So here we are.
The 21st century. Well well .
But since roughly around the 1990s America let alone many other countries really haven’t progressed that much at all … with the exception of the internet & social media.
C’mon lets face it. It’s true. We still have poverty, war and high amounts of violence, guns, no free education or free or affordable healthcare and worst of all racism & republican idiot fascists like Trump and his gullible ignorant followers who just over the last decade have made things even more far-right worse and who have destroyed any progress that we had made since the Barack Obama Administration. These “People ” who are admittedly unqualified, greedy wannabes like Trump, De Santis, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and many other faux human beings have lied their way into offices of power and who are daily ruining and destroying our country as we speak. But that’s just the beginning. Their goals are to force the Christian religion down people’s throats and to remove any lifestyle, straight or gay, Pagan or Muslim, drag queen or not or any true freedoms which we have in a real civilization or democracy so that they hold the power and control over American citizens. Repealing abortion, censoring books and stopping gun control as well as supporting Neo Nazi related movements & groups such as the Proud Boys and the KKK. It’s hard to believe that now in the year 2023 that these self centered, narcissist monsters exist and are actually even followed or listened to. Regression. A failing experiment. America is de-evolving into a nightmare that it was never intended to be. And it’s truly sickening to watch. These money-power driven faux politicians are destroying our country and they don’t even truly believe in the God they are using as a tool to claim America as theirs much like an amateur Hitler or Mussolini. With deception, lies and complete bullshit. Being backed up by false media & corrupt corporations.
But this post isn’t just about the aforementioned slime that’s trying to make America into a dying cesspool but since the mid 2000s many of the other somewhat unnoticed changes that have been taking place as well. Mostly on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter ( now X) Tik Tok & Facebook. And many of these changes sadly reflect what we as human beings have become and worse yet are becoming and it is a truly disturbing spectacle to see on a daily basis.
So let’s talk more about social media and in that regard poets & poetry and some of those bad decisions and changes which have occurred over the years.
1998 Albany NY
Back in 1998 here in Albany, NY myself & friend and poet Hex M’ Jai ( Jason) were regulars of the Albany Poetry, Goth-Punk Clubs & Music scenes but were also poets and writers who had published chapbooks previously and had been published in many paper zines before ourselves. And one night while hanging out and drinking at a club known as the FuzeBox
( The Qe2) we both had a great vision. To create something different and new and something that would be more open to our way of life and beliefs, our musical tastes and our culture. And that idea was a small independent chapbook and poetry publishing group we called DEAD MAN’S PRESS INK. Based upon the culture of punk, goth, noir and the occult which was a part of who we were and the things we loved. At first? The process of creating this idea and manifesting it into creation was slow. We both published chapbooks under this new banner of idealism and then with Yahoo Geocities built a crude working website. We also created a profile on Myspace ( yes Myspace) and even stated a local DIY paper pamphlet local zine called ” Mertz!” where many local poets on the Albany Open Mic Poetry scene were published in and their work could be found locally & read in bars, cafes and at the readings themselves. After that though with the Internet and many other changes in our lives DMPI like so many other creative efforts in life took a backseat after publishing a few more poets chapbooks around 1999. The Internet was growing at an accelerated rate and I had many other ideas, plans that would help benefit our thriving Albany, NY Poetry scene to make it even bigger and well known. At this time I was running a successful and crowded monthly poetry open mic at a rock club called Valentine’s which was called ” The School of Night” which was set up a bit differently than many other area open mics. For instance. We had no sign up list. You would put your name on a slip of paper and drop it in the brass church plate and when it was picked out by myself the host your stage time was then -2 poems each or five minutes. We also had a saxophone player ( Bruce Richardson) and a stand up bass player (James Washburn) performing jazz music upon the stage behind the readers. It was an amazing time to host a poetry reading and be a part of what was a new resurgence, a true American poetry rennisance that was happening everywhere across America because of the media like MTV/Henry Rollins and the return of coffee house, cafe culture as well as a new interest in spoken word poetry and styles from places like the Nuyorican Cafe in the East Village in NYC. It was an amazing time & era to be a poet in. But, with that said and a brief amount of history I’ll continue with my story in regards to change and social media. In 1999 one of my other ideas came into becoming a reality. Albany Poets was one of the first events and article websites made to promote just poetry & poetry open mics on a large scale in the United States. One other was in California. And after searching for a good web designer which was difficult to find in those days we had one good friend & young poet at the time who had been attending our open mics since he was in high school reading his work out. And his name ? Was Thom Francis. So with Thom’ s help as well as spoken word poet and friend Mary Panza‘s, Albany Poets became a reality eventually creating a local, upstate NY poetry scene that became huge quickly. There was a poetry reading in the Albany NY, the Capital Region almost every single night & week! And it was amazing bringing news and media interest and opportunities to grow and travel with our poems and voices. This soon led to the annual Albany WordFest poetry gathering for poets from everywhere as well as The Central Muse Division Poetry Performance group.
So. Social Media. The Internet?
So not bad huh?
