And in this Corner... C.J. Laity : Incivility Takes the Stage Among Chicago Poets        An Essay by    Rhys Essex.
 
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” 
Bertrand Russell 
          There are nearly as many theories regarding the source and reasons behind our increasing levels of incivility as there are actions reflecting it. 
          From petty spite to full court malice, scientists, philosophers, sociologists, theologians, newspaper columnists, law enforcement workers, artists and just about anyone who’s either witnessed or been on the dirty end of the stick, move their fingers around the sociological Ouija board looking for that one all encompassing answer that will stop the madness. That answer, if found will be the holy grail of answers, perhaps presaging the dawn of a Utopian age of peace, love and understanding. Compassion will be the buzzword. Empathy will become as ubiquitous and as in vogue as text messaging. 
           In a perfect world, the answer will suddenly be discovered in the form of a heretofore unknown chemical by-product of global warming and fast food restaurant emissions warping our limbic systems, resulting in our lower thresholds of tolerance, our rising levels of anger, the increasing value in giving and taking of offense and our devaluation in giving and receiving non violent (verbal as well as physical) forms of communication. Once deemed that our screwed up, misanthropic behaviors are not solely our fault, the newly revealed victims of science gone bad can rest easy. The heavy lifting that comes from honest reflection upon our own failings to exercise a healthy symbiosis with our communities can be put aside once again. 
            The pervasiveness of spite, like tracking dog excrement indoors, leaves its offensive stain in places, where simply by its nature, you’d rather not have it. Paradoxically, because it is so widespread, a virulent sort of societal phage, we’ve come to a near hopeless acceptance of it. And in this acceptance we fall into what psychologist, Stanley Milgrom calls ‘norms of non-involvement.’ We find spitefulness, as well as escalated degrees of cruelty in the workplace, in school, the marketplace, church, the media and in our homes. It runs rampant in nearly every political campaign as candidates often veer completely away from the concrete issues that effect lives and into personal attacks on everything from clothing, looks, to sexual peccadilloes. One of the manifestations of spitefulness, bullying, is the hot topic nowadays, where it’s now the province of boys and girls and not just the playground but the electronic playground as well. The atmosphere is rife with nastiness and vindictiveness. People seem ever more avid to exorcise their feelings of frustration or powerlessness in seemingly random acts of malice. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands. 
          Yet, cruelty and bullying are by no means recent phenomena. The miserable heart of it gave us the Nazis, the Janjaweed, the Klan, the urban guerillas that terrorize our cities and Al Qaeda. Cruelty was behind all the lives lost on Sept 11th . It was behind the death of Matthew Shepherd, the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. and it was behind the 2006 death of Jimilla Tunstall, whose unborn fetus was cut from her body. Bullying and cruelty set the stage for the murders at Columbine High School. Take it a step further and the jingoist rhetoric that peppers Pres. George W. Bush’s speech, ‘axis of evil, ‘dead or alive’, ‘for us or against us’ in addition to his consistent use of the words ‘crusade’ and ‘evil’, weighted with all their medieval connotations, has much to do with political execution as the chest thumping of a gorilla has to do with seeking justice. Less graphically but no less poignant, the psychological machinations of bullying are behind spousal abuse, vandalism, gang intimidation, all forms of harassment, as well as acts of racial, sexual and religious discrimination. 
          Cruelty takes on a life of its own, moves to the beat of it’s own rationale, fuels itself on its shallow perception of possessing power enough to bring the shock and awe to its enemies- enemies that are not really adversaries with varying indices of offenses, but missed or refuted opportunities to engage moral language toward a mutually beneficial, ethical outcome. My personal concept of moral language is one that encompasses the values of caring, empathy, mercy and the value in consistently striving to live in a socially healthy community. 
           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. 
 
Truly, most disagreements can be and should be settled using the finer artillery of intellect on a level playing field of respect for the other person’s points of view. And given the rather close knittedness of the poetry community, differences can be resolved in person. By restricting the playing field to cyberspace the door is open for faulty communication, the various nuances inherent in speech being lost or misunderstood. The replies, if any, are not only running on the slippery ice of misinterpretation, they are increasingly hostile in attempting to discover the sender’s real intent. The result- cyber-drama. 
 
I once had a supervisor admonish our staff in regards to answering internal clients via back and forth emails. It was inefficient to type out a detailed response to a complicated question, wait for a response, realize that the answer wasn’t quite clear, and then resend the email with different details. By simply picking up the phone or in some cases walking a few feet over to their desk to answer the initial question as well as any other that arose from the original problem, not only saved time but all but eliminated the possibility of a message being misconstrued. Often an email response can come across as snarky without the sender actually intending it. 
 
Yet, what can be done when mean-spiritedness, spitefulness, character defamation, unprincipled duplicity and neighborly hostility are intended? What can be done if attempts at dialogue are virtually stillborn because there is no unifying moral language upon which to build trust or respect? What if C. J. Laity’s perpetuation of cyber-drama is both means and end? 
 
According to Wired Kids, the youth version of the popular science and technology magazine, Wired. There are four types of cyber-bullies. I chose the two types that bear the closest resemblance to Laity’s modus operandi along with supporting quotes taken from his own site as well as various mass emails sourced back to him. 
 
The Vengeful Angel often doesn’t see themselves as a bully. To them it’s all about righting perceived wrongs or protecting themselves. They act out because they are angry at something the victim (s) may have said or may have done. Thus revenge is warranted in order to teach them a lesson. 
 
‘I’m telling you, my friends, I can’t take it anymore! People line up single file to fuck with me like this’ 
 
‘I feel my reputation is at stake and I need an avenue in which I can defend myself from the bullshit.’ 
 
‘I’m a human being trying to do some good in the world. If this loser keeps bombarding me with his hate mail I am going to lose it. I am going to come to the Café during his feature and I am going to piss all over him...’ 
 
‘The thing is, I’m not out there all the time to personally combat the urban legends that are told about me.’ 
 
‘I call this group of poets the "I hate CJ club.” Be aware that this group exists and know what their intentions are. Don't be fooled by their talk of "community" because it's all bullshit. If they truly believe in "community" then why am I not invited into it?’ 
 
‘They've each got it out for me for one reason or another, and lately they've been working together with a sort of lynch mob mentality in order to slander me.’ 
 
