I copied this from Wanda Coleman’s recent article in the LA Weekly concerning the furor over her criticism of Maya Angelou’s most recent book.

I posted this to the slam list as well…I think it’s a good encapsulation of one of the key issues regarding slam/performance poetry today: the apparent unwillingness to honestly critique each other’s work.

Would love your thoughts…

“ALL LITERARY CRITICISM, AT ROOT, IS BIASED because each reviewer
must bring to the act his or her individual world-view and aesthetic
sensibility.

Each must decide if the social values of a text as a political record
are more important than its literary values…

But fostering an illusion of excellence where none exists, regardless
of the writer or subject matter, is to do a democratic readership the
ultimate disservice.

Saying amen to the going cultural directives, minus a true analysis,
is as morally suspect as any bigoted criticism — whether done out of
guilt, fear, or the desire to compensate the author for the social
ills that shaped his or her existence.”

— Wanda Coleman

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12:00:

And within minutes, I had been told that my posting this “as a white man” was dangerous because I resembled those white Republicans who claimed to understand how Martin Luther King would react because they’ve taken individual comments out of context.

Y’know, I really ought to let my dad know that I’ve been promoted to “white”.