Will the Real Amari Hamadene Please Stand Up!
Published February 9th, 2006 | 
After many months of silence, plagiarist and charlatan, Amari Hamadene has sent me an email blasting my entry, “Somebody Hand Me a Shotgun, They’s a Fox in My Henhouse.” You can read Hamadene’s largely incoherent email message and my reply to it in The Last Word. However, I’d like to take issue with one thing Hamadene said, right here. Hamadene writes, “The poetry will never be online and you know it.”
Well, I beg to differ with Hamadene. While certainly it was true that, in the early days of the Internet, literary offerings were not top shelf — amateur hour at best — over the last several years, the literary scene has gone through many improvements. In other words, the poetry is definitely online!
Check out some recent offerings. How about Poems Niederngasse’s erotic issue. Maybe Stickman Review Or InPosse Review. The point is, there are hundreds of places publishing poetry online — quality poems.
As for Hamadene, we still don’t know who he is. Is he even Algerian? Maybe he’s Canadian. Maybe he’s a computer virus. Who the fuck knows? If the Hamadene incident teaches us one thing, it’s that, while the Internet can be a rich place for creativity and free thought