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     Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 1090 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- April 21, 2005 Surrender in the Battle of Poetry Web Sites By EDWARD WYATT . H. Auden may have lamented that "poetry makes nothing happen," but that has not kept poets themselves - and their enthusiasts - from using the Internet to make trouble when they get riled up. This week the poetry world is atwitter over the closing down of an Internet site that for the last year dedicated itself to exposing what it calls fraud among the small circle of poetry contests that frequently offer publishing contracts as prizes. Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago. He called his site the "American poetry watchdog" and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said "are often large-scale fraud operations" in which judges select their friends and students as winners. But Mr. Cordle's identity, which he says he protected to avoid recriminations against those who joined in his fight, was revealed earlier this month. The unmasking was performed by an anti-Foetry Web site that is also run anonymously and which used some of Mr. Cordle's own aggressive tactics - he once used a state open-records law to unlock details about participants in a contest sponsored by a state university press - to remove his cloak of mystery. In an interview yesterday, Mr. Cordle said that while the unveiling of his identity was the immediate cause of his decision to close the Foetry site, he had been planning to do so "for about a month" because of frequent requests from his wife. She, it turns out, is a poet - Kathleen Halme, who in September 1994 won a poetry contest managed by the University of Georgia Press, the Contemporary Poetry Series, one of the contests that Mr. Cordle has railed against as corrupt. Mr. Cordle's identity was revealed by a blog called whoisfoetry (whoisfoetry.blogspot.com). It had recently solicited tips about the identity of the Foetry operator and of participants in its discussion forum, which over the last year drew hundreds of poetry fanatics as participants - most of them participating using pseudonyms. After several tries, the blog managed to wrest the identity of the Foetry site's registrant from the company that manages Internet domain names. For the poetry world, which makes headlines about as often as philosophers' guilds and knitting circles, the dust-up has led to bitter recriminations and charges of slander or worse. One of the poets and contest judges who has been attacked on the Foetry site, Jorie Graham, a professor at Harvard University, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the claims on Foetry were untrue as well as "vitriolic and very painful" and took unfair aim "at the people who have worked to try to help young poets in this country." She is not the only opponent to speak publicly about Foetry; another is Janet Holmes, an associate professor of English at Boise State University and the director of Ahsahta Press, which oversees a poetry prize that has come under fire on Foetry. Writing on her Web site, www.humanophone.com, she said she was disgusted by the "lies and innuendoes" on Mr. Cordle's site. "He should be ashamed of himself for what he's done, not just because he's been caught doing it," she wrote. Mr. Cordle said he had maintained the site's domain registration and that he might restart the site at some point in the future if he can find someone to take over monitoring of the discussion forums. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top | ||
| Crystal "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Crystal Post Number: 209 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thanks Chris. This reminds me of when my son was in Jr. High School and entered a national poetry contest he saw in some magazine. When he showed it to me I knew it was a scam but told him to go ahead and send one in. He did but didn’t win [duh] and they sent him a letter saying for a small fee [$20?] they would send him a plaque with the poem printed on it. He was so proud that they would print it for him that we got it. For an even larger fee [$100?] they would send him a copy of the book with all the submitted poems in it – didn’t get that. He still has that plaque hanging in his room. The poem is called “All Alone” about some little heffa that broke his heart and left him “all, all alone”. It took all my strength not to laugh in his face when I read it. Poor thing. Hahahahaha! |
