it is. It is what we’ve some to. Having a job as a professor in the MFA system would not mean a poet would no longer be a poet. A poet must do something for a living. But I get it about the rant.
I like looking across the pond into the UK to read the poetry that comes from there and the criticisms and reviews that come from there as well. We in the USA, and Canada too, have a true peripheral look at what is going on in another “system”. They use the same words yet what is appreciated as good wordsmithing is different. What the American MFA programs bring about results from a system as well. It can easily move away from greater and essential humanity, because it is becoming institutionalized and therefore of itself. Poetry in this sense is systemic. Thus there is a politics that surrounds what is created and what is lauded. Canadian and US poetry is more intertwined than either is to UK poetry. But so is some of the politics, and so is much of the poetry politics of both sides of the Atlantic.
I wonder. If Franz had said in person what he wrote on Facebook, would he not have been perceived as an animated character instead of a vitriolic mental health patient?
The issue, though, Bill, is not that we need more poets, just more good poetry!
I’m sorry I can’t hear a word if Franz’ poetic argument above the sound of his gunfire. Mean people suck out loud.
Meg:
Aren’t we all mean, sometimes?
The way we say things doesn’t always mean that what we say isn’t valid. In fact, the more angry we are might sometimes more accurately validate what we mean.
GBF
Gary, anger might make what a person says more honest, but it rarely leads to solid reasoning.
I disagree with Wright’s overall point about MFA programs because it’s simplistic and inaccurate in too many cases. There may be a nugget of truth buried deep in his screed that applies to some poets, but not enough to make an overall judgment about the MFA as an institution. But that’s not why Wright is facing a backlash right now. The argument over what the MFA does to writing has been going on since the degree was introduced and won’t stop in my lifetime, I’m sure. Wright is getting hammered now because he was a public douche (again) and some people decided to call him on it. That’s all.
As someone put it on Twitter, “Franz Wright may be a ‘lil stinker,” but this article is still “poet on poet violence.”
Both the Daily News and the Rumpus pieces come off as a personal attack, not a reasoned response.
I also suffered one of his tirades when I posted a comment about a poem of his on my blog. He apparently googles himself and goes off looking to trash and insult people. I was shocked. He is very clearly mentally unstable; he exercises abominably poor judgement and needs behavioral supervision. He is also an excellent poet.
Yes, absolutely. And there’s a definite note of malicious glee in some of these attacks. Wahoo, the chance to stomp all over a blazingly talented, Pulitzer Prize winning, very vulnerable poet and look righteous doing it.Does anybody doubt that Wright spoke as he did because he is suffering? And by the way, as others have noted, there were some real chunks of difficult truth in his rant about the MFA programs…
Yes. We are all mean at times; I know I am–but this is not one of those times for me. And as I said earlier peace to Franz Wright. That said, and if you are following commentary, you’ve also seen the frequency with which commenters say, “I’ve had a similar experience with FW.” If you believe even half of these claims, then we are talking about a serial offender. The way to stop bullying behavior is zero tolerance.
Meg, if you are following commentary, you might have noticed that Franz Wright cannot control his outbursts. He is tortured, ill.The idea of “punishing” such a person with ridicule is simply medieval. I’m with you in wishing him peace…but fear he will never have it. When Franz Wright was fifteen, his father said to him, “I’ll be damned. You’re a poet. Welcome to hell.” Wright Senior didn’t know the half of it.
I think he probably can control his outbursts. We can only change ourselves. Yet, in these discussions and over the years, I also perceive a kind permission granted/all is forgiven for the sake of ‘genius’ and I don’t buy it. I think we are talking about learned behavior and I think there’s been a good deal of reinforcement for this behavior. I have little doubt but that this too will be forgiven and will recur. I think FW is better served by a zero tolerance approach. But I understand and accept thst this is improbable. I hope Franz is able to recognize and address his instrumental role in all of this.
The only poet he put down is Melanie Braverman, by using her as an example of what comes out of the MFA system. He actually calls her subdoormat as a poet.
There is no other system in the US for a poet to make it as a poet, certainly none as obvious and institutionalized. “What shall we do with our poets here in America,” we seems to have asked. Our answer, a generous answer to a great degree, is, “We’ll create the MFA system.” What Franz is holding witness to is a difference. Where his peripheral point of view seems to be coming from, is what he knows of his father’s time as a poet, then how and that the institutional system has come to be.
What he shouts out with capital letters, is nothing personal to anyone. He is simply fed up with what others have been debating politely. What he does not do is give poets a new direction. He does not use well-placed humor. His rant is nothing more or less than what any two of us might have said each other. The further question is, “If this is all we have, this 20-21st-century MFA creation, then what are we missing, what’s wrong with it?”
The attacks (or even counterattacks, if you prefer) leveled against him are coming out of the MFA system. In China, they arrest dissident poets, sometimes to give them correctional re-education. Institutions justify their own existence in order to grow and perpetuate. But the arrest of the dissident is based on misbehavior, creating unrest, or making rash decisions on a tax issue, the story being that these people are not worth listening to, and should be in prison. House arrest is a favorite tactic in Burma. By not addressing Franz’s points, we are attempting to put him under MFA house arrest. None of us have halos, and all of us can be viewed through our worst behavior. Here we have an MFA dissident poet in Franz Wright, or at least one case of dissident action on his part.
Did you mean French Symbolists? None of those poets (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine) is a surrealist…
And hell yeah what Bill Knott says…
I’ll admit at times to questioning the validity of the MFA culture, but all-in-all I agree with Bill Knott – there can never be too many poets. Was Wright grossly out of line in the tenor of his facebook post? Yes. But since when has talent been a guarantee of good behavior? Never.
I am tired of watching men beat up women (Carolyn, Olga, Melanie, Meg) in public and then hearing how the troubled genius has a point, or the troubled genius just couldn’t help himself. One need only consider his “nice mommies” comment to see that beneath it all–and not too far beneath–his attack is gendered. Poetry has been mommie-ized! Interesting to consider why he lowers his attack on Meg and her low-res MFA program at Pine Manor College and not the big dogs like Iowa. I’ve seen a similar response in academic culture as it became “invaded” by the women and the non-white–accusations of hand-holding, of classrooms filled with breast milk rather than rigor. We’ve just witnessed it played out in national politics–all those right-wing white men appalled by the new face of the electorate, voting to make government mommie-ish, handout out gifts, softening the borders. Yes, Meg can certainly speak for and defend herself, but I am happy to see others join the chorus. Wright’s point about MFA programs is neither here nor there. Sometimes, as in poetry, form is more telling than content.