The Power Hungry and Revenge of the Nerds bully share similarities to playground bullies inasmuch as their desire to exert their authority and demonstrate their ability to control others with fear. The only difference is technology and being techno-savvy enough to use it against their foes in typical ‘Revenge of the Nerds fashion. The Power Hungry aspect arises because this type of cyber bully needs an audience, a circle of friends to feed their need to be perceived as powerful. Typically they brag to this audience about their actions. They seek to embarrass or in some way intimidate their victims. They crave a reaction. Failing that, they will escalate their activities in order to get a response. 
 
‘You would have been wise to advise her against going head to head with me before she started.’ 
 
‘ChicagoPoetry.com will continue to crush this destructive pattern of passive-aggressive assaults, and ChicagoPoetry.com will continue to expose those who [practice] this harmful behavior. Nobody, and I repeat, nobody is untouchable.’ 
 
‘You are so full of shit it is pathetic. You are a selfish, uppity,
judgmental, egocentric cocksucker.’ 
 
‘Quite frankly, all I have to say to you is go fuck yourself.’
 
And so it goes on the electronic playground of a portion of Chicago’s poets. A pushing and shoving match in html format with no monitor to tell all parties to cut it out and play nice. 
 
If the above quotes had been uttered face to face, it wouldn’t be quite as disturbing. Yet, not only were they posted on websites, but widely emailed and contextualized by the poster/sender. Irony, which is the smoking gun of poetry abounds. How can a person who participates in poetry readings, where one is required to stand in front of an audience and read poetry, so heavily rely on electronic correspondence to state his case? How can a person who claims to be a writer, with the requisite quiver of literary devises at hand resort to childish expletives, name calling and inchoate implications of retaliation? In a world where mental toughness is the key to good mental hygiene why does Laity become so perturbed by the very perception of becoming a victim of -talk, of words? So perturbed that he often runs the risk of alienating the very people who make up his audience and so perturbed that he risks crossing the legal line between opinion and defamation? 
 
In 2005, a strange confluence of events transpired, the ripple effects of which are still being felt three years later. For C.J. Laity the effects seemed to amount to an economic and social upheaval, one that reached volcanic proportions largely due to his response to them. 
 
His girlfriend of some years, who had financially supported his endeavors left Laity at once and moved to another state. In confiding her unhappiness in the relationship to her girlfriends, Maggie was able to put her life in perspective. More than ready to take the helm of a future that saw both new career opportunities as well as a more loving relationship, she moved on. 
 
These things happen. Man does wrong, gets dumped, gets angry, wallows in self pity for a spell, then moves on. In Laity’s world private pain is publicized. Worse, the blame is leveled against others, who, according to him were directly responsible for her departure. And of course, who can’t imagine Maggie haplessly falling under the Svengalli-esque sway of her girlfriends as they chant around the cauldron ‘leave him, leave him’. Embracing victim culture in full career, Laity waves his bloodied heart around, not so much in an attempt to go dowsing for sympathy, but to leverage his inculpability into a motive to perpetuate yet again a cycle of lex talionis ; the brutally  aggrieved seeking to retaliate against his foes with equal or even surpassing cruelty.
 
‘When she was with me she told me how much she loved me and cared about me, but when she was with her friends or family apparently she told them how miserable she was with me.’ 
 
‘After a five year roller coaster ride, she dumped me as if I was nothing but garbage and worst than that, she turned a bunch of my friends against me. People sympathized with her because she's five feet tall and as cute as a button’ 
 
‘Shelly was stupid enough to think that just because she got Maggie drunk in her time of confusion and Maggie cried on her shoulder, that Maggie was on her side.’ 
 
`Escaped fugitive Norman A. Porter Jr., known for some twenty years as the poet J J Jameson, was arrested in a church in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Unknown to everyone, Porter had been charged and sentenced for the 1960 shooting of a part time store clerk in Saugus Massachusetts. A year later he had been involved in a fatal assault the shooting of a guard and subsequently an escape attempt. Recaptured while holding up a grocery store, Porter was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Years of being a model prisoner as well as having one of his sentences commuted by then Massachusetts governor Dukakis paid off and Porter was allowed the limited freedom privileges that come from serving out his time in a pre- release center. In 1985 he signed himself out of the facility and never returned. Coming to Chicago he made a decision to put his past life behind him by the means that came easily available to him. A carpenter, an activist, a poet and friend to many people from different walks of life. Cantankerous, impoverished, given to drinking, old and often sick. JJ Jameson was the antithesis of Norman A Porter Jr. 
 
For those who knew the man personally or tangentially the revelations were stunning. Everyone had an opinion regarding Porter, his deception, his crimes and the legal system at large principally based on their own paradigms. Anyone willing and able to apply a minimum of intellectual scrutiny easily understands that the feelings regarding Porter surpassed the simplistic ‘those for’ or ‘those against’ him dialectic.. What was done was done. The machinations regarding his debt to society are in the hands of the court. 
 
Yet, again in C.J. Laity’s world it’s not simply taking sides. It’s about his side and how he feels betrayed and how anyone who does not feel as betrayed as he does becomes the target of the seething rancor which is his stock in trade response to differences in opinion. 
 
To a lesser, yet somewhat pivotal degree, 2005 saw another poet start a website, Wordslingers. Wordslingers is largely a huge audio archive of poets who have read their work on the nine year old radio program he produces from Loyola University’s WLUW. It’s founder, Michael C. Watson, finding his girlfriend Shelley Nation on the receiving end of Laity’s brand of cyber spite did what any self respecting boyfriend would. He defended her and angrily confronted Laity- not in cyberspace but in person. Watson’s initial intention was to talk to Laity privately. And Laity, perhaps caught off guard and feeling threatened balked. Matters deteriorated into a shouting match, resulting in both Michael and Shelley being ejected from the Subterranean night club- where, as irony would have it a poetry reading was scheduled to begin some time later that day- on September 11th no less. 
 
Admittedly the time and place could have been better chosen. The interpretation of ‘can we step outside and discuss this’ depends on one’s knowledge of Watson as a person. As people are an alloy of disparate life experiences Watson seems exceptionally comfortable with his. Called a ‘good natured enforcer’ in Richard Lloyd’s book, Neo Bohemia Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, the former bouncer, personal trainer and poet wisely arrived at two decisions regarding Laity. One, never engage him on his own level. Two, in the large scheme of things, at least for a writer, if it doesn’t have anything to do with writing a good poem, learning how to craft a good poem, reading the works of those who have written good poems, then all else is irrelevant and should be treated as such. Where Laity uses the Chicago Poetry .com website and more recently a malicious parody MySpace page, called ‘Waiting For the Bus’ to lambaste his perceived foes Watson sticks to poetry, the occasional essay and the audio archives. 
 
