Debunkable Poetry Contests

The book blog called So Many Books has posted a link to Cnet’s article about the demise of a website called Foetry.

Alan Cordle, a research librarian who lives in Portland, Ore., has managed the Web site, www.foetry.com, anonymously since its inception a little more a year ago.

He called his site the “American poetry watchdog” and aimed to expose the national poetry contests that he said “are often large-scale fraud operations” in which judges select their friends and students as winners.

But Cordle’s identity, which he says he protected to avoid recriminations against those who joined in his fight, was revealed earlier this month. The unmasking was performed by an anti-Foetry Web site that is also run anonymously and which used some of Cordle’s own aggressive tactics–he once used a state open-records law to unlock details about participants in a contest sponsored by a state university press–to remove his cloak of mystery.

Now that the author of the website is no longer annonymous, I really don’t see cause to shut down such a wonderful community service. Can’t the “American poetry watchdog” have a real name and a real face? Who is going to step up to the plate here and keep this thing going?

As it turns out, both CNN and the New York Times have it all wrong about Foetry! It isn’t going anywhere at all, according to the website tiself:

Foetry! We missed you. Why did you come back? It’s the biased and poorly researched article in the New York Times declaring a surrender. Reminds me of the Wicked Witch of the West flying through the sky, “Surrender Foetry.” You can thank Foets, Janet Holmes and Jorie Graham, who have threatened me with legal action and said that I lied. Well, Foets, the site’s back up and I stand behind the information here. — Alan Cordle

Now, I have a link to give to those of my people who are always and forever suggesting that I try to strike it rich with my writing, by entering these debunkable contests. While I’m at it, to those well-meaning friends of mine, I know you love me, but shut up.