And On the Saga Goes

Editors are a rather lowly masquerade, an ever entertaining game of musical chairs:

To Kevin Larimer,

My name is Joanne Marinelli, an ailing disability journalist from Philadelphia. I was a long time supporter of Poets & Writers from the days when the periodical was called Coda. I discovered the organization from issues of the magazine in my dead academic advisor's office, and thought I believed in what the organization represented until I joined Speakeasy in 97-98. Moderator "Dana" banned me from the boards in 02, because users complained about my injection of quadriplegia and my bad attitude, and within the last two years, one of your interns blocked me from following PW's twitter account because I reacted to a poetry invitation by tweeting the organization discriminates against the disabled, the block being the case in point. Poets & Writers continues to solicit me by regular mail. I want to know why. 

I cannot compel you to answer me, and I confused another gentleman on the phone, relating to this long association, around 9/16 when I managed to get past voicemail recordings: What I do not want in response is "if you do not wish to be solicited we'll remove your address". I am 54 years old, facing a grave crisis which is putting me at risk, and PW ostracizes me online, telling me in 02 that your methodology doesn't serve my needs, but your circulation department solicits me for a subscription in order to serve those needs. I have the latest envelope, with postmark, to prove it came after the twitter block, and I will be filing an ADA complaint with the NY state attorney if PW and I, as a writer with cerebral palsy, cannot reach some kind of accord on the matter.


What do I want from Poets & Writers? A fair arbitration. I no longer have time for Speakeasy, but I supported PW diligently through the turn of the century. Check your records. What do I have to show for it? I am rotting under the same section 202 rental agent I have lived under since 1986. Do the math. Do you think, as an ambulatory male, that this represents an extraordinary length of time for an unhappy wheelchair user with a graduate education, defaulted loans she'll never pay off, her health failing? Len Fulton never treated me this way, and I succeeded creatively under Dustbooks with far greater regularity than I do with your magazine listings; I'd like to write a retrospective tribute to him from that perspective, using his surviving family as sources, at least initially. I attach the column he accepted while SPR was still in print. This email is long enough, but I also seek access to emergency services for writers in peril. Gee, can PW help me there?

Gorilla Out of Shoulder Blades

In the literary genre, there are better and lesser credits, just as in journalism. The brand name credits have always alluded me, sometimes by a nose. APR hexed me as an undergraduate, handwriting a precious consolation note beneath its then 1983 standard rejection slip: "sorry to say no!". Even as a student I was baffled. WTF did it mean? I have supported APR intermittently, and would and shall continue to do so, with the luxury of resource, even if I never get a slice of their space, but like Kenyon, APR is a status brand; in marketing terms, I have few of these, the best being a minority anthology out of Pittsburgh, another fallow destitute period where I abused the young man who accepted me in it-- and yet, even today, simply by taking blind aim, I wind up in the laps of African American scholars who see my suffering as a corresponding voice to their historical memory: I had the gall, if you like, to ask one of these if she might consider writing a forward to my long tortured poetry manuscript, the strongest of them. "I am not sure I am the right person," she wrote, but if I do trouble her with it, why does such hypocrisy offer momentary glee? My psyche is far more interesting than that of Lee Doty's nurse (to pick an old scab).

I make the damnest effort to stay away from lesser known student journals, precisely because of the scaffold of credits I do have, but this is because of a towering giant who is no more. Len was truly independent, and he never humiliated me as did the Poets and Writers community, but I am caught with my zipper painfully pinching my crotch: I am too established not to ignore a great deal of what Allison transmits and writing magazines advertise, but cannot limit myself to APR and the Atlantic, creatively, and expect to survive. I am even less as a freelance journalist, but face nearly the same difficulty in getting commissioned for content. The digital world imploded an already wobbly pay for play patronage system: It killed Len's singular loyalty driven Small Press Review. I miss what the man meant to me.