Predictably C.J. Laity viewed the Wordslingers site as competition. ‘...if it is your intention to develop a website that is in competition with me rather than in cooperation with me, you will have to do that without the help of ChicagoPoetry.com.’ Later his response to Wordslingers was faint praise - then outright venom when Watson declined to feature his poems or list his contribution in the archives. 
 
‘See.  Now that you're doing the same thing that you claim I do, deciding who gets published at Wordslingers based on your personal conflicts, I bet you've never even been in a relationship for five years.  I bet you are not man enough to host a going away party for your lover if and when she ever decides she needs to leave and be with someone else.  The one thing I never was with Maggie was PUSSY WHIPPED.’ 
 
Wordslingers is not the only site that Laity views through a warped window darkly as somehow competitive to his Kurt Heintz’s E Poets Network, and recently David Hargarten’s Chicago Poetry Resource are always in his crosshairs. Lately David Gecic’s Puddin’head Press website has expanded to include a list of local poetry related happenings as well as a growing list of poets’ biographies. The Poetry Center of Chicago has started listing poetry events scheduled to occur in and around the Chicago area. Charlie Newman, host of the Café reading series sends out a weekly list of readings, as well as notes from small presses and venues looking to feature the works of poets. These organic efforts are all viewed as pale imitators, pretenders to Laity’s make believe throne. 
 
Life goes on, as it must and things that were all the rage one day are yesterday’s news the next. The same goes for performance poetry. During its heyday there were more than a couple dozen different poetry venues where an audience could listen as well as participate in the art. Many a Chicago poet will reminisce of the times when every night of the week contained poetry readings. There were documentaries, movies and books in which the performance poetry scene was central. Poetry slams were a huge hit, drawing poets and non poets alike-at once attracted to the style, the verbal bells and whistles that moves an audience to applaud, snap or simply boo. Chicago, the birthplace of the slam, rode the crest of that wave. Several coffee houses, bars and bookstores could boast having one night set aside for poetry readings. For a poet, exposure is next to godliness. 
 
From a social standpoint one goes to a reading, more to be among a community of like minded folk than as an exercise in literary vigor. Writing can be a lonely affair. The open mic becomes a sort of pressure release valve-providing the opportunity to sit among people who, no matter their careers, marital, status, gender or age, are somewhat in the same boat. 
 
The economics of interest and just plain finance have since waned. There are open mic readings, though no where near as many. The poetry slam still remains a key piece of the poetry landscape. In Chicago, many of the scene makers, have since moved away, took up a different form of writing, stepped into demanding careers, married raised families and simply stepped off the stage. As one gets older and steps farther into the life affirming commitments and sacrifices that is adulthood. Priorities shift. Back to back late night or weekend poetry readings are cool at 20 or 30 and the commitment to one’s job is somewhat fluid. Suddenly, having a spouse, children, insurance, car notes, rising rents, a mortgage, in addition to navigating a career path, doesn’t leave a lot of energy to attend as many readings. Consequently, less butts in seats means less revenue for the venues, which in turn means either they stop the fiscal bleeding by ditching the readings or they close down altogether. 
 
None of this is to imply that poetry readings are on life support- far from it. They cater to a wider and more diverse segment of poets encompassing, experimental and music backed efforts. Open mic features are still culled from open mic participants but equally as often features are invited from other parts of the state, the, country and the world to add to the mix. Features are chosen based on their notoriety in poetry circles. They are networked in so to speak because someone knows someone who read / heard someone and thinks that person would be an excellent feature. 
 
Networking is a wild child, given the speed and ubiquity of communication, proximity is an email away. Networking in an electronic environment is a way of not only sharing information and experiences it also provides a means of fact checking. Networking is one way people find out about employment opportunities, relationship prospects, housing and other things. It is not by any stretch of reason a gossip free zone, thus, since emails never die and what’s stated on a website can never be absolutely erased there are footprints enough for anyone with a desire or aptitude for forensics to chart certain patterns. People can and will make certain decisions sight unseen. This became a national issue when employers admitted that they view a prospective employee’s MySpace or FaceBook pages looking for insights into those persons interests. Woe to the applicant whose pages were filled with detailed accounts of drinking and or sexual exploits. Likewise for the potential employee whose website had links to a hate group. 
 
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 Heldt, 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt, 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
Heldt, 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. 
 
 
Rhys Essex
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I think it's one of those socio-biological things, this tendency to look back on the year and reflect on what happened or didn't happen. Of course doing this ignores the previous years that laid the rails for the last year and will of course maintain that course for years to come. Instead, year end reflections are written and spoken of as if the occurrences of that year took place in a vacuum. If nothing else, time is a study in continuity and progression. The seeds of yesterday's events were laid months, years, perhaps generations in advance. The future is predicated on actions, trials, motives, impulses and proceedings- made all the more unpredictable by any one person's inability to grasp the scope of the force of history. You see, time has no doors. There's no pause, no sudden cosmic or earthly cessation that marks December 31 st from January 1st. The light of exploded stars still reaches us. Immortality remains a mathematic equation, or an extraordinarily intricate riddle game performed between artistic consciousness and logic empiricists. The living speaks for the dead and the dead have yet to tell anyone whether they agree or disagree with the mythology. 
 
It's all kind of humbling and despite all claims of religious or spiritual piety mortals don't particularly like being humbled. So we mark the passing of time with clocks and calendars. The next year is heralded by fireworks and descending disco balls. Therefore, because we are mortal, conscious of the moving of time in a way that no other creature is, it becomes our imperative that even infinity- mathematics, music, poetry, riddles and all- bears our signature. Resolutions are made to do some things differently if not better. And why not? 
 
Again, the rails have been laid. What will be done in 2008, beneficial or injurious benevolent or acrimonious is based on quantifiable events known and unknown that lead up to this point. As time cannot truly be compartmentalized, what choices we accomplish will not occur in a vacuum. 
 