What Diane said. Though, I’ve seen his vitriol directed at men as well. Listen, lets stop romanticizing the tortured genius. We’re all tortured in our way, most of us have the good sense and dignity to not splay our mental health debris all over the community at large.
But Russ Bowden got it right. The troubled genius stumbled on something true. The fact that it was outrageous in form, a sort of taloned hairball which he coughed up, doesn’t mean we get to dismiss it. His point about MFA programs is here AND there. And I don’t think we get to dismiss him as a misogynist either. Melanie Braverman was the only woman whose work he specifically savaged. He mentioned prominent male poets (including his own father) as well as women poets who, in his mind, had “sold their souls” for safe teaching jobs.I wonder what Zero Tolerance for this raving poet would involve. Shunning him, isolating him further, like a Caliban? Letting him know he should freaking shut up? But we should be tough enough, or fair enough, to listen to an eccentric brother shout exactly what’s on his mind and not be horrified by it.
It is the behavior that deserves zero tolerance,not the person. When one is on the receiving end of such a rant, it is personal. Social media is personal. You don’t make a point with a hammer. If any is isolating
FW, it’s FW. No worries, FW will emerge
Unscathed.
What the troubled genius stumbled upon is a truism. Hasn’t the value of MFA programs been debated for a long time? It’s nothing new, it’s just mean, and targeted. The raving and the shouting is the form for a conventional old argument. What should be done with him? I guess what should be done with other playground bullies, which does not include pedestalizing them.
Margaret– he can have a point. I can see (and even agree) with part of his point. Have you been on the receiving end of this? Have you been called a stupid f*cking c*unt by the charming Mr. Wright? ( I have) If a man screams abuse at his wife about something he thinks she did wrong but he has a “point”, does that excuse the abusive behavior? FW is a bully. Plain and simple. This is sustained, ongoing behavior. I have many many friends who have encountered this. Almost everyone who has any contact with him has been turned on at one point. Some of us are tired and standing up for ourselves.
As for the mentally ill comment– so are most serial killers. The illness doesn’t excuse the behavior.
Linda–Thank you for your comment, which clears things up. Of course you’re right that there’s no excuse for such nasty, vicious behavior. About all one can do in such a case is read his poems (if they deserve it) and otherwise avoid all contact. And he’ll have the solitude he claims to crave.
I was going to forgo comment on the misogyny card that is being played in this discussion. But as I look at the social dynamics, it smacks of insider politics. Part of this has to do with my observation of his behavior at one or two Dodge Poetry Festivals, when he was milling about with his family. They were enjoying him and he was enjoying them. I was not focused on him other than he and his family were there where I was going a few times. Yet, all that I overheard and saw smacked of love and respect. I also attended at least one discussion group where I looked forward to what he would have to say. Jorie Graham, I believe, was my main attraction to the discussion. But his point of view is worth listening to, I came to find out.
I must be prejudiced by his favorable behavior while some here are prejudiced by his unfavorable. Still and all, there is no misogyny in Franz Wright’s rant. There may be misogyny in some of his life or some of the time, but not all of it and not all of the time. (This negativity prejudice reminds me of a discussion about Sylvia Plath at The Guardian, where it comes to be that there are responders who cannot read her poetry without considering that each poem has something to do with her suicide. I would love to review the suicide scene to discover that she was murdered. If you don’t buy into that, then buy into that too often nowadays her name cannot be mentioned without mentioning Ted Hughes, even though we can review Ted Hughes without mentioning Sylvia Plath. We are not reading her through a prejudice, one could not forgive her for committing suicide with her children in the house.) Anyway . . .
What this conversation seems to be leading to is to never listen to Franz when he mentions a woman by name, because he hates them all (or you all), all of the time. Or at least his writing must be read as if his most unattractive quality is either predominant or salient. I am a witness to that being not true in vivo.
Russ – You don’t understand misogyny. At all. And I don’t have the will or the energy to explain it to you.
Diane — Please spell my name R-u-s. That us how my name is spelled. R-u-s-s is how others spell their names.
It’s unfair to say that I don’t understand misogyny. Plain unfair, and smacks of verbal politics, which goes back to the power politics of poetry. You don’t know what I know. As a victim of spousal abuse, I understand some things that I don’t have the energy to explain to you either.
I am very understanding of the prejudice that being the victim creates. I have not put anyone down as you have just tried to put me down.
For me, this is not about misogyny (although I do believe such bent is demonstrated in the behaviors we’ve experienced). It is not about a brilliant poet with a mental illness. It is not about politics. It is not about self-worshiping academia versus the poetic genius struggling in solitude to perfect his understanding. It is not about a troubled childhood or a terrible father. It is not about how you spell your name, Rus.
It’s about bullying. It is about the bully being permitted to bully because of some perceived value that exceeds the value of the victim. It is about everyone on the schoolyard looking the other way while the bully does his bullying and then carrying on in the pretense of ‘that never happened.’ The bully realizes all the benefit of such rants. He gets to be the misunderstood poet genius. He gets to feel like the big hard guy who is delivering the truth to the rest of us pedestrians poem pretenders.
I’m not surprised that Rus’ encounter with FW was positive; such dichotomy is more the rule than the exception with cruel people.
The most important line in RW’s scree, I think, is toward the very end where he says, “and YOU get all the dough,” this is the temper tantrum of a spoiled little boy.
The Rush Limbaugh comparison is a forced, post-election comparison. I agree with Meg Harris that this is about mental illness, not politics or sexism.
And not just any ole’ mental illness–a phrase people throw around without any nuanced awareness of particular disorders and their symptoms—-but severe Bipolar Disorder. One of the symptoms of Bipolar is irritability/rage. I have Bipolar myself and I can see Wright’s symptoms clear as day (no, I’m not diagnosing him—-it’s already well known that he has severe BPD; I just recognize them).
