Clubs That I Wouldn't Want to Have Me As A Member

When I started going to the Chamber Pot Society (see yesterday's post) it was very clear that most of the people that attended and participated felt that the "art" - the poetry, the literature, etc. was sacrosanct and so was the person that created it. The poets were all lyrical song birds, the novelists were genius and profound and wrote like arch-angels. It was very apparent I did not fit in with this attitude. I look at it all for entertainment and knowledge AND for the bones sticking out, the clunkers, the mistakes. There were very few that were geniuses. I was too cynical and too disrespectful to be a true member of the club. I loved to drink too much and play mind games with them. I recall an hour long discussion with Paul and later with Chris Farmer about how I could make a case that Hemingway and Faulkner and Steinbeck were all romance writers. Anyhow, since I didn't have the right attitude, I didn't get included with other groups that were off shoots. There was a writers' group that Larry Spingarn ran over in the valley. The other writers in the Chamber Pot all went, except me. I finally went to him and asked to be included and was invited and went once. It was boring and not even insightful. There was the Contra Nostra that I was invited to and then uninvited to because they knew I was sacrilegious- god forbid I might show up with some off the wall interpretation of something they had studied in depth for several months. Even had some friends that belonged to it.  I honestly believe to this day that I was too scary or not serious enough. Lenny, who ran the Chamber Pot for years, would not let me do Sherwood Anderson for 5 years. Wouldn't let me do John Gardner at all. I didn't quite understand until he published his silly little book on Chaucer and purposely didn't invite me to the publication party. Who am I to talk - who doesn't even have a degree, let alone spent years beating a dead horse to death.

There was another poetry group that I wasn't invited to, but I can't really remember the folks' names now.
One of 'em read some of his own poetry at the session we had of everyone's creative stuff and I was particularly interested in hearing his, since he had done lectures on a bunch of poets over the years. He stunk. The part I couldn't understand was how he could not hear the difference between his stuff and the stuff he lectured on.