This brings me back to time. For all intents and purposes the best earmarks of time lie in the people one interacts with each day whether it's face to face, email, phone, television and radio Their lives, the utter manifestation of the force of history interweave with each of us, their memories entwine with ours and our in their turn find expression in the acts of others. Author, Stephen L. Carter notes in his book Civility, that we are like passengers sharing space on crowded train and as such we must be mindful that what we do impacts others. Civility calls upon us to sacrifice some things in order to make the ride tolerable for others. 
 
Time is that train. Mortality shares it. We are not alone. Should we resolve to comprehend and affect this then our individual signatures upon infinity will look less like temporary impositions of self and more like a map weaving lines from life to life, from then to when to be viewed on the last train home. 
 

Hey True Believers!
 
November 06  marked Wordslingers' 7 year anniversary. 
Now ain’t that a trip!  
 
For seven years the folks at this station have given me license to act as a kind of liaison between the growing audience that listens to WLUW Listener Supported Community Radio and Chicago’s poetry community at large. And I'm having a ball! I'm doing something that continues to excite as well as inspire me. Not only when I’m on the air but in between when I’m answering emails, reading the works of various poets, listening to recordings of past shows, or out a venue hearing another vibrant poet connecting with an audience. From Wordslinger’ s inception the mission  was to a share Chicago’s poets and their work to as wide an audience as possible and to offer Chicago’s poets yet another venue to perform their works to an appreciative, albeit invisible audience.

 
In 7 years there’s been some high points and some low ones. I ran myself down into a depressive funk that lasted most of 2001. I was working long hours in a position I truly hated. The tragedy of 9/11/01 got beneath the my armor of cynicism and stayed there. Existential anxiety all but paralyzed me in a clockwork of questions regarding faith, passion, humanity and purpose. For much of 2002 Wordslingers limped along on pre-recorded shows. 
 
By 2003 I woke out of my self imposed hiatus and with the help of a kick in the butt by my friend Ken Green Wordslingers was up and running again with live in studio guests. Admittedly Ken and I are natural class clowns, always joking around, signifying, breaking balls, etc. So some shows were equal parts comedy and poetry. When Ken moved on I kept plugging away. 
 
However, by the end of 2004  I was having doubts. If you are a writer or an avid reader you’ll understand that much of our lives are solitary and given to introspection- in my case I have a tendancy to not only dig myself into a hole but drag furniture down there with me. Introspection in itself isn’t a bad thing, (I believe we’d all be better off if more people took a closer examination of their individual lives in order to effect positive, life affirming amendments to the societal whole.) But I digress. 

 
I was having doubts as to whether people were hearing us, feeling us, these poets these poems, these stories, these small yet potent acts of revolution against the tele-sedated culture of icons and cheaply packaged realities. A few weeks prior to this stream of thought, another radio venue that featured poets, Northeastern’s WZRD had folded. I thought about about my doubts and in my usual solitary fashion attempted to weigh those doubts without any external input from anyone else. I figured that if I stopped Wordslingers I could transition the sense of loss and resulting down time into producing my own work.
 
In May of 2005 I sent out an mass email saying that my plan was to fold up shop in a year, but not before getting every poet that wanted to be on the air a chance to do just that. 
 
That email must have been infected with a highly contagious Mad Poet disease. Some poets responded almost instantaneously. It’s numbers redoubled themselves from at least three poetry based websites whose founders in turn sent it to their mailing lists.
 
The moral of this part of the story might as well be; doubt be damned!  As the emails came in the tone was pretty consistent. Wordslingers is valuable. And folks like what's happening.  
 
Wordslingers.org  was developed while I was still riding the crest of the wave of a great deal of positive as well as negative animus. The majority of visitors to Wordslingers.org saw it it as a natural outgrowth of the show. A smaller minority saw it as potentially competitive enterprise, a web based pulpit from which I might unfurl a yellow banner of explicit rue and spite or a tabloid featuring the lifestyles of the dissed, damaged and dumbfounded. As if the world needs more of that?
 
The purpose of Wordslingers.org is three fold. First, to give WLUW listeners a second chance to hear the poets they may have missed due to time constraints or, to WLUW's low signal range. Second, to archive some of these terrific voices so that anyone who wants to can hear some pretty damn good poetry. (Visit the growing Vox Cafe) Third, as place to let fly various thoughts and opinions on a variety of social, political and poetry related issues.
 
So that’s the skinny. I hope to keep on doing a very basic, no drama, no polemics, no style councils exchange and keep to an integral mission; to share Chicago’s poets and their work to as wide an audience as possible and to offer Chicago’s poets yet another venue to perform their works to an appreciative audience. 
 
Big thanks and megawatt grins go out to all the guests who have graced the WLUW studio sharing their power and love of words. Every show is like a different workshop delving into different forms and principles of the writing craft.
 
Big thanks to the nth power goes out to those for listening to Wordslingers and encouraging others to listen in as well. Please keep the faith.
 
See you in 2007!
 
Poetic Contagion
Spread The Words
 
Michael Covenant Watson

Too Young to Teach   by  Oz Devilhorse
(More of his work will be aired live on March 19th)

   We gotta go back to the early 70s. Everybody was kung-fu fighting. We had Vietnam, big long cars, and steel mills. There were only 4 channels on television, and it was ok to have livestock within city limits. Back then it was also permissible for teachers to swat a kid on the palm with a ruler for misbehaving. Ms. Bird was our teacher. I remember her being attractive, and maybe 25 years old: too young to be teaching kids.

 “Come up to my desk,” Ms. Bird would say. Then the 7-yr old convict would slowly walk up and extend one hand. 

   Those moments gave me a sick feeling, even when I wasn’t on my way to the desk. See, I was one of the good kids, and rarely spent time on the wrong end of her ruler. But, seeing another kid go up there ... I wanted to laugh sometimes, but I also worried that she might call me up next. Since she was in the disciplinary mood, what if she’d found out about one of my quiet transgressions? Thus, the paranoia & morose humor never neutralized each other. Their collision actually made me sick.


   Nothing could be heard in the classroom, except wood striking against a child’s hand. SWAAP! SWAAP! And I’d count silently to myself, 3, 4, 5 ... Some kids would immediately scream out because of the pain. Others had to be broken down; maybe it’d take 15 pops before a long whine came out. All along the way, Ms. Bird would demand, “Open your hand! I’m not through with you. I said open your hand!!” Silence. Silence. SWAAP! 16. SWAAP! 17. “Open your hand, I said!”

