I’ve long written about the darkly comic degradation of academia and the arts. My assertions were once controversial. No more. Now they’re common knowledge. In June of 2019 I wrote about academics Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay who submitted 20 purposely lunatic leftist articles to academic journals, most of which were accepted for publication and praised, until they revealed their hoaxing to expose how leftist and unacademic those journals had become.

One article was about canine rape culture in dog parks, which reflects human rape culture. For another, they just rewrote a chapter of Hitler’s Mein Kampf in contemporary, feminist jargon. Another lauded paper was titled “The Conceptual Penis.”  All, like Alan Sokal’s ground-breaking hoax—Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Gravity—made no sense  but were loaded with pseudo-scientific leftist academic jargon. That left “scientific, academic” journal editors an uncomfortable choice: admit they weren’t smart enough to understand what those submissions said, or go with the nonsensical leftist flow, even if it made a mockery of academics and science.

Now a straight, white poet who pretended to be a “gender-fluid” Nigerian named Adele Nwankwo—yes, there’s an obvious pun there—submitted poems that were absolute nonsense to literary journals around the world.  Some 30 of them published about 50 of his purposely nonsensical poems, which says a great deal about the state of art, particularly poetry, these days.

Graphic: X Post

“My thinking was that, if the industry — from small magazines to full-on publishing imprints — could get away with showing a clear preference toward certain groups and, in that same vein, a clear bias against other groups,” Barry, who hails from Vancouver, said.

“Then there was nothing to say that such power couldn’t be abused in the future, whether it be to adhere to shifting trends or politics, or to discriminate against additional demographics,” the poet continued.

“Such treatment would leave writers in a state of peril and anxiety, forever having to look over their shoulders while navigating their careers,” he added.

Amazingly, “Shakespeare’s Cumslut” is apparently still in publication, albeit with this editor’s note:

Editor’s Note: In light of recent news, JAKE has updated the author’s name and biography to reflect the values of his editorial process and the places where it disconnects from the author’s. He believes removing it from the record would be problematic in archiving the mag, and sees artistic value beyond the cruel joke intended by Mr. Barry. It’s a piece of satire, and JAKE took it as such. Even though the target was different than the author intended, JAKE knows the Author is dead anyways, and is free to interpret the comedy how he wants. Below is the poem as it originally appeared (at some point the code broke, but this is most reflective of the original manuscript). JAKE had also nominated the poem for Best of the Net, but has elected to remove it from the collection, as he doesn’t wish to encourage others like Barry to talk down on their own process in the way he has.

Suuuuure “Jake” knew it was satire.

“They were trash,” Barry told Daily Mail of his work, adding, “The worst part: every single poem got published.”

Chris Talbot, who uses “they/them” pronouns and is the editor of B’K Magazine — which published one of Nwankwo’s poems last year — was reportedly “infuriated” upon learning of Barry’s true identity.

“There’s a white cis man, Jasper Ceylon, pretending to be a host of marginalized individuals in order to get published as them,” B’K Magazine wrote on Instagram.

“He thinks it makes him clever and is trying to prove that publications will print anything as long as it comes from a marginalized person,” the magazine further lamented.

It appears Barry isn’t “trying to prove” anything. The editors that accepted, praised and published his “trash” did it for him.  Like Boghossian, Pluckrose and Lindsay, Barry has done a real public service. He’s exposed what passes for art these days is on a par with the paintings of Hunter Biden. True talent—artistic merit—doesn’t matter. Sexual/political identity does, even if a fourth grader would know it’s incomprehensible nonsense.  I’ll let Barry, who does write serious poetry—how else could he know how to write the kind of trash for which leftists would fall?--have the final word:

“In the end, I hope people will see from this that there’s room for all types of writing and narratives in today’s literary world, if only we’d stop being so adversarial and moralistic about things,” Barry said.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.