F.U. to arrogant so-and-so's everywhere

Six months or so after my first iPod committed suicide, my wife got me a new iPod Nano (as some sort of make-up present for neglecting the dishes) and it’s simply awesome.

Watching Metalocalypse cartoons at lunch is bomb-riffic. But the best thing is that I’ve rediscovered podcasts, including the jazz, poetry and fiction ones I can listen to while driving (always with one earplug) or during non-demanding periods at work.

Yesterday I came across two stories. One was about Steve Almond, a short story/essayist who recently came out with “My Year as a Poet,” about his failed attempts at poetry. It’s pretty funny. However, I was a little saddened to hear Almond gave up his awful poetry after a more established poet, who Almond won’t name, told him that, well, he wasn’t really a poet.

Almond thanks this guy, quits his folly, and seems much better and happier for it. Good for him. I, on the other hand, am left somewhat shocked and disgusted. Who the f&%$ does this other poet think he is???

I’m all for someone’s ability to criticize my work, even if they have no talent whatsoever. That’s part of the craziness that is America. But who is anybody to tell Almond – as bad of a poet as he may be – is not a real poet? If you set about writing poems as your main “thing” in life, and you write and perform poem after poem, you are a poet regardless of your talent level, which is entirely subjective – even if you poems are so horrible they trigger mass suicides.

I mean, the arrogance!

Man, I was pissed off. I’m getting pissed off just thinking about it again.

But then I heard a story that made me chuckle at the self-importance of entire literary industry construct (a construct, which, I admit, I have had little to no dealings with, save for a handful of rejection letters).

Let me say right off that “The Lace Reader” by Brunonia Barry is a book I’ll probably never read. It’s apparently about women who can “read the future from a pattern of lace.” I might read it, I don’t know. But the subject doesn’t really appeal to me.

The beauty of this book is that it was initially self-published – on unbound sheets of paper – and passed around at a series of book clubs long before the plus-$2 million publishing deal came around.

Rare, perhaps. Still, for circumcising the entire we-bestow-book-deal-upon-Thee-ishness that makes or breaks writers (real writers and "not really writers"), Brav-O, Ms. Barry.