TDR Letter
Date: June 21, 2004
Subject: Mr. Shane Neilson's yellow journalism
To the General Editor of TDR (should one exist -- there being some question on that, obviously):
Shane Neilson's personal slag of one of our poets, Rob McLennan, as posted in his "bio" on your website, is both completely unnecessary AND, much more importantly, completely unprofessional. The question you were asking of Mr. Neilson, one of your own "editors" in your own "bio-interviews" was: "what do you like & dislike about Canadian poetry" and not "what do you like & dislike about Canadian poets" or even not "who [not 'what'] do you dislike among Canadian poets" (please pardon the [parenthetical] double negative). It's also worth noting that many of the other poets that Mr. Neilson & other "editors" for & on the TDR site seem to "like" (with the same kind of personal intensity as Mr. Neilson so obviously "hates" Mr. McLennan?) are in fact many of the same people whose work Mr. McLennan tirelessly supports & promotes on his own various sites & through his many activities (people who Mr. Neilson appears to call Mr. McLennan's "legions"). So what could Mr. Neilson possibly mean by what he alleges to be Mr. McLennan's "pernicious influence" on his "legions?" Professionally, I mean.
Finally, and most telling of all, what, exactly, are Mr. Neilson's qualifications as a "poetry editor?" Are they academic? Are they editorial credits (other than for TDR, of course)? Are they publication credits? His "bio" says he's published ONE CHAPBOOK with a small press?!? Excuse me, with that kind of publication(s) credit list, at his age, what does he base his own critical credibility in poetry and poetics on? The fact that he (like so many other aspiring wannabes in the craft) has published "many" individual poems in "literary magazines," in his 'special' case, not just in Canada, but "also in the UK?" Are we still in the colonial 1950s here? Does publication of even the most occasional ephemera outside Canada, especially in a country that's one of Canada's former colonial masters, automatically confer a patina of credibility on the "critic" in question? Has anyone at TDR ever heard of the phrase "post-colonial?" Or is TDR, as an institution, still adrift in the fascist-imperialist flotsam & jetsam of "modernism?" So, in the absence of any shred of credible professional information on the part of someone on your site called "Shane Neilson," I'm left only, of course, with a (rhetorical) personal question about this public non-entity: When (and if) Mr. Neilson dresses himself in the morning, does he put on what we used to refer in the 1950s as "continentals," rather than the far more indigenously North American jeans, commando pants, sweats, and / or skateboard-Bermuda shorts?
For God's sake, spare me the answer. I REALLY don't want to know!
Karl H. Siegler, President & Publisher
Talon Books Ltd., Editorial Offices
6828 Alberni Street, Powell River, B.C.
Canada V8A 2B5
Phone: (604) 485-5801 Fax (604) 485-5802
P.S. There, now wasn't that a much more polite way of saying: "So who the hell is Shane Neilson anyway, and, much more importantly, who the fuck cares?" K.S
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