While people are understandably upset at his outburst, and while I’m not making excuses for him, I also cannot explain to some of you what it feels like to have your brain completely overrun by this horrible disease that ruins friendships, family relationships, and isolates the sufferer in ways unimaginable to the average person. Trust me, folks, he is feeling like utter crap right now, as he’s surely realized the consequences of his behavior. He might not own up to it, but believe me he feels like crap right now and feels further alienated and lone.
Bipolar rage often occurs during mixed episodes of mania and depression, a torturous state of mind wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and this was the state—I’m sure—Wright was in when he flew off the handle.
Again, I’m not condoning his actions. Honestly, he should try harder to avoid social media at all costs and be aware of his triggers, but understand that it’s equally offensive to reduce his behavior to sexism or politics. The man has a disease; some diseases—unlike others—manifest in the brain, not the “body,†but that doesn’t make them any less horrendous. I’d hope so-called “liberals” would understand this.
So now I get attacked by you, Meg?
I don’t know Franz. He’s not my favorite poet. He seemed like a nice guy that was having a good time with his family when I saw them in Stanhope last. That should be reported just as David felt his outburst should have been. It was in a previous Dodge that I saw him on a discussion panel and found the ideas he shared interesting.
Am I only suppose to say negative things about him, or else be tagged a bully? Is my asking such a question bullying behavior? Or is the name-calling that is coming my way all of a sudden bullying behavior?
I have Diane saying I don’t know enough to be in this conversation and you saying I am bulling someone.
I have never been in an online discussion with my name being mispelled. I am not bullying by being assertive and asking to please spell it correctly.
On Facebook today, someone shared this quote by Jimi Hendrix: When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
We will also come to a better understanding, I guess not only of Franz Wright’s behavior, but each other’s.
I’m sorry if you felt I attacked you, Rus. That was not my intent! I think you may have misunderstood my point because I don’t think you were bullying anyone. The bully is the guy this thread is about. That said, I’d better go and rereadmy post in case I misspoke somehow.
Nor did I intend to imply that you don’t know enough to be this conversation.
Please note that Joeblow’s good post slipped in, a slip being a post that a newer poster did not see or could not have seen before clicking the submit button. Turns out, it was cleared for display after mine went up.
Now Meg’s and Diane’s good posts slipped in. The conversation is moving so fast.
Thanks both of you.
I’m actually very well schooled and studied in community social psychology. Also, in the undergraduate work, I did a lot on depression and suicide. So I am able to follow along. When I went to Rivier, where I got the bachelors, it was an all-woman school during the day, that I attended at night. I’ve also worked in the mental health field for six years, where I made it a practice to take people at face value. This may be why, more than my practice of reading poetry, that I go to what is being said, versus what any psych diagnosis might be, for either Franz Wright or Sylvia Plath.
>>There may be a nugget of truth buried deep in his screed that applies to some poets, but not enough to make an overall judgment about the MFA as an institution.
Opinion.
Indeed. But a far more defensible opinion than Wright’s.
Looks like I misread Meg’s post…or skimmed.
Meg, it might be about bullying, but his behavior is clearly symptomatic of Bipolar rage, and this cannot be ignored. Bipolar sufferers often feel so helpless that they resort to bullying as a way to gain power when they literally have none. Look it up.
Well, a bully is a bully, even if he has an illness. Very juvenile, that rant. His poetry doesn’t do much for me. Seems forced, like his “I’m hearing voices” screed.
Biespiel addressed NONE of Wright’s points—and he made many.
I discuss them here: http://scarriet.wordpress.com/
The issue is aesthetics and what can/should be taught? The English Department teaches poetry. The MFA program teaches poetry. The essential, institutional difference is crucial.
There’s a not so fine line between having a mental illness which might at times impair behavior and simply being an asshole. Frankly, I think it’s insulting to those of us who have suffered from mental illness to explain away this behavior as something the poor fool can’t help. It shows complete and total ignorance of, among other things, the way that psychologists and psychiatrists themselves understand such behavior: pathology should not entail automatic carte blanche, immediate forgiveness, codes of silence, etc. As everyone in “po biz” knows, FW’s been doing this for decades. Calling other poets up and threatening to **kill them** for minor perceived slights in friendly conversation was, for example, an old m.o. of his. His anger at academia may have some “nugget” of truth, just as Rush Limbaugh may at times blunder into the realm of reality (DB’s parallel seems to me a good one.) But look at the other factors. FW himself was employed at the very institution he rails against here (with, by the way, completely misogynist rhetoric, picking on a talented young woman who is far from the powers that be in that institution)and he was *fired* from the place. Look into it; it was not pretty and, yes, it involved misogyny, harassment, abuse, all of which were forgiven and explained away for far too long. This most recent outburst may be “psychotic” in the lazy, common sense of that word, but it seems in fact both calculating and frighteningly idiomatic or “run of the mill” for this individual, in a way that no one afflicted by actual psychosis or in the throes of full-on mania could manage. Surely there are plenty of diagnoses to go around. Narcissism seems to me the obvious one here– narcissism that has been enabled by a tremendous amount of spoiled privilege and by some of the same, lame attitudes on display in many of the above comments.
Mike – What you wrote is exactly it. Brilliantly expressed and true. Thank you.
Yes! Mike! you got it!
Mike,
I wasn’t making excuses for his behavior. I offered a specific point about a particular disorder that should at least be considered because people are discussing his “mental illness†without mentioning his specific “mental illness,†as if all mental illnesses are the same. Of course, feel good, warm-and-fuzzy anti-stigma movements lead by the likes of NAMI and other such organizations would love you to believe that a mild or moderate case of depression is the same as Bipolar I—they love to whitewash and sanitize mental illness so that it’s palatable for the masses—but I’m not buying any of that noise and I’ve seen its larger repercussions in the lives of people with severe mental illnesses. So, your claim that a “bully is a bully†is straight-up bullshit because, as I’ve already said, it is well known amongst psychologists and psychiatrists that bullying is a common behavior associated with Bipolar rage. To point out this reality is not excusing FW’s behavior. Nonetheless, it is important to mention, perhaps so people can have a better understanding of the disease—and/or, perhaps so someone in Franz’s life can help him avoid his triggers.
