Monday, July 13, 2009

CJ Laity Likes Dick (Cheney?)

No, his own:

cj_laity01

The underlying thrust of this essay has to do with a particularly antagonizing person in the form of Chicago Poetry’s C. J. Laity. This single individual has as of late done much to sow dissension, distrust and anger among a considerable segment of poets –particularly those who participate in open mic readings. Much, if not all of his venom takes place on his popular website. More poison is widely distributed through email blasts to supporters and past participants in his reading series. And while disagreements and heated arguments must happen, it takes on an entirely different, even insidious tone when it has the purposeful disconnect of cyberspace. It is worse when only one side of the disagreement is re-contextualized, then widely e- disseminated to an audience. The very fact that there is an audience is in itself disturbing- because being heard or in this case, read, the audience, even as passive recipients, amount to enthusiastic support. The singular root of this particular problem is not solely Laity’s outpourings of venomous defamation, and vituperative opinions. It’s the leveraging of the pseudo authenticity of a web site that purportedly acts as a clearing house for all things poetry being applied as a bully pulpit for an array of petty beefs that Laity has with individuals within the poetry community. Insult is added to injury because in using the web and mass email correspondence, those he has beefs with are caught blindsided, placed on the defensive in an e- war of words- in which only one side –Laity’s is actually read.

Laity Loves Ladies – Not!

CJ Laity of chicagopoetry.com is continuing to fill the web with slander against poet and dancing girl press founding editor Kristy Bowen, even after issuing a (clearly insincere) apology. This is totally unacceptable.

I recommend reading these ladies thoughts on the topic, as they are far more nuanced than mine: this or this or this.

***

"Women, Men, and Language shows that in an academic setting women can conversationally take up no more than 30 percent of the talking time before men feel women are contributing too much. During a five-week study, during the two days in which women’s contributions exceeded the men’s, the men became distressed and angry, feeling they were being 'silenced'" (Coates, J. 2004: 118).

Cum here for something better!

Laity's Wise Words

poetrydude Says:
June 9th, 2009 at 10:26 am Gee, what a surprise that CJ Laity has grabbed yet another opportunity to blow his own horn! If self-promotion was an Olympic sport, he’d be our Mark Spitz. Anyone who continually feels the need to tear down the work of others has clearly got serious emotional problems. Dude, get a job. And a shrink.

Mr. Chicago Poetry

Welcome to Chicago Poetry!

I think I might rename my blog Chicago Poetry because I live in Chicago and I have written poetry. Or, maybe I'll rename my blog Treehouse Shareholders or Mayonnaise Memories or any combination of words. My point is that no one owns Chicago as a word and no one owns poetry as a word.

If this guy is the voice and representative of the Chicago poetry world, then I don't want to be a part of it.

He's down and dirty and wants you to enter!

CJ Laity Stirs More Shit, Drinks

Mmmmmm!!!!

Leading up to C.J. Laity being emphatically asked to leave a venue and the fact that people actually applauded his ouster owes much to the virulence of ill feelings that Laity himself helped to foster In the weeks leading up to his ejection, Laity seemed to go out of his way to show his disdain, not only for the host of the event, Charlie Newman but the four featured poets. His response wasn't unexpected, given that he has – in his way a stormy history with all five parties.

The common thread that runs through all of them is that they made the blunder of disagreeing with him on some matter and/or they were viewed by Laity as competitors, somehow chipping away at his status as a scene maker. Of the four features Kurt Heintz, Kristy Bowen, Scott Dekatch and Todd, the latter seems to have earned most of Laity's anger as the two of them briefly engaged in a back and forth email exchange rife with sarcasm and no small amount of vitriol. If the coin of the realm is meaningful and respectful dialogue, then for either Todd or Laity engaging in a bootless email war is a great example of the law of diminishing returns.

'Oh, boo hoo, CJ doesn't like me! Yawn. I read through your anthology. You set the bar pretty fucking low for "one of the most respected poetry institutions in America." In my ever so humble opinion, Mr. Laity, you are a charlatan, and a hack, a no-talent hanger on. Don't you dare darken my e-mail address with any more of your projects, much less a short note just to hurl an insult.
I bet you feel great about yourself after suckering a bunch of teenagers out of their allowance so they can appear in your pay-for-play delusion-fest.
Poetry doesn't OWE you a living. It never has and it never will. If you need to pay your bills get a job, but don't dare pretend at representing
poetry or Chicago. You are an insult to both.'