   Still, there were 3 boys who never did make a scene all school year. Ah! But it did take Ms. Bird several months to figure out how many swats would cause these boys to gush quiet tears.

   Funny. These boys would insist that they felt no pain. 
	
	“Ms. Bird can’t hurt me.”
“But, I saw those tears! You were crying!”
“No I wasn’t, you’re a liar!”

   But maybe they were right. Maybe they were weeping for Ms. Bird: tears of pity for a woman on an impossible mission.


   Instead of pity, I learned to hate Ms. Bird. What else can you do when you’re just 7 years old? There is no discussion or grievance procedure. Disrespect will be rewarded with the wrong end of the ruler. So, all I could was hate her. Why?

   It was clear that some students couldn’t stay on her good side for very long. She’d erase the boundary between good & bad, and re-draw it with certain kids—once again—on the wrong side. Larry was one boy who was in Wrong-ville as soon as he stepped into the classroom. 


   Then ... then there was the time when several boys were around my desk. Ms. Bird interrupted, “What’s going on over there?” No one responded. The other boys scurried off like cockroaches, back to their desks. She asked again, “what was going on over there?”

   Someone ratted, “Ozkr was looking up pussy in the dictionary.”

   Thus, I was immediately summoned. My comeuppance. 15 swats? Maybe 100? 
But there was one issue that Bird had kangarooed over:

   I was showing my fellow classmates that there’s no such word as turd, and that pussy isn’t what they kept saying it was. Pussy had nothing to do with a girl, unless it was a female housecat. 


   I’d begun to cry before I made it to Ms. Bird’s desk. She railed as I walked up the aisle amid the silence of my classmates: the admixture of fear and muted laughter. Ms. Bird was taunting, “you are so nasty. Just disgusting!” And when I stuck out my hand, she said, “Get away from me! You are so nasty, I don’t even want to touch you.”

   That was worse than taking an undeserved beating. Being called so intensely disgusting was an open-ended punishment. There was no moment of closure. In her mind, no amount of swats on my hand would burn away such a sin. She just sent me hurtling into history as being more despicable than the boys who’d peed on the restroom floor. Playing games … trying to see how far you can step backward and put such an arc on your pee that it’ll still reach the urinal … then take one too many steps and piss all over the floor … Ms. Bird could beat those interests out of a boy. But I was her terrorist: polluted beyond imagination and incorrigible.

What's It Gonna Be, People?

Will we still find ourselves ducking, dodging, 
looking over our shoulders, 
watching these streets from the corner of our eyes, 
double locking our windows, 
practicing sociological martial arts, 
punching, chopping, flipping, feinting 
tumbling like a bag of loose joints, 
and thinking about carrying a pistol?

Will we still be hopscotching redlines around certain neighborhoods 
according to certain times of day, 
when the moon is full, when the eagle flies, 
when the cut rate liquor sign flickers out?
when the who’s who of wasted human resources 
struggle on the pages of do nothing policies 
between the footnotes and the margins?

Will we still wonder about folks less cynical than silly for dreaming the improbable  “I am a community of one”  dream? 
Will we still find ourselves considering being ku kluxed
by amped up thugs that look just like us, 
rolled like dice with six sides of snake eyes 
plunged face first into the grief of pulled triggers and full caskets
as just the cost of doing business in the toxic culture ghetto that makes up the quilt of the America that America chooses to ignore?

Will we still find ourselves as extras 
in another porn video featuring foreign policy and domestic poverty sound tracked to the Buick bouncing beat of  “no way up, no way out”?   
Will we lace up our slave labor sponsored shoes while thinking about how fast we can run, 
or how fast anybody can run 
versus a pitbull suddenly off it’s chain, 
versus taser toting Gestapo, 
versus hurricane floodwaters 
versus another disaster for the mighty whitey rich right wing to orchestrate political advantage of, 
versus bullets that don’t even have our names on them but chase us duck and cover from shadow to shadow 
down streets made of locked doors and broken keys? 
Will this be the day?  
Will this be our right place wrong time day didn’t move fast enough day?

Is this what was meant when the pioneers sacrificed, 
when the heroes died 
when the frontiers were open but waiting for blood, 
when the songs of freedom were raised like fists 
when poetic consciousness fathomed the lightless catacombs of an American soul  
when the mothers were waiting but holding back tears 
when fathers were bending lower, then lower still like trees  beneath the weight of gravesite dirt covering yet over another brick in the road toward 
what?

Will we still hate the same people we hated the year before, recycle poisonous spite 
and little big egos 
from the landfill of empathic dereliction 
wear our game faces, look tough, 
shoulder, muscle and road rage our way past each other, 
Will we clumsily ignore our fracturing reflections in the gaping spaces between our actions and intentions?
Will we pray to the heavens to give us this day our daily enemies to lead us not into benevolence but define us by the viral load of romanticized fascism?

Will we shame the system or become the empire?
Will our poems still believe in change,
Will our true stories of our true selves open doors 
of not how many enemies made easily 
but how many affinities gained by effort?
Will this be the year of the overcoming, 
the seizing of the time, 
the lifting every voice, 
the calling to action against the reavers of rights?

Another year ends as another begins
Disclosure or ambush?
Charity or inclemency?
Intelligence or charade?
What’s it gonna be people?

MCW 12/09/2005

comment? mwatson@questinternet.net

This Relentless Thought Just in From Joel Brussell

Dialogue at will!

A few months back I attended and participated in the Chicago Poetry Fest.
As I watched other poets the question came to mind; what is the purpose of reading poetry to the public? Is it simply self expression, not caring or oblivious to its affect on audience members?  If this is the case, it makes perfect sense that 90% of the audience members are other poets. Until we make some real conscious efforts to involve the public it will always be a small, self congratulatory network of other poets desperate for a venue.

I believe the only way to get the public really interested is to be aware that poetry like television, must be entertaining.

While I may completely agree with a radical political poet’s beliefs, I’ve attended enough poetry events only to watch closely as the non-poet audience,  mentally heads for the hills with the first spouting or yelling or listing of the world’s injustices.

Should the same poet choose to deliver the message in- between bites of ham sandwich, occasionally swabbing mustard off the corners of their lips, I guarantee the audience will be with the poet at least a few seconds longer.

Many people would say my work is infantile, of little substance, too much stand-up etc
Those are valid criticisms as I strain to reach for my pacifier.