“Frankly,†though, amidst all of your sanctimonious self-righteousness, it is interesting that you are so ready to dispense with any side of “mental illness” that might harm others under some guise that admitting such uncomfortable realities reinforces ignorance. Actually, it works in the opposite direction: discussing mental illness honestly benefits those with mental illness a lot more than only discussing the parts that make don’t make most people uncomfortable; we need to have frank discussions about those aspects of mental illness most would prefer to ignore. Many Bipolar sufferers in the throes of mania do not have control over their brains. Pretending like this is not a harsh reality of Bipolar disorder is more offensive than anything I’ve posted, because it essentially minimizes an integral component of the disease. Please tell me again that I have control over my brain when I can’t sleep for two straight nights, become paranoid, can’t leave my house because of anxiety, etc. Please tell me that my mental illness doesn’t actually exist. Wonderfully compassionate of you!
Now, if you wish to continue to read my posts as mere excuse making, go on ahead. Or, if you have the guts to have a brutally honest discussion of severe mental illness that’s not steeped in political correctness, we can do that too.
“This most recent outburst may be “psychotic†in the lazy, common sense of that word, but it seems in fact both calculating and frighteningly idiomatic or “run of the mill†for this individual, in a way that no one afflicted by actual psychosis or in the throes of full-on mania could manage”–Mike
Um, what? Someone asked him to “like” an MFA page on Facebook, a page representing a program he’s dealt with positively in the past, and he posted a completely irrational public screed against the program director, one filled with typos, personal attacks, and logical fallacies…all because she asked him to “like” a Facebook page. There’s absolutely nothing “calculating†there at all.
Thomas Brady Graves Scarriet, there’s a problem with your reply to Biespiel’s piece, namely that Biespiel wasn’t talking about Wright’s tired position on MFA programs. He was talking, instead, about Wright’s bullying behavior. Pretty much everyone else on this thread figured that out, even those who disagree with Biespiel’s assessment. It’s not a weakness of this blog post that it doesn’t address what you wish it had addressed.
Brian Spears, I agree that Thomas Brady Grave Scarriet’s blog post is off on an irrelevant tangent!
What an enjoyable read. As someone that has no “dog in this hunt”, it opened up a debate that I’ve not yet taken part in. I found this piece via Hubski: http://hubski.com/pub?id=46413 and would encourage Mr. Bielpiel to check out the comments there as well. An interesting discussion emerging on the nature of higher learning and the trauma it entails.
I’m enjoying being a fly on the wall for this fight.
Carolyn Forche is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known; obviously this man is unhinged.
I aggree with Mike; narcissism is the real culprit. Mental health issues are extremely difficult to deal with, I know first-hand. However, they are not a one-way ticket to being a misogynist or having other major personality issues. People always have choice; the pharmaceutical companies and doctors would like to have us think that is not true. And please, in general do not call it MENTAL ILLNESS. Think about the stigma you are perpetuating with that term. ILLNESS is such an ugly word.
Rewording the terminology is empowering: Mental Health Issues are something that people can contend with, makes choices about… Mental ilness is too damning a term.
Some of you do realize that Wright has been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, right? And yet, you continue to ignore this fact and diagnose him yourselves with “narcissism.”
And Julia, while it’s true that Bipolar people can make choices (no one has said otherwise), it’s also true that the disorder itself–the one none of you will acknowledge, the one that Wright was diagnosed with as a teen–is a debilitating disease.
You and others have your heads buried in the sand if you don’t think there’s a connection between his outbursts and his Bipolar disorder. Obviously, it’s a lot easier for you to deal with the uncomfortable realities of his disorder by pretending it doesn’t have any bearing on his behavior, or reducing his behavior to pathology, sexism and politics (easy and safe to do). To top it off, it’s obviously easy for you to pretend like you care about mentally ill people by implying that those of us who are honest are reinforcing stereotypes/stigma or other such nonsense.
Joe Blow, I feel properly equipped to speak about it in ANY terms. The Icarus Project is something I believe in, and it seems like a proper time for a mention:
http://theicarusproject.net/
Well, I was diagnosed at 14 too–back when it wasn’t a fad to diagnose children as Bipolar. I’m sorry, but I have a lot of problems with your approach and your desire to eradicate words like “illness,” or to associate mental disorders with a bunch of anti-pych new age mysticism. Talk about privilege. Homeless Schizophrenics living under a bridge don’t have time for your approach. They need meds, and they need hospital beds.
Joe, I think we’re veering far from the issue here. I am a therapist and have coped with mental issues/illness in my own family for most of my life. If Mr. Wright is ill, he has my sympathy and empathy, but to excuse his behavior because of his illness is not helpful to him or to those he has victimized. Probably most tyrants are diagnosable, but that does not exempt them from the consequences of their actions and words. Addiction, for instance, is a disease, but addicts are still accountable for their actions while drunk or high. Accountability is one element of the journey toward health.
You obviously have anger towards the system, as I have. But, don’t go around dismissing people’s diagnoses as fads. Not evoryone may need meds, nor does everyone want to insitutionalize themself and give their souls away. There needs to be alternatives within the Metal Health sector. Renaming it Mental Health, rather than Mental Illness, is the first step in giving people dignity as they try to crave out a space for themself in a society where they do not always fit. Btw, The Icarus Project is not new-agey at all. If anything, I would call it punk. And also, you sound very cranky. I am going to leave this conversation, for risk of becoming cranky, too.
Diane,
Franz Wright is Bipolar, which is common knowledge in the literary world. Not sure why you wrote “if he’s ill.” You of all people should be aware of his diagnosis, the one he’s written about endlessly. Second, I never claimed he wasn’t accountable for his actions.
Julia,
I never dismissed your own diagnosis as a fad. I simply mentioned that I was diagnosed before BPD became a fad diagnosis, so that there wouldn’t be any question about my own authority to discuss these issues.
