Earlier today Al Fireis passed on the following announcement to New-Poetry:
“The people of the Kelly Writers House are pleased to announce – in addition to many hundreds of other readings, symposia, performances, seminars, workshops, netcasts & community outreach programs – this year’s three Writers House Fellows:
“Does the house ever do artist outreach programs–by giving an artist with something fresh to say in a highly visible forum, for pay? That said, I have to say that Albee has proven himself not an enemy of the arts by supporting (with money, I believe) the Atlantic Arts Center in Florida. It mainly helps artists who don’t need help, but pays them to help artists (like me) who do need help, as sort of associates working together under the leadership of the artist who doesn’t need help. If that’s the way it is still run. I learned Photo Shop there, a program I couldn’t afford though I eventual was able to get a cheap version of it, Paint Shop. It was a key to my development as a visual poet.
“Of course, my getting into one of the Atlantic Arts Center programs was a fluke. Albee himself had used his influence to get Richard Kostelanetz a slot as a master artist, and Richard picked truly marginal associates. All other master artists selected, so far as I know, have been mainstreamers, with mainstream associates.
“Perloff, to give her credit, helped language poetry when it was otherstream. She may well have done this opportunistically: Vendler had used Ashbery to stand out, so she grabbed Bernstein, or the language poetry people in general. Which is fine with me. I’d love such an opportunits to do the same for visual poetry, and will never understand why none has. A few have tried but not gotten far with it. Probably because few visual poets are academics, and thus close in one way to the mainstream. More language poets had academic clout long before they had literary clout.
“As for Cheever, I can’t imagine what she has to say. Reminiscences about her father, a one-time noted mainstreamer.
“Sorry for the Me-stuff, but the name Albee set it off. Strangely important name in my life even though I’m not a great admirer of his plays, and probably have little in common with him in other ways, and once disliked him. I saw what may have been the premiere of his Zoo Story, along with Krapp’s Last Tape; disliked Zoo Story, very much liked Krapp’s Last Tape. Greenwich Village Theatre when I was a teen-ager just learning my way into the arts, with high school buddies I’m still friends with, one of whom because a actor who got by but never became well-known, another who became a very wealthy Manhattan corporate lawyer, and a third who became a wealthy Bevery Hills cataract man.
“Sorry, again, but I’m feeling talkative–”writative?” Took a pain pill with an opium derivative in it an hour ago. Hip pain I’ll probably need hip replacement surgery to get rid of. Also, I live alone.
“You know, I’m against the government’s subsidizing anything whatever, but if they’re going to subsidize the arts, I think they should make it a rule that any organization getting government money, even in the form of tax breaks, should be required by law to give at least one position a year like the ones Kelly House is giving to Albee and the others to someone who has never been given such a position by such an organization. Or never gotten more for taking such a position than, say, a hundred dollars.
“One of my daydreams is of becoming a literary super-star invited all over to make guest appearances, and refusing to for a given organization until that organization has invited four or more marginal artists (or critics) to make similar appearances, paying them what it’d pay a super-star. It would be going too far to make them do that before inviting any well-known artist or critic; I wouldn’t require more than their doing it for just one unknown if it weren’t the practice never to help an unknown (who doesn’t have somebody of influence pushing for him to be invited, or is representative of some allegedly underprivileged group, aside from experimental artists.
“Hey, looks like I’ve written my blog entry for today. I’ve been so out of it for many months that I’ve been trying to force myself to at least write a blog entry every day. Have done so for over a week. “
As I wrote to Bob when he replied by email by sending the text above, he’s assuming that we are a mainstream Big Name venue, which we’re not at all. Here’s what I wrote in reply:
‘I’m on the road so this reply will be too brief. Sorry! KWH Fellows is our only “big name” program. We host 100s of others and in those really reach out. We have a program, now in its 3rd year, whereby we give young artists subsidized housing and an affiliation with us, etc. A real “fellow” position. Generally we don’t provide much in the way of honoraria but we try. We’ve gotten some funding from arts foundations but not much; mostly we try to operate on funds given us by individual donors.’
Here is our list of collaborators:
http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/collaborations.php
And here is our list of featured visitors:
http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/people/visitors/
- Al