C.J. responded 'Fuck you you shit for brains fucking loser asshole! Nobody will ever give a fucking shit about Todd and you know why--read your own fucking dribble below. You are a self centered piece of crap who has never done anything for anybody. All you do is go around using people and then you stab them in the back. Who the fuck do you think YOU are? A poetry god? So you have a fucking crap ass book folded and stapled like a self publishing fucking loser yourself. FUCK YOU, you jealous prick, just because YOU can't earn a living off of poetry stop taking it out on somebody who can. My job IS poetry, you dumb garbage mouthed sick demented lobotomy case. For you it's just a fucking hobby, but for me it's a life. Your time is going to come, you scum bag!
'This is not veiled YOUR DAY IS GOING TO COME'

The last sentence, taken from another email sent to Todd by C.J. Laity is truly disturbing- disturbing enough by almost anyone's standards to be brought to the attention of law enforcement.

Kurt Heintz, the founder of a poetry and information website called The E-Poets Network years ago found himself on the bitter end of Laity's temper and subsequent histrionics. Laity went so far as to create a website mimicking Heintz' not only to pull traffic but yet, again as redoubt from which to hurl rancor and spite. His attempts to sabotage Heintz' site and readings having met with failure, Laity, even years later continues to snipe, denigrate, and generally make an unmitigated nuisance of himself.

Recently, Laity has done this to one other person, David Hargarten aka Buddha 309 who hosts a poetry reading series called Waiting For the Bus. Hargarten, a poet and musician developed a MySpace page called the Chicago Poetry Resource Center as place where poets could post information about upcoming poetry gigs. C.J. Laity took umbrage first because of the potential competition and more absurdly because of Hargarten's use of the words Chicago Poetry. In Laity's mock site he resorts to childish name calling and a lapses into an adolescent tirade about all the things he has allegedly done for Buddha (the backstabber) as well as what Buddha has done to him.

Kristy Bowen and Scott Dekatch simply took issue with being required to pay a sum of money in order to read their poetry at one of C.J. Laity's readings. Dekatch's questioning followed on the heels of Bowen's reluctance on principle to pay a reading fee to read for free meant that they too were targets of Laity's noxious ire.

'Todd was taught that there is only one style of poetry that is acceptable and that style just so happens to be his own. The last time I saw that do-nothing Kurt Heintz was years ago when he bombed with a piece about being a "gay man in a burka". Huh? Kristy Bowen recently savored her little malicious bout of CJ bashing at her blog and no doubt earned some brownie points from the hate club for doing it. And Scott DeKatch doesn't think poets should pool their money to publish a book or to put on a fest, but he has no problem paying Kinkos to publish his own work'

'Fri Oct 3: St. Paul's Cultural Center, 2215 W. North Ave, Todd , Kristy Bowen, Scott DeKatch and Kurt Heintz (not a fart that stinks, scary, huh?), 8 – 9:30 PM, donations. I am definitely going to make an attempt to go and review this one.'

'Fri Oct 3: St. Paul's, 2215 W. North Ave, Todd, Kristy Bowen, Scott DeKatch and Kurt Heintz will fart chanel number five in what promises to be the snob fest of the year,'

Because this was sent out in mass emails as well as posted on the Chicago Poetry website, the implications of belligerence, drama and venom were crystal clear. Nor was the connotation of planned prejudice lost on anyone. Trouble was brewing for this poetry reading and neither the performers, the host nor the audience had to leave their seats- trouble came to them in the form of C.J. Laity who careened into the room like a man long used to charting ill-plotted collision courses.

The right or wrong of what happened next is certainly open to speculation. C.J. Laity was asked to leave a poetry reading because of his prejudice against the performers and fears of escalated belligerence on his part. His being asked to leave was also the last straw or the first shot across the bow- a growing intolerance for Laity's brand of correspondence as well as his duplicitous attempts to needlessly sow dissension via character assassination has been percolating for years. Allegations of email spoofing, website mimicry, cyber-bullying, trail him like the proverbial smoke from a distant fire. Should he have been allowed to stay is too up for speculation because if even part of the goal was to perhaps avoid a negatively biased review of the performers, then it failed. His thoughts of them now underscored by his ejection have given him weeks, perhaps even years of traction- in which he, once and still considered a villain can now wear the cerements of a victim. His attempt to drape himself in the First Amendment and turn this into a violation of free speech only underscores a poor grasp of constitutional law. That people applauded is testament to at least two dynamics. One, a sigh of relief, albeit short-lived that a negative electric charge had been successfully dissipated. Two, for those who knew the back story and at the time there were about thirty members of the audience who did, it was a fine bit of theatre.