I disagree so strongly with the rest of your post that I’m not even going to bother responding to it in detail, other than to say that the phrase “mental health” has done a world of damage to people with severe mental illnesses. There is a difference between general “health” and “disease,” and it’s a disgrace that you want to diminish those distinctions because you think it will benefit people with mental illnesses; it’s like suggesting that a person with cancer doesn’t have a disease but is instead “unhealthy.” I’m done with this thread.
Joe – I’m weary of the argument, but I’ll just say this: I said “if he’s ill” because I don’t want to be presumptuous about anyone’s health.
Ok, I lied, and am back, because mental health activism is something I am committed to. I meant to say in my earlier post that we should de-stigmatize labels by renaming what we as a society call metal illness as mental health issues. Joe, if someone has issues, they are something THEY can attempt to take control of. There is not one way to heal.
The fact that we are having such a conversation in a poetry posting is interesting to me. What we name things is highly important.
There is nothing in Franz Wright’s rant that necessarily points to whatever his struggles with bipolar disorder may have been.
One way to stigmatized someone is to continually talk about it in relation to all he or she does and writes.
This is a way of harming Franz. So if you would like to abuse him or bully him, then carry on.
He is making points in the rant. Agree with them or don’t, like his point of view or don’t, but it’s grossly unfair to create a near-hundred response thread in a blog of a respected poet and editor to display him in the worst light.
“There is nothing in Franz Wright’s rant that necessarily points to whatever his struggles with bipolar disorder may have been.”
Oh please. Give me a break. Franz has a history of going off people online for no reason and had no “point” to make in his rant. Others have already done a good job pointing out his hypocrisy and numerous logical fallacies. The rant is damn near incoherent and not written for someone rational. I’m not further stigmatizing him by considering his post in relation to a history or pattern of behavior and I find it hilarious that you think my posts are “bullying” him. Haha.
Rus – He displayed HIMSELF in the worst light.
“There is nothing in Franz Wright’s rant that necessarily points to whatever his struggles with bipolar disorder may have been.â€
Oh please. Give me a break. Franz has a history of going off on people online for no reason and had no “point†to make in his rant. Others have already done a good job of pointing out his hypocrisy and numerous logical fallacies. The rant is damn near incoherent and not written by someone rational or sane (at that particular moment). I’m not further stigmatizing him by considering his post in relation to a history or pattern of behavior and I find it hilarious that you think my posts are “bullying†him.
Second of all, what a bizarre post from you, since you basically agreed with my first post that said the same things I’ve said in later posts.
Hi Joeblow,
It’s not just you. The entire thread has become about his diagnosis and nothing about the rant, which I understand.
The rant, by the way, goes against the system, not against people per se. For instance, above in this thread, the rant is misread as being against Carolyn Forche. It is not.
And yet, there’s nothing in his life or poetry that suggests he himself isn’t part of the system. Secondly, it wasn’t the appropriate time or place. Someone asked him to “like” a Facebook page. I think I once liked my Grandmother’s Facebook page for her cat without giving it much thought.
It was not inappropriate. I was a friggin Facebook response, a riff of opinion, an informal response in an informal venue.
It was taken wrong.
Yikes. This has become ugly.
I am re-posting my comment from way back up there on the thread:
“I just wanted to say that many of you would do well to reread, and more carefully consider, exactly what Mr. Wright is saying about contemporary poetry.”
You are all missing the point. It has nothing to do with how things were said, or the tone, or the anger, or the “mental health” of the speaker.
It has to do with WHAT HE’S SAYING!
It has to do with POETRY!
.
Taken wrong by half the human race.
Gary – Is he really saying something earth-shattering? This is not news.
Diane — taken wrong nonetheless. And yet, how many people really care about this like we do. Half the human race are not poets. And then not all poets are in the MFA system, which seem to be the ones reeling instead of reading–earth shattering or not. It’s true, some of the threads that have resulted from Franz’ rant are discussing the merits of his point of view, or at least picking the subject up once again, while this thread talks about his mental health.
Rus said:
‘It’s true, some of the threads that have resulted from Franz’ rant are discussing the merits of his point of view, or at least picking the subject up once again, while this thread talks about his mental health”
Rus, can you link to some of these threads?
GBF
P.S. Hello again, old friend. Have you heard from Terreson lately? I know he had surgery due to cancer, but he seems to have completely disappeared from his poetry forum ‘Delectable Mountains’. Is he okay?
Gary
Chr*st, people, I think we’ve attacked this article from every possible angle. I, for one, am tired of it all! Let’s move on…
HI Gary,
Come to think of it, no, I have not heard from Tere.
Two were linked to above:
http://hubski.com/pub?id=46413
http://scarriet.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/the-controversial-franz-wright-punk-or-prophet/
I’m not joining those conversations, by the way. I thought Dawn Potter’s response, the second response, in the scarriet thread was interesting. Where most everyone is coming from is outside the MFA system, whether that’s for the good or the bad or wherever in between. It seems that when that’s the case, when Franz’ rant is read from the outside, which is where I am as well. I have my disagreements with most of the responders, but the disagreements are on either how they read Franz, or within their responses to his point of view.
Whoever moderated my previous post out, please post it up.
Gary,
You must live under a rock if you think he’s saying something new or provocative about poetry via MFA program conspiracy theories. There’s nothing in his rant that hasn’t been said a million times already. Even if one were to agree with some of his points, it’s not like those points were bravely broached by him. I assume you’ve been out of the MFA bashing loop for the, oh, past two decades.
I believe that my response to Gary is held up in moderation because it contains links.
The links I posted are are the scarriet.wordpress link and the hubski one with the /pub?id=46413 at the end. I’ve held back here on putting in the dot com.
I did not copy the post before clicking “submit comment” but went on to say that . . .
The second response in the scarriet dot com thread, the one by Dawn Potter, I found interested. Being outside the inside group makes it easier to read his rant for what it is.
I am not participating in those discussions, but I do not agree with much of the points and counterpoints being made about the relative merits of the MFA system and individuals, nor of what might be right or wrong with his off-the-cuff critique of the system.
These are posts that are visiting what Franz said in the post, and are by poets who are not within the MFA system.
