Testing the Waters of Democracy

Abstract

On the local level, I tended to do what most poets, writers, artists, and professors dared not: test the waters of democracy and thereby risking the loss of teaching opportunities, invitations, publishing possibilities, and ostracizing, not to mention subscriptions to the magazine I edited. Over the years, the subjects of my experiments had mostly been poets, writers, editors, publishers, cultural-council bureaucrats, teachers, professors, and librarians. In general, they had proven closed to freedom of expression and vigorous debate, cornerstones of democracy. Even PEN New England, which boasted as its prime purpose defending freedom of expression, had proven closed regarding the defense of my freedom of expression in New England.As publisher of a small-press 501 c3 nonprofit magazine, devoted to literature, democracy, and dissidence, I had been knocking on the doors of public libraries over the past decade in an attempt to build a subscriber base. To date, I managed to obtain only 16 libraries, including only a handful of public ones (Concord, Lincoln, Newton, Iowa, Lincoln Parish, Arlington, and Gleason). The rest consisted of university libraries like Harvard, Yale, John Hopkins, Brown, Buffalo, and Wisconsin. One might compare that paltry number of institutional subscribers to the over 500 possessed by Agni or Poetry Magazine.In general, my knocking on doors, that is my experimentation, had shown that public libraries (and university libraries as well) tended, perhaps contrary to public belief, not to be bastions of free speech and free expression at all. One of them even issued a no-trespass warrant against me without due process several years ago, though I had not disturbed patrons, used four-l etter words, talked about sex, or made threats. What I'd done was simply persist in my attempt to get it to subscribe.More recently, I was sitting in the public library that my tax dollars helped fund in Barnstable, Massachusetts, Sturgis Library, one of the oldest in America. There, I overheard a brief discussion: putting in good They're Andersen! Then the discussion arrived next to me: Let me take a look at these nice windows! I was sitting next to those windows. Unable to resist, I interjected, noting the library could afford expensive windows, but not a $20 subscription to a nonprofit journal devoted to democracy published right in the neighborhood. The man and woman didn't quite seem to understand what I was talking about. My experience underscored that most citizens didn't really care about democracy. Most would not lift a finger to protest against censorship, unless it had to do with a friend or family member.Six months before, I'd tried to interest the director of Sturgis, who was also the director of the Cape Cod Cultural Council. But she'd argued the library did not have the money, and that I could donate a free subscription. Yet, I'd thought, why should I donate when the only magazine on the library shelf publishing literature, Poetry Magazine, had a $100-million endowment? I read through the library's Collection Development Policy, which included the American Association's Library Bill of Rights, in particular: Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.The point I then made to the director was as clear as a bell, at least to me. The magazine I published presented poetry as socio-politically engaged and highly critical of poetry as a form of high-brow intellectual entertainment, the kind favored by the established-order poets highlighted in Poetry Magazine. In other words, by rejecting my magazine and its critical point of view and only featuring one point of view regarding poetry, Sturgis was in clear violation of its own Collection Development Policy. It was in clear violation of democracy. …