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Joseph S. Salemi: How the Mighty Have Fallen (II)
Is Dr. Joseph S. Salemi really "America's greatest man of letters," as the
Keystone Scops have claimed more than once?
In my original review, which you can read by clicking the hyperlinked name of
the group, I suggested that
The Society of Classical Poets should
consider a name change to The Keystone Scops. One reason
for my suggestion, apart from the terrible poetry the scops regularly publish,
then acclaim wildly in pidgin English, is the way they praise each other to the
skies and beyond, apparently for merely existing and having similar aims and
goals. Every scop, it seems, is the greatest at something monumental: Joseph
Charles MacKenzie is the greatest lyric poet of all time despite the frequent awkwardness
of his retrograde verse; James Sale is England's foremost literary critic
despite not having mastered basic English grammar; Evan Mantyk is America's
foremost publisher of "classical" poetry despite being semi-literate. Thus one
must at least consider the possibility that the claims about Salemi may have been,
ahem, "slightly exaggerated."
Salemi is not a consistently bad writer, so he is not a typical scop. But there has
to be a giant leap from "not a bad writer" or "at times a
competent writer"
to "America's greatest man of letters." So let's examine the evidence ...
by Michael R. Burch
Joseph Salemi's Humpty-Dumpty-Like Fall
The idea that Joseph Salemi is "America's greatest man of letters" can be
immediately rejected, I believe, simply because he keeps publishing with the Keystone
Scops. I once had poems published in my high school's literary journal. That
achievement did
not make me a contender to be considered "America's greatest man of letters"
and yet the quality of the writing in my high school journal was often better
than what one often finds cluttering the SCP website and littering its magazine.
How is it possible that "America's greatest man of letters" would stoop to
publishing with a journal whose typical "poem" couldn't pass a quick grammar check at a decent
high school (and probably not at some of the better grade schools)?
How the mighty have fallen, indeed, if "America's greatest man of letters"
has been reduced to publishing with a "literary journal" whose editor
and publisher, Evan
Mantyk, not only lacks an ear for poetry and fine prose, but struggles to write
grammatically correct sentences—failing as often as not. Meanwhile, the Key
Stoners seem to be high as kites in their "literary criticism," since they
frequently praise trainwrecks.
Furthermore, one would expect "America's greatest man of letters" to write
impeccably at all times. One would not expect to find "clunkers" in his
published poems. Here are examples of extreme clunkiness in a poem Salemi recently
published with the Keystone Scops:
Go to a tailor and buy a suit
With shirts and silk ties that look really cute ...
Then visit some company that is vast ...
Going through motions that are complex ...
... they don’t see
Why you’re absorbed in your petty self
And rolling in comfort and excess pelf ...
... Or why you eat filets mignons and veals
When some other loser gets Meals on Wheels.
The lines above were taken from a single poem, "Advice to an Aspiring
Careerist," written by Salemi and published by the SCP to typical gushing
applause. My advice to the careerist poet and man of letters is: "Don't quit your day
job."
Yet here is what the "greatest lyric poet of all time" and the scop
recently nominated for Poet Laureate by his peers, Joseph Charles
MacKenzie, wrote about "Advice to an Aspiring Careerist":
Joseph Salemi has raised this most necessary of arts to a level of perfection
our Anglo-American poetry had not seen prior to the “Gallery of Ethopaths”—a
breakthrough in the history of letters.
"Perfection"? A "breakthrough in the history of letters"? Really?
I published a few poems from Salemi's Gallery of Ethopaths after he
told me that he had been censored elsewhere. At the time I told Salemi that I
didn't think his "ethopath" rants were his best work, and I will stick by that
opinion. The poems in question, while publishable, fall far short of
"perfection" and do not constitute anything close to a "breakthrough in the
history of letters." Salemi has written better poems, which he acknowledged
during our discussions.
The scops have serious problems, if they want to be considered serious poets and
literary critics. One problem is that they keep publishing terrible poems, which
they then proceed to lavish with unrestrained praise. Another problem is that some of
the Key Stoners are obviously clueless about the immense differences between
terrible and great writing. They apparently think anything a scop writes is
automatically the height of all art. It's like watching kindergartners ooh and
ah over their crayon masterpieces, while seldom managing to stay between the
lines.
Salemi's "ethopath" poems are not terrible, nor are they the height of all art.
If he really cared about the poems as works of art, he would fix the clunky
lines above, which any reasonably talented poet could easily do. But as Paul
Valery once observed, poems are never finished; at some point the poets simply
give up. The trick is not to give up too soon. The fact that Salemi didn't
bother to iron out the obvious flaws in his "ethopath" poems suggests that he
doesn't consider them all that important in the grand scheme of things. Or
perhaps he knows that his fellow scops are easily impressed, making detail work
unnecessary. Since MacKenzie confuses such poems with groundbreaking works of
artistic "perfection," he had best keep his day job too.
Demonstrating how very, very seriously the scops take themselves, Salemi posted this
grandly modest response to MacKenzie's effusive praise:
Dear Joseph—Thank you for your kind words. They are deeply appreciated. I have
wanted to revitalize the art of satire, in strict Juvenalian style, for many
years. Whether I shall have succeeded in the eyes of posterity is something none
of us can determine now.
But perhaps we can determine the surefire fate of lines like those quoted above,
which strike me as more "juvenilian" than Juvenalian, if we have ears to hear and employ them.
Salemi also has a very selective memory. For instance, in the spirit of the
holiday season he wrote: "A truly stellar Christmas poem, one that fulfills Mr.
MacKenzie’s desire for solid doctrinal substance as well as mere seasonal
spirit, is Robert Southwell’s "The Burning Babe." Southwell was one of the
Jesuit martyrs who was judicially murdered under the first Elizabeth’s
anti-Catholic persecutions." Of course Salemi conveniently fails to mention all
the Protestants murdered by Catholics before Elizabeth I was born. Which came
first, the Inquisition or the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church
slaughtering tens of thousands of Cathars (the first Crusade was a "holy war"
waged against Christians) or the eventual resistance? How many Protestants had
been tortured and burned at the stake by Catholic popes,
inquisitors and monarchs,
before Elizabeth I was even conceived? Why has Elizabeth's sister, the Catholic
queen who proceeded her, been remembered as "Bloody Mary"?
Yes, there are Protestants with blood on their hands, but the inquisitions and
"holy wars" started with the Roman Catholic Church. Why does Salemi constantly
"spin" the truth? As Sam Gwynn once observed, Salemi seems to be more politico
than poet. And ironically his politics seem to match those of the ultimate
dumbed-down, lowbrow Protestant, Donald J. Trump.
Related Pages:
A Review of the Society's Literary Journal,
Laureates 'R' US,
Joseph Charles MacKenzie: Poet or Pretender?,
Evan Mantyk's Poetic Tic,
James Sale's Blue Light Special,
Bruce Dale Wise or Un-?,
"How to Write a Real Good Poem" by R. S. Gwano,
Joseph S. Salemi: How the Mighty Have Fallen
(I),
Joseph S. Salemi: How
the Mighty Have Fallen (II),
Salemi's Dilemma,
Salemi Interview and Responses by other Poets
The HyperTexts