I am simply attempting to start a dialogue over whether poets should have some awareness of what of their work does or doesn’t do to the audience?

With the slightest semblance of sincerity,

Joel Brussell

JUST WHAT IS OUR ALTERNATIVE ANYWAY?	
	 
       I’ve noticed that when the word – alternative is used in modern conversation it has more to do with openly assailing qualities or effects deemed negative- or at least disagreed upon at the expense of discovering what makes them tick. 
	In this sense alternative derives it’s existence from being so against something that it spends an inordinate amount of time and resources being antagonistic. This tilts the scales against discovering and providing new ideas or solutions.
	This seems to be a symptom of the aggressive, in your face culture of the time. The pedagogy of the pit bulls, of the loud, the pseudo didactic and dogmatic teaches it’s apostles to stake out their ideological turf –not as if they were the lone discoverers of a particular brand of thinking, but as if their very core identities were in jeopardy of being stolen or destroyed. 
	In this atmosphere communication from points of openness, i.e., deep listening shrivels down to the lowest common denominator- irresolvable conflict. There’s no middle ground, common threads are ignored. It’s a boxing match, ideologues come out swinging from their own paradigms. Humanity disengages from it’s heritage. Curses ignite, bullets fly, bombs fall. Every day we struggle across an obstacle course that seems to consist of scores of enemy camps. Where there is so much to be said there’s no one able to hear it.
	There has to be – at the least a growing frustration born from an inherent comprehension of empathic shades of grey, that most stark contrasts are drawn by impoverished hearts failing to plumb deep enough and self crippling minds refusing to quest higher. 
	Witness the world. No one seems to hear a thing save for consistent drumbeat of fear. Is there an alternative to that?

M.C.Watson.

And in this Corner... C.J. Laity : Incivility Takes the Stage Among Chicago Poets        An Essay by    Rhys Essex.
 
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” 
Bertrand Russell 
           There are nearly as many theories regarding the source and reasons behind our increasing levels of incivility as there are actions reflecting it. 
         From petty spite to full court malice, scientists, philosophers, sociologists, theologians, newspaper columnists, law enforcement workers, artists and just about anyone who’s either witnessed or been on the dirty end of the stick, move their fingers around the sociological Ouija board looking for that one all encompassing answer that will stop the madness. That answer, if found will be the holy grail of answers, perhaps presaging the dawn of a Utopian age of peace, love and understanding. Compassion will be the buzzword. Empathy will become as ubiquitous and as in vogue as text messaging. 
         In a perfect world, the answer will suddenly be discovered in the form of a heretofore unknown chemical by-product of global warming and fast food restaurant emissions warping our limbic systems, resulting in our lower thresholds of tolerance, our rising levels of anger, the increasing value in giving and taking of offense and our devaluation in giving and receiving non violent (verbal as well as physical) forms of communication. Once deemed that our screwed up, misanthropic behaviors are not solely our fault, the newly revealed victims of science gone bad can rest easy. The heavy lifting that comes from honest reflection upon our own failings to exercise a healthy symbiosis with our communities can be put aside once again. 
        The pervasiveness of spite, like tracking dog excrement indoors, leaves its offensive stain in places, where simply by its nature, you’d rather not have it. Paradoxically, because it is so widespread, a virulent sort of societal phage, we’ve come to a near hopeless acceptance of it. And in this acceptance we fall into what psychologist, Stanley Milgrom calls ‘norms of non-involvement.’ We find spitefulness, as well as escalated degrees of cruelty in the workplace, in school, the marketplace, church, the media and in our homes. It runs rampant in nearly every political campaign as candidates often veer completely away from the concrete issues that effect lives and into personal attacks on everything from clothing, looks, to sexual peccadilloes. One of the manifestations of spitefulness, bullying, is the hot topic nowadays, where it’s now the province of boys and girls and not just the playground but the electronic playground as well. The atmosphere is rife with nastiness and vindictiveness. People seem ever more avid to exorcise their feelings of frustration or powerlessness in seemingly random acts of malice. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands. 
          Yet, cruelty and bullying are by no means recent phenomena. The miserable heart of it gave us the Nazis, the Janjaweed, the Klan, the urban guerillas that terrorize our cities and Al Qaeda. Cruelty was behind all the lives lost on Sept 11th . It was behind the death of Matthew Shepherd, the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. and it was behind the 2006 death of Jimilla Tunstall, whose unborn fetus was cut from her body. Bullying and cruelty set the stage for the murders at Columbine High School. Take it a step further and the jingoist rhetoric that peppers Pres. George W. Bush’s speech, ‘axis of evil, ‘dead or alive’, ‘for us or against us’ in addition to his consistent use of the words ‘crusade’ and ‘evil’, weighted with all their medieval connotations, has much to do with political execution as the chest thumping of a gorilla has to do with seeking justice. Less graphically but no less poignant, the psychological machinations of bullying are behind spousal abuse, vandalism, gang intimidation, all forms of harassment, as well as acts of racial, sexual and religious discrimination. 
          Cruelty takes on a life of its own, moves to the beat of it’s own rationale, fuels itself on its shallow perception of possessing power enough to bring the shock and awe to its enemies- enemies that are not really adversaries with varying indices of offenses, but missed or refuted opportunities to engage moral language toward a mutually beneficial, ethical outcome. My personal concept of moral language is one that encompasses the values of caring, empathy, mercy and the value in consistently striving to live in a socially healthy community. 
            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. 
 
Truly, most disagreements can be and should be settled using the finer artillery of intellect on a level playing field of respect for the other person’s points of view. And given the rather close knittedness of the poetry community, differences can be resolved in person. By restricting the playing field to cyberspace the door is open for faulty communication, the various nuances inherent in speech being lost or misunderstood. The replies, if any, are not only running on the slippery ice of misinterpretation, they are increasingly hostile in attempting to discover the sender’s real intent. The result- cyber-drama. 
 
I once had a supervisor admonish our staff in regards to answering internal clients via back and forth emails. It was inefficient to type out a detailed response to a complicated question, wait for a response, realize that the answer wasn’t quite clear, and then resend the email with different details. By simply picking up the phone or in some cases walking a few feet over to their desk to answer the initial question as well as any other that arose from the original problem, not only saved time but all but eliminated the possibility of a message being misconstrued. Often an email response can come across as snarky without the sender actually intending it. 
 