From far enough away, the whole mess reminds me of those young adult dramas on television. Indeed, the CW series, Gossip Girl's premise is mostly based on teenagers jockeying for power. The show's main character, Serena is a malicious gossip that discusses the goings on of her peers then posts the gossip and photos on her website. The students spend an inordinate amount of time and effort to check the site on the computers and cell phones in order to receive the latest, hottest gossip. Incidentally, Gossip Girls is based on a series of books written for teenaged girls and its target demographic is 18-34 young women. From all accounts C.J. Laity is in his early to mid 40s. To be fair many of the other individuals mentioned in this essay are also well outside this demographic.

What seems to raise everyone's hackles is C.J. Laity's bombastic assumptions of authority. Claiming that he represents all Chicago Poets or the Chicago Poetry Scene as it were is as ludicrous as a Republican politician claiming he or she represents the interests of all Republicans or a Black spokesperson claiming to represent the interests of all Black people. And if by some Outer Limits twist he did, what poet in their right mind would desire as their spokesperson, the servant of their interests someone who engages in years long vindictive feuds against imaginary or ill perceived foes, resorts to profanity, libel, defamation, violent threats, sabotage, cyber bullying, and generally sowing factional dissension nearly everywhere he goes? What rankles some poets is that their name, their art may in some way be attached to Laity self aggrandizing label of being the authority on all things Chicago Poetry complete with all of the bad mojo and emotional mephitis that comes with it..

Again, it comes back to what Laity's ejection and everything that led up to it boils down to. The steady decline in civility is being marked by what takes its place; cruelty, spitefulness and selfishness. That society is made up of singularities- people of differing points of view trying to find their way is true. However, it is their recognition that we are cheek and jowl, shoulder to shoulder, verse and note symbiotically connected to one another that forms the basis for civilization.

I wrote earlier of moral language. Such language is not to be confused with politeness. Neither is it a language that requires it to be stripped of passionate conviction. Moral language stems from the same place that any methodology of conveying information does; the desire to be heard, to be understood, to have it be recognized that all of our experiences, the good as well as the bad resonate in someone else.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The irony is that honesty, critical thinking as well as abstract thinking and that miraculous ability to tap the ley lines of inspiration in order to uplift the human psyche across time and space is the lifeblood of poets. Every moment they allow themselves to become immersed in pettiness, in cruelty and in acts of malevolence diminishes their reach, blunts that extraordinary ability to create. If these wielders of words cannot discover a language to communicate transparently with honesty, empathy, mercy and atonement they have a lot to learn about the true soul of poetry; to speak for time, into time.

For a good time, cum here!

ChicagoPoetry.com – CJ Laity!

CJ Laity & Chicago Poetry

CJ Laity hates women and isn't afraid to tell you about it! Yay, for CJ Laity! Striking a blow for all those men oppressed by women poets! Striking a blow for men who like to reserve the right to call other women "fat," if they can't think of anything else to say!

But we don't have to tell you how cool that is. You can read it yourself:

"She thinks that just because she is a young overweight woman she can steal from an older man"--CJ Laity
"Friends have no problem making fun of my alcoholism or insinuating that I have mental problems"--CJ Laity
"Yes, I am a DICK." --CJ Laity
"I will make sure when people google your domain name, I pop up and I will set everyone straight.... That's a promise."----CJ Laity

Yes, if you are looking for Chicago Poetry then look no further than this page. Whenever I'm looking for Chicago Poetry, that's the link I use--the search result that takes me to AK's post of the same name. It helps me avoid misogynist pricks such as CJ Laity. I encourage you to click on that link as many times as you can in the next, say, week or two. Or just click on this link for Chicago Poetry. It's KB's page for worthwhile readings in Chicago, readings where you can also avoid fucktards such as CJ Laity.

cj laity by night

MY BLOGROLL

CJ Laity's Chicago Poetry Blog