But let’s elaborate on this after all the local poetry history. I ran Albany Poets as it’s president for four years and they were some of the best years of my life with my friends by my side helping me out and keeping it going. But? As in all stories life changes you. Always. And yes, you get older too. I moved to the Florida Keys to live with a former girlfriend/love rekindled but it didn’t work out. But also? In our Albany area poetry was growing and changing even more and Slam Poetry started moving in as not so much an open mic, poetry for everyone, but as more a contest where they charged you money $ to get in and not a small donation. Poetry isn’t a contest or some competition and I will repeat that until I can no longer say it. POETRY is for EVERYONE in all styles & forms on or off the stage. Period. As it was Slam was already so overused and oversaturated by the trendy and even by the academics by 2004 that it was already digging it’s own grave and taking it’s last breathe. And watching rappers and poets fighting over a contest prize and their petty arguing to me was utter and ridiculous bullshit. Slam became all about popularity, ego, competition and worst of all … money. Not the spoken word and not the poetry itself. Slam became the McDonald’s of poetry and not it’s evolution or forward motion. Money changes everything as does popularity.
So Again. Social Media. Ugh.
To make this long story short I’m going to skip my stories of running more poetry open mics, how Albany’s poetry scene has dwindled over the last few years or for that matter the famous fad of Instagram Poets becoming it’s own 15 minutes of famous fame. We now live after all these years in some of the worst times possible of and for poetry and I’ll tell you why. Social Media regurgitates the ideas of past music, past eras ( beat generation, punk, GenX) and has left younger writers & poets scraps of original movements with only Disney and horrible pop music corporate made influences growing up. It’s left them with media controlled brainwashing and without a true spirit of their own let alone for their generation or other generations following. So? They borrow ours. And it’s unfortunate. And not because they don’t believe in these past movements but because some of them feel that they actually created these movements themselves. Some remember, but not all. For instance . There’s a millennial age poetry group on Instagram making up all sorts of completely false information. They like to say they are “hardcore”, original but they write just like the last two past generations and use Instagram and other social media in ways of promotion that to be honest in many ways is just bad advertising. Bad memes, usually degrading women in a pornographic ways as well as even degrading many of the older poets, dead poets who they’ve most likely never read and mocking them but mostly attacking & citing GenX and the baby boomer generations that created everything they are doing that came before them. Not all millennials or millennial age poetry groups or poets do this. But the group that I’m speaking about hasn’t really done anything good for poetry any poetry scene at all. Especially in a time when poetry and protest, benefits and rebellion against those fascist groups and politicians I mentioned in the beginning of this post are needed most . When you see younger poets constantly trying to degrade or insult older poets, dead poets and especially women in their memes & posts this tells you alot about them. That their accomplishments are mediocre and that they only desire two things. Attention and fame. No matter what event they are running or no matter how many friends or followers they have collected in their never ending reach for it. And that? That isn’t poetry either. It’s fast disposable food and disposable trash in a time when we need writers and poets to stand up against monsters and concentrate on writing new, original & epic shit.
Like I said. Not all younger poets or groups on Instagram are like this or use these kinds of shitty bad humor tactics to flaut attention but this one group is particularly pathetic and needy and have to resort to fake, pathetic and useless shit that really doesn’t matter. Never will. What matters is what you actually write and what in your own fire and times stand up against. That’s it. That’s all. And you could be so much more if you actually cared or tried.
Dead Man’s Press Ink Albany NY
After running Poetry Open Mics and writing, getting my work out there in journals and zines for the last thirty some years I’m about to bring back the Open Mic I started over a year ago ” Invocation” to the newly completed downstairs bar/cafe restaurant called ” Eleven” in Lark Hall here in downtown Albany. Sponsored by Dead Man’s Press Ink. Over the last three years DMPI has been publishing a lot of amazing poets both old and new no matter what generation or age. Surprisingly, in an era of fear and political upheaval we are thriving and putting some of our times best poets and poetry out there now with the help of our new co-editor, Sam Maurice who is a truly gifted writer himself. But after all these said 30 years I still read new poets work with an open mind and an open soul. But honestly what I sometimes see or read on Instagram by such groups as I previously mentioned makes me a little sick. The sadness of an older poet who only sees a shit show of complete waste and of no cause, love of poetry or even a direction. No meaning or value. A waste of what could be. I see a lot of younger poets fighting and writing against a nightmare of an America and failing world that they will inherit. I hear their original and new voices when I read them. So I support them all. No matter what generation or age. So to all those ridiculous “follower collectors“, vanity presses and shallow fame seekers fucking up the air we breathe as we search for the talent or the future of poetry?
I say ” Fuck You”.
Dead Man’s Press Ink was founded in 1998 by two GenX poets in Albany NY.
The Real Punks, Goths and Hardcore.
And in a time when our words & poetry is needed most we are going to fight for what matters the most.
Poetry.
So Let The War Begin. We’ve Already Won.
#screwvanitypresses
#fuckapathy #poetrymatters
http://www.deadmanspressink.com
https://instagram.com/deadmanspressink?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
~ R.M. Engelhardt * Editor
#supportsmallpresspoetry
R.M. ENGELHARDT 
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