Pretention at its best. Just have a left handed slapping contest in the classics library.
Rus, I dug your comment with the links out of the moderation queue and posted it. But a word of advice: when talking about issues like misogyny, it’s not the best tactic to simply dismiss the feelings of others, particularly those who face sexism and misogyny on a daily basis in a way that neither you nor I can even begin to imagine, with a flip comment like “It was taken wrong.” That’s insulting, and it makes you look arrogant. It doesn’t matter if you meant it that way–that’s the way it’s going to come off to a large percentage of the people you’re talking to, and if you’re trying to talk to them rather than at them, then you just failed.
Gary B. Fitzgerald, the content of Wright’s rant was not the subject of Biespiel’s post, which is likely why no one responded to your earlier comment. As many others have pointed out, there are other places on the web where that conversation is taking place. This post was about Wright’s pattern of conduct over the years, not about Wright’s view of the MFA in poetry, except in the sense that Wright is a little guilty of hypocrisy on the matter.
HI Brian,
I insulted no one. And will link to it no longer either at facebook.
To be so selective on point of view as to misread what I said, and then have the audacity to give me advice on how to behave online, is just too nervy and prejudiced.
I’m off this site.
Yours,
Rus
I will link here no longer either from my column or from my FB page, is what I meant to say.
What you don’t get is that this thread has been a flame against Franz Wright. That’s how poor your judgment is as a moderator. I was feeling that someone should have come in yesterday and put a halt to the abuse that was going on.
Brian Spears said:
“Gary B. Fitzgerald, the content of Wright’s rant was not the subject of Biespiel’s post, which is likely why no one responded to your earlier comment. As many others have pointed out, there are other places on the web where that conversation is taking place. This post was about Wright’s pattern of conduct over the years, not about Wright’s view of the MFA in poetry, except in the sense that Wright is a little guilty of hypocrisy on the matter “.
I would only note:
“Abusive ‘argumentum ad hominem’ (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one’s opponents in order to attack their claims or invalidate their arguments, but can also involve pointing out true character flaws or actions that are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument. This is logically fallacious because it relates to the opponent’s personal character, which has nothing to do with the logical merit of the opponent’s argument.â€
(from Wikipedia)
GBF
Except that Biespiel wasn’t trying to invalidate Wright’s argument (such as it existed in that Facebook post), so your Wikipedia quote doesn’t really apply. He wasn’t claiming that Wright’s argument had no merit because he was acting like a jerk. He was stating that Wright has acted like a jerk for a long time now, and as such, reminds him of Rush Limbaugh. There was no connection made between Wright’s conduct and the quality of his argument.
Brian Spears said:
“Except that Biespiel wasn’t trying to invalidate Wright’s argument (such as it existed in that Facebook post), so your Wikipedia quote doesn’t really apply. He wasn’t claiming that Wright’s argument had no merit because he was acting like a jerk. He was stating that Wright has acted like a jerk for a long time now, and as such, reminds him of Rush Limbaugh. There was no connection made between Wright’s conduct and the quality of his argument.”
Then why doesn’t Mister Biespiel simply address the point made instead of the person making it?
You’re basically suggesting that there’s never a reason to call someone out when they act like a jerk. I disagree. Obviously so does Biespiel.
I don’t think the Limbaugh comparison works well at all. Limbaugh is a college drop out and drug addict who has done nothing with his life other than make ill-informed, mean-spirited pronouncements.
Franz Wright is a wonderful and original poet. He went too far in his comments and he stated them badly and baldly.
Having said that, his point about the number of prize winning poets who do not teach is worth noting. Look at the Morrow Anthology. Every poet in that anthology teaches somewhere.
I think Wright’s whole point is that there are many mansions in the kingdom of poetry and that, right now, a MFA appears to many people to be the only entrance to the kingdom.
Actually, there really is no reason to call someone out when they act like a jerk. Doesn’t that make you a jerk too?
Who’s the bully here?
Although, having been called a c*#t by Mr. Wright on FB and having been attacked by him in the comments of one of my online articles, I am probably not entirely objective, IMHO this is exactly right. People have noted here that Wright suffers from a mental illness. Sad and true. However, mental illness and being a misogynistic, entitled asshole are not mutually exclusive. As Mr. Wright has demonstrated yet once more.
Wright (like many other poets, I would note) can be a nasty unit. This is common knowledge. This might even be an intentional M.O.
Still, have you no comment on what he was actually saying about poetry today?
It’s true! The Academic/Publishing complex has, for all intents and purposes, literally 🙂 destroyed poetry today.
Why is this all about how much of an asshole someone is rather than about the point he made? Being an asshole doesn’t make one wrong.
According to Franz, he has been diagnosed with bipolar and schizo affective disorder. The latter is very hard to treat and to control. It is characterized by delusions and paranoid behavior. Medications help, but those affected often experience episode, even with medications.
This thread is so frustruating.
I requested earlier for people to CONSIDER using the term mental health issues instead of mental illness. Mental health issues affect everyone; if not indirectly, at some point, almost everyone is affected. Using the term illness creates undue stigma. It seems this discussion of how to hold someone accountable for their actions errs on the side of forgetting that, no matter what, our words hold power. Words can hurt. You are all poets, MFA ones: yes? Can’t we do better that this? The diction used above is quite careless. when addressing mental health issues, I encourage you all to imagine your families, friends and loved ones as the individual you are discussing and then chose your words based on that.
No one, maybe expect Joe Blow, wants to be called ill for the rest of their lives. If they are privilaged enough to have health care, they are already most likely being told they will need to be medicated for life, in therapy for life; the last thing a person dealing with that wants is to be told they are ILL on top of it. Give some power back to the people who are struggling to just say alive each day. Stop stigmatizing those dealing with mental health issues. Be aware of your diction, poets.
Julia, are you referring to my post?
Regarding the use of the term “mental illness”…Franz has a collection called ILL LIT. And in the following interview the term “mental illness” is used. There is no stigma attached to the term and Franz is very open about his suffering in that regard. I recommend that people listen to this interview. It tells us a lot about Wright, his challenges, and how he views art. http://m.npr.org/story/1851833?storyId=1851833
Many of our best poet have suffered from mental conditions such as Wright’s: Frost, Berryman, Roethke and Sexton to name a few. Their poems are their gifts to us and the best of them show us the way to empathy and generosity even as we read about the terror that is life. As readers and poets we know this. We can respond with cynicism or with generosity.
