all of you politically correct types, right, or left, won't like this, especially the video, but it speaks much truth which is a dangerous item here in the empire;

Eileen Neff was my professor at the Philadelphia College of Art, and we became friends and even did coke together, though just once. In January, Eileen emailed to ask if I would consider writing a piece about Walt Whitman for the American Poetry Review, where she is a board member. Its late editor, Stephen Berg, was a mutual friend, and we had many drinking bouts together, fondly remembered, and by Steve too, I’m sure, whether he’s lounging in a heavenly or hellish sphere.

I answered Eileen, “I’ve moved back to Vietnam, spent much of last year here. I’m now working as a foreman in my brother in law’s plastic recycling plant, in a small, dusty village no one in their right mind would visit […] With my new life and mindset, I’m not sure I can say much about Whitman for APR.”

Earlier this month, the Brooklyn Public Library invited me to be on a panel, discussing Walt Whitman, for the 200th anniversary of his birth was coming up. The honorarium would be $500, not great, but acceptable if I was still in Philadelphia, a short train ride away. Plus, I would not have wasted a chance to talk about Whitman in Brooklyn.

I responded, “Many thanks for your interest, but I’m now living in Ea Kly, Vietnam, and working in a plastic recycling plant. Literally a world away, the American poetry scene is completely alien to me, and I no longer have any interest in it,” and that’s the truth, for I have stopped reading American poems nearly a decade ago, at exactly the same time I decided to write essays on society and politics...........http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=185713