Thursday, November 20, 2008

I spend 12 hours on a bus...

...and look what happens! Clearly feeling the heat, Di Brandt and Jacob Scheier have offered half-assed defenses for their respective rewarding and accepting of the GG award for poetry. I absolutely love what Scheier has to say: “I think that if they knew Di, they would see she has more integrity than pretty much anyone I’ve known in my life.” Oh, anyone he's known. And he's a GG winner, so that carries a lot of weight!

And the CC writing and publishing head has gone on record saying it's important to talk to jurors about conflict of interest, without actually saying that she talked to these jurors about it. Also, it's important to have rules, but also the freedom to ignore them. I'm glad that Ms. Rutledge clarified that for us.

Also, apparently the neo-dadaists are mad. I haven't heard them weigh in on this, but there's a pretty good chance it's true. They're usually mad about something.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Melanie Rutledge:

"no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to what constitutes conflict of interest".

Criticism by others seems superfluous when their own quotes are so juicy.

I also enjoyed the
“There will always be an element of envy among people who didn’t get their favourite people nominated or their particular poetics represented” limping plea from Brandt. That, of course, is unsubstantiated, and a poor attempt to steer the conversation away from the core. I haven't read any of the first- or second-timers on the GG shortlist, and I'm not a particular fan of Moritz's poetry, yet I can be (and am) dismayed at the secretive pork-barreling process of the handout.