Here’s a thoughtful reply to this article:
http://www.massreview.org/blog/wright-defense
Rather than skate over the real issues, “Wright Defense” brings up good points to think about.
Yes, yes, he is a bully and a tyrant and a woman-hater and a stunning egoist, but honestly I feel sorrier for Franz Wright than I can even express. And I say that both as someone who lives with chronic mental health challenges herself and also as someone whom Wright has attacked online (although, happily, I got out of the line of fire rather quickly and he got bored).
Wright is clearly terribly, terribly ill. He is to be pitied more than anything else. That said, he is (in my opinion) also a bully, and my guess is that he would be a bully without the mental health challenges. It’s just who he is: a very sad, very angry guy who wants to make sure that other people suffer as he does.
I actually do think he cares about poetry (although he doesn’t seem to know much about the kind of money most non-tenured writers in academia make… trust me, for most of us it’s barely enough to pay the rent on a one-bedroom apartment). His Rilke translations are wonderful, as is some (though not all) of his own work. But his sputtering rage toward and fear of ideas that are even slightly different than his own–his blinding egoism and myopic view of not only the world but of aesthetic possibility in general–finally limits not only his life but his work. He wants desperately to be his dad, but he can’t be.
It’s a shame, but also fairly simple. Franz Wright is to be pitied for his behavior, respected for the aspects of his work that are worthwhile, and steered clear of as much as is humanly possible.
A., thanks for the link to the article.
An interesting book is Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison.
A lot of people have attacked Franz for having a “pure” notion of what poetry is, but I think perhaps for Franz and others like him, writing is very spiritual and a lifeline, a kind of salvation. Many poets have had a similar relationship to their writing. John Berryman’s ex-wife, who wrote POETS IN THEIR YOUTH, for instance, spoke of how writing had saved Berryman, kept him from falling sooner. Under the circumstances, it’s easy to understand why writing would be so important for Franz. I admire his dedication to his writing.
Only Franz knows the depth of his suffering and the price he pays. What seems like cruelty to us might be an expression of his intense agony, but who can say? We can’t know, and because we can’t know, the situation becomes a mirror, reflecting ourselves back to us.
You know who should really be pitied? His wife.
At at rate, Happy Birthday William Blake!
Let’s try this again:
At any rate…Happy Birthday William Blake.
Well, I seem to have done it–to have inspired universal horror, and achieved universal estrangement. Before you know it, I shall have conquered solitude. Well, sorry for all the hurt feelings, and God bless you all.
Franz Wright
universal horror, universal estrangement, Franz? Come on. You still have a publisher, remember, you still have readers. You don’t have to self-publish your books like I do, you don’t have to suffer that humiliation. You’re esteemed as one of the greatest living poets, your books are in print, your poems are in anthologies, in readers’ hearts and minds. You’re one of the most successful poets in the country. And rightfully so.
Hi Franz. Glad to see your post. Have been wondering how you are.
Franz, go look at the 25 pages posted here, and then tell me again how “universally” abhorred you are: http://knottpoetry.blogspot.com/
Yes, and look at the final section of my essay here: http://www.cprw.com/the-poem-as-devotional-practice-luke-hankins-on-the-metaphysical-poets (and the poems of yours I’ve included in my anthology, Poems of Devotion).
But Bill, I don’t understand your suggestion that no one will publish you. Not only have we done so at Asheville Poetry Review in the past, but, correct me if I’m wrong, Don Share at POETRY is itching to publish you, but you won’t send him anything!
Mr. Hankins, really— my “suggestion” that no one will publish me—? suggestion? are you kidding? do those hundreds of form rejection notices look like I’m “suggesting” those magazines rejected me? How many more hundreds do I have to upload to convince you? and furthermore,
if you look at the pages on that site—
http://knottpoetry.blogspot.com/
you will see a form rejection slip from Poetry Magazine, i could have put together a wall of such rejection notices from Poetry Magazine, but used only one because I didn’t duplicate when I pasted the pages together a couple years ago . . .
Nobody is “itching” to publish my work, and you are wrong to SUGGEST otherwise—
Bill, all I can say is that I’ve heard otherwise from Don himself (who frequently shares links to your blogs on FB, btw). You should talk to him if you haven’t recently, especially since he’s now the Editor at Poetry. Also, virtually every poet has hundreds of rejections. I’m half your age and have as many as you.
And check it out: one of your poems we published at APR on the Poetry Foundation site! Now not everybody gets on there, and obviously the folks there admire your work: poetryfoundation.org/poem/171657
And in fact they have 14 of your poems, many of which DID appear in Poetry…
ashevillepoetryreview.com/tag/bill-knott
Not a single poem in my new book was published by any magazine, every one in it was rejected by magazine editors:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Poems-Past-Six-Years/dp/1489500987/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372185128&sr=1-5&keywords=bill+knott
You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Hankins——
and stop lying: you didn’t publish any of my poems in Ashville, you REPRINTED some of my old poems there—
reprinting is not publishing.
I didn’t remember that they were reprints, as that was many years ago, but I’m sure you’re right. My point, however, is that there is attention to your work in some places, even at the Poetry Foundation. But clearly this conversation is upsetting you. One of my other points was that I’m one of your advocates, but since you’re getting upset, I’ll let it be.
every one of the poems in my 140-page new book (which you may notice is self-published, since no legitimate publisher would touch it) was rejected by magazines, not a single one of them was accepted,
and if you look at the book before this new one, “Stigmata Errata Etcetera” (2007), you’d see from the acknowledgments that only 4 of the 46 poems in it appeared previously in magazines.
And those 4 remain the only poems I’ve had accepted by any magazine since (approx) 2005.