Yet, what can be done when mean-spiritedness, spitefulness, character defamation, unprincipled duplicity and neighborly hostility are intended? What can be done if attempts at dialogue are virtually stillborn because there is no unifying moral language upon which to build trust or respect? What if C. J. Laity’s perpetuation of cyber-drama is both means and end? 
 
According to Wired Kids, the youth version of the popular science and technology magazine, Wired. There are four types of cyber-bullies. I chose the two types that bear the closest resemblance to Laity’s modus operandi along with supporting quotes taken from his own site as well as various mass emails sourced back to him. 
 
The Vengeful Angel often doesn’t see themselves as a bully. To them it’s all about righting perceived wrongs or protecting themselves. They act out because they are angry at something the victim (s) may have said or may have done. Thus revenge is warranted in order to teach them a lesson. 
 
‘I’m telling you, my friends, I can’t take it anymore! People line up single file to fuck with me like this’ 
 
‘I feel my reputation is at stake and I need an avenue in which I can defend myself from the bullshit.’ 
 
‘I’m a human being trying to do some good in the world. If this loser keeps bombarding me with his hate mail I am going to lose it. I am going to come to the Café during his feature and I am going to piss all over him...’ 
 
‘The thing is, I’m not out there all the time to personally combat the urban legends that are told about me.’ 
 
‘I call this group of poets the "I hate CJ club.” Be aware that this group exists and know what their intentions are. Don't be fooled by their talk of "community" because it's all bullshit. If they truly believe in "community" then why am I not invited into it?’ 
 
‘They've each got it out for me for one reason or another, and lately they've been working together with a sort of lynch mob mentality in order to slander me.’ 
 
The Power Hungry and Revenge of the Nerds bully share similarities to playground bullies inasmuch as their desire to exert their authority and demonstrate their ability to control others with fear. The only difference is technology and being techno-savvy enough to use it against their foes in typical ‘Revenge of the Nerds fashion. The Power Hungry aspect arises because this type of cyber bully needs an audience, a circle of friends to feed their need to be perceived as powerful. Typically they brag to this audience about their actions. They seek to embarrass or in some way intimidate their victims. They crave a reaction. Failing that, they will escalate their activities in order to get a response. 
 
‘You would have been wise to advise her against going head to head with me before she started.’ 
 
‘ChicagoPoetry.com will continue to crush this destructive pattern of passive-aggressive assaults, and ChicagoPoetry.com will continue to expose those who [practice] this harmful behavior. Nobody, and I repeat, nobody is untouchable.’ 
 
‘You are so full of shit it is pathetic. You are a selfish, uppity,
judgmental, egocentric cocksucker.’ 
 
‘Quite frankly, all I have to say to you is go fuck yourself.’
 
And so it goes on the electronic playground of a portion of Chicago’s poets. A pushing and shoving match in html format with no monitor to tell all parties to cut it out and play nice. 
 
If the above quotes had been uttered face to face, it wouldn’t be quite as disturbing. Yet, not only were they posted on websites, but widely emailed and contextualized by the poster/sender. Irony, which is the smoking gun of poetry abounds. How can a person who participates in poetry readings, where one is required to stand in front of an audience and read poetry, so heavily rely on electronic correspondence to state his case? How can a person who claims to be a writer, with the requisite quiver of literary devises at hand resort to childish expletives, name calling and inchoate implications of retaliation? In a world where mental toughness is the key to good mental hygiene why does Laity become so perturbed by the very perception of becoming a victim of -talk, of words? So perturbed that he often runs the risk of alienating the very people who make up his audience and so perturbed that he risks crossing the legal line between opinion and defamation? 
 
In 2005, a strange confluence of events transpired, the ripple effects of which are still being felt three years later. For C.J. Laity the effects seemed to amount to an economic and social upheaval, one that reached volcanic proportions largely due to his response to them. 
 
His girlfriend of some years, who had financially supported his endeavors left Laity at once and moved to another state. In confiding her unhappiness in the relationship to her girlfriends, Maggie was able to put her life in perspective. More than ready to take the helm of a future that saw both new career opportunities as well as a more loving relationship, she moved on. 
 
These things happen. Man does wrong, gets dumped, gets angry, wallows in self pity for a spell, then moves on. In Laity’s world private pain is publicized. Worse, the blame is leveled against others, who, according to him were directly responsible for her departure. And of course, who can’t imagine Maggie haplessly falling under the Svengalli-esque sway of her girlfriends as they chant around the cauldron ‘leave him, leave him’. Embracing victim culture in full career, Laity waves his bloodied heart around, not so much in an attempt to go dowsing for sympathy, but to leverage his inculpability into a motive to perpetuate yet again a cycle of lex talionis ; the brutally  aggrieved seeking to retaliate against his foes with equal or even surpassing cruelty.
 
‘When she was with me she told me how much she loved me and cared about me, but when she was with her friends or family apparently she told them how miserable she was with me.’ 
 
‘After a five year roller coaster ride, she dumped me as if I was nothing but garbage and worst than that, she turned a bunch of my friends against me. People sympathized with her because she's five feet tall and as cute as a button’ 
 
‘Shelly was stupid enough to think that just because she got Maggie drunk in her time of confusion and Maggie cried on her shoulder, that Maggie was on her side.’ 
 
`Escaped fugitive Norman A. Porter Jr., known for some twenty years as the poet J J Jameson, was arrested in a church in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Unknown to everyone, Porter had been charged and sentenced for the 1960 shooting of a part time store clerk in Saugus Massachusetts. A year later he had been involved in a fatal assault the shooting of a guard and subsequently an escape attempt. Recaptured while holding up a grocery store, Porter was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Years of being a model prisoner as well as having one of his sentences commuted by then Massachusetts governor Dukakis paid off and Porter was allowed the limited freedom privileges that come from serving out his time in a pre- release center. In 1985 he signed himself out of the facility and never returned. Coming to Chicago he made a decision to put his past life behind him by the means that came easily available to him. A carpenter, an activist, a poet and friend to many people from different walks of life. Cantankerous, impoverished, given to drinking, old and often sick. JJ Jameson was the antithesis of Norman A Porter Jr. 
 
For those who knew the man personally or tangentially the revelations were stunning. Everyone had an opinion regarding Porter, his deception, his crimes and the legal system at large principally based on their own paradigms. Anyone willing and able to apply a minimum of intellectual scrutiny easily understands that the feelings regarding Porter surpassed the simplistic ‘those for’ or ‘those against’ him dialectic.. What was done was done. The machinations regarding his debt to society are in the hands of the court. 
 
