No earnest artist pays any mind to contests and prizes. They are a twee bourgeoisie nicety, conceit really, of the weekend tea and cake set.
Because I do receive with keen interest the Nobel science and economics prize announcements each October, which are far sturdier in criteria and selection—and far more portentous to know—I invariably learn of the literature prize.
While a fine cadre of titans have in fact won the thing over the decades, many more were famously and crassly omitted for the very reasons prizes are worthless in the first place. If you tell the naked truth in a new, Promethean way—say the way Ezra Pound, James Joyce or William Burroughs did—they will shun you like direct sunlight.
Don’t Hate The Player, Hate The State
In the last quarter century, the “academy” has exhibited an anti-American bias, while selecting one quizzical obscurity after another, including other writers of dubious political nationality and standing. When they did return their haughty gaze to the American shores, they made complete jackasses of themselves by choosing entertainer and notoriously shameless plagiarist and now maudlin crooner Bob “Dylan” who has zero to do with literature.
Now this year they’ve landed upon simply a mediocre poet, a throwback to the horrible mid-century university scene of morose interior, confessional, psychoanalyst’s couch poetry.
Straight academy, homey.
Beyond Mortal
No point in bothering with further examination—of the feeble nature of art prizes nor of the weird honorees. An authentic artist works ten thousand light years above such mortal concerns.
Instead, better to spotlight one of the very last of the living masters of the holy but dying craft of poetry, a former teacher of mine who could so readily have been honored, and for all the right reasons that they usually choose to associate themselves: humanity, courage, craft, the withstanding of suppression and censorship, and a warrior’s life tour in the World War Against The Imagination.
Wish I had time to delineate some of the rare and invaluable lessons she availed me, some stories from the glorious years once upon a time and of the piercing insights since, even a brief precis of her phenomenal and alas yet-to-be-published Prometheus Unbound As A Magickal Working, but for now Ladies & Gentlemen, Diane di Prima:
❏