I’m telling you, just drop a line to Don Share. Tell him that some crazy cat called Hankins sent you his way if you like. Check out his glowing comments on your Collected: “2012 was a great year for ‘collected poems.’ Two deserve special attention: Edward Dorn’s and Bill Knott’s. These are keenly quintessential—and essential—American poets. We’re lucky that Knott’s still around, luckier still (though the luck is ours, not his), that his collected can be read for free on his blog; print versions he self-published came and went in an eyeblink.”
dear Mr Hankins: stop goading me with your illogical comments, and i’ll stop responding to you: that thing you quote from Share is a case of cognitive disconnect: it’s what he doesn’t say that’s more relevant, for example this: “Dorn’s Collected Poems is published by one of the most prestigious poetry publishers in the world, Anvil Press, and Knott’s Collected Poems is published by . . . by himself, due to the fact that no legitimate publisher will publish anything by Knott.”
That’s the implied codicil to his statement.
The point is precisely that he doesn’t give a fuck who or how the work is published, only that he esteems it “quintessential” and “essential”! Get out of the cell of denial you’ve built for yourself. Take action. Contact Don. If common sense and overwhelming concrete evidence won’t convince you I don’t know what will. And with that, I’m over and out.
I didn’t build that cell, Hankins: its walls are constructed of rejection slips from editors: they built it, not me. And if you had any common sense, you’d know that a poet who has to self-publish his own books is a bad poet. If the poems in my new book were any good, they wouldn’t all have been rejected by magazines, would they, and I wouldn’t have to publish the book myself, would I. Poetry fucking Daily dot com is not going to print an excerpt from my new book, that’s for sure, and no publication is going to “review” it, because the official channels of USA poetry don’t recognize the legitimacy of such vanity volumes. Do you think Poetry Magazine is going to review it? Ha.
Well, to respond to Franz Wright’s rather genial, kind and totally sane post of June 23…God bless you too, Franz Wright.
Especially since Franz Wright was an undergraduate classmate of mine at Oberlin College, I’ve read with interest his various attacks against MFA writing programs and workshops. But Franz chose Oberlin in large part because it had one of the best undergraduate writing programs in the country at the time. As far as I know he took every poetry workshop and tutorial that the school offered. If he didn’t subsequently need to enter an MFA program, it might well have been because the Oberlin writing program he immersed himself in was in fact stronger and had stronger student writers than most MFA programs I’m aware of.
I took no creative writin g classes, though I took many courses taught by David Y and Stuart F, close friends to this day, I studied philoSOPY, LIT. AND RELIGIONI went to Oberlin because of a girl, actually. 2nd, because of FIELD Magazine. I have to MFA (MY dad used to say these letters stand for…but never mind. It involves language that is not nice and might upset you.I have no MFA degree, and I’ve only been with a prostitute once. Love,F
And thanks again for all the attention–obsession? Anyway, it’s very flattering.
You like to kick a guy when he’s down, some of you–an awful thing to do.
Franz apparently forgot about the fantastic poetry writing workshops he took at Oberlin with Thomas Lux. Also, as the director of the Oberlin Creative Writing Program at the time, Stuart Friebert then taught only creative writing, in particular tutorials, or courses with a creative writing focus. David Young was heavily but not exclusively involved teaching creative writing. In addition to the Thomas Lux workshops, Franz was also a classmate of mine in at least one David Young course where the written work consisted of creative writing submissions. As far as literature goes, that’s an integral part of any MFA program. It’s nice that Franz remains close friends with Stuart and David. Opportunities to form lasting poetry-focused friendships such as this, whether with teachers or fellow students, are another advantage of MFA programs. The same is often true for the chance to hang around a literary magazine such as FIELD. It isn’t a matter of kicking Franz (whether he’s up or down) to point out that Oberlin’s stellar creative writing program in the 1970s provided him with the advantages of an MFA program, and was in fact stronger than many if not most such programs at the time. If he or anyone would like to claim that some MFA programs are better than others, or that some students are better prepared or disposed than others to profit from a good writing program, that would be a different conversation. Since Franz mentions his father — wouldn’t having one of the greatest American poets of the last fifty or sixty years as a parent provide for at least some of the learning opportunities sought out in graduate writing programs?
Andrew Kaufman asks, “…wouldn’t having one of the greatest American poets of the last fifty or sixty years as a parent provide for at least some of the learning opportunities sought out in graduate writing programs?” Well, maybe not, if the parent in question was a lifelong alcoholic with manic depression who underwent electroshock treatments. The “lessons” imparted by such a parent might be seen by a sensitive child as a crushing burden.They certainly would have imparted a disaster-prone view of life. Franz Wright’s accomplishments, inspite of that, in defiance of everything, prove that he is tougher than he knows; certainly tougher than we knew.
I have read the article and comments and am commenting myself at a much later time after the article was posted because My dear friend, who knew Franz in the 70’s had just reconnected with him. Or so it seemed. Twice Franz started out okay and then, inexplicably to me, turned really mean. In the latest instance no only mean but incomprehensible. Having hung around poets and writers in the 60’s and 70’s and actually met his dad it is no surprise to me FW is not involved in any MFA program anywhere. I can’t bring myself to read more of his poetry due to his vitriol and casual willingness to strike out at my friend. I don’t give a damn about his problems. He will be lucky if his poems don’t turn to ashes.
I don’t give a damn about his problems either.Buty if you’re going to have fire–real intense fire, which I’ve had to live at the center of for 40 years, though won’t too much longer!–yeah, you’re going to get ashes.I suppose I aqm quite a meanie. I tried with great sincerity to take my place in the nicey world–just couldn’t manage it. Sorry. And true, I’ve been pretty cranky. Lung cancer will do that t6o you. (It did it to my maternal grandmother5 in her 40s while I WAS STILL ENJOYING pre-natal life (bathed in hormones of pity and horror no doubt). FW
P.S. And no, she didn’t smoke. But man, I did, bout 20 billion of them, as I recall. FW
Yes–I hear F smoked fifty cigarettes! (His mother’s mother died of the disease too, and did not smoke. Isn’t that strange?!
BW
Re: Armand Foster, Oct. 15, 2014: I, too, have friends who have experienced the exact pattern Armand describes. I know about a number of others, second or third hand, who also were put through this. It’s cold comfort, but Armand’s friend has lots of great company in this regard.
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