Yet, again in C.J. Laity’s world it’s not simply taking sides. It’s about his side and how he feels betrayed and how anyone who does not feel as betrayed as he does becomes the target of the seething rancor which is his stock in trade response to differences in opinion. 
 
To a lesser, yet somewhat pivotal degree, 2005 saw another poet start a website, Wordslingers. Wordslingers is largely a huge audio archive of poets who have read their work on the nine year old radio program he produces from Loyola University’s WLUW. It’s founder, Michael C. Watson, finding his girlfriend Shelley Nation on the receiving end of Laity’s brand of cyber spite did what any self respecting boyfriend would. He defended her and angrily confronted Laity- not in cyberspace but in person. Watson’s initial intention was to talk to Laity privately. And Laity, perhaps caught off guard and feeling threatened balked. Matters deteriorated into a shouting match, resulting in both Michael and Shelley being ejected from the Subterranean night club- where, as irony would have it a poetry reading was scheduled to begin some time later that day- on September 11th no less. 
 
Admittedly the time and place could have been better chosen. The interpretation of ‘can we step outside and discuss this’ depends on one’s knowledge of Watson as a person. As people are an alloy of disparate life experiences Watson seems exceptionally comfortable with his. Called a ‘good natured enforcer’ in Richard Lloyd’s book, Neo Bohemia Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City, the former bouncer, personal trainer and poet wisely arrived at two decisions regarding Laity. One, never engage him on his own level. Two, in the large scheme of things, at least for a writer, if it doesn’t have anything to do with writing a good poem, learning how to craft a good poem, reading the works of those who have written good poems, then all else is irrelevant and should be treated as such. Where Laity uses the Chicago Poetry .com website and more recently a malicious parody MySpace page, called ‘Waiting For the Bus’ to lambaste his perceived foes Watson sticks to poetry, the occasional essay and the audio archives. 
 
Predictably C.J. Laity viewed the Wordslingers site as competition. ‘...if it is your intention to develop a website that is in competition with me rather than in cooperation with me, you will have to do that without the help of ChicagoPoetry.com.’ Later his response to Wordslingers was faint praise - then outright venom when Watson declined to feature his poems or list his contribution in the archives. 
 
‘See.  Now that you're doing the same thing that you claim I do, deciding who gets published at Wordslingers based on your personal conflicts, I bet you've never even been in a relationship for five years.  I bet you are not man enough to host a going away party for your lover if and when she ever decides she needs to leave and be with someone else.  The one thing I never was with Maggie was PUSSY WHIPPED.’ 
 
Wordslingers is not the only site that Laity views through a warped window darkly as somehow competitive to his Kurt Heintz’s E Poets Network, and recently David Hargarten’s Chicago Poetry Resource are always in his crosshairs. Lately David Gecic’s Puddin’head Press website has expanded to include a list of local poetry related happenings as well as a growing list of poets’ biographies. The Poetry Center of Chicago has started listing poetry events scheduled to occur in and around the Chicago area. Charlie Newman, host of the Café reading series sends out a weekly list of readings, as well as notes from small presses and venues looking to feature the works of poets. These organic efforts are all viewed as pale imitators, pretenders to Laity’s make believe throne. 
 
Life goes on, as it must and things that were all the rage one day are yesterday’s news the next. The same goes for performance poetry. During its heyday there were more than a couple dozen different poetry venues where an audience could listen as well as participate in the art. Many a Chicago poet will reminisce of the times when every night of the week contained poetry readings. There were documentaries, movies and books in which the performance poetry scene was central. Poetry slams were a huge hit, drawing poets and non poets alike-at once attracted to the style, the verbal bells and whistles that moves an audience to applaud, snap or simply boo. Chicago, the birthplace of the slam, rode the crest of that wave. Several coffee houses, bars and bookstores could boast having one night set aside for poetry readings. For a poet, exposure is next to godliness. 
 
From a social standpoint one goes to a reading, more to be among a community of like minded folk than as an exercise in literary vigor. Writing can be a lonely affair. The open mic becomes a sort of pressure release valve-providing the opportunity to sit among people who, no matter their careers, marital, status, gender or age, are somewhat in the same boat. 
 
The economics of interest and just plain finance have since waned. There are open mic readings, though no where near as many. The poetry slam still remains a key piece of the poetry landscape. In Chicago, many of the scene makers, have since moved away, took up a different form of writing, stepped into demanding careers, married raised families and simply stepped off the stage. As one gets older and steps farther into the life affirming commitments and sacrifices that is adulthood. Priorities shift. Back to back late night or weekend poetry readings are cool at 20 or 30 and the commitment to one’s job is somewhat fluid. Suddenly, having a spouse, children, insurance, car notes, rising rents, a mortgage, in addition to navigating a career path, doesn’t leave a lot of energy to attend as many readings. Consequently, less butts in seats means less revenue for the venues, which in turn means either they stop the fiscal bleeding by ditching the readings or they close down altogether. 
 
None of this is to imply that poetry readings are on life support- far from it. They cater to a wider and more diverse segment of poets encompassing, experimental and music backed efforts. Open mic features are still culled from open mic participants but equally as often features are invited from other parts of the state, the, country and the world to add to the mix. Features are chosen based on their notoriety in poetry circles. They are networked in so to speak because someone knows someone who read / heard someone and thinks that person would be an excellent feature. 
 
Networking is a wild child, given the speed and ubiquity of communication, proximity is an email away. Networking in an electronic environment is a way of not only sharing information and experiences it also provides a means of fact checking. Networking is one way people find out about employment opportunities, relationship prospects, housing and other things. It is not by any stretch of reason a gossip free zone, thus, since emails never die and what’s stated on a website can never be absolutely erased there are footprints enough for anyone with a desire or aptitude for forensics to chart certain patterns. People can and will make certain decisions sight unseen. This became a national issue when employers admitted that they view a prospective employee’s MySpace or FaceBook pages looking for insights into those persons interests. Woe to the applicant whose pages were filled with detailed accounts of drinking and or sexual exploits. Likewise for the potential employee whose website had links to a hate group. 
 
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 Heldt, 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt 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 Heldt, 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
Heldt, 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. 
 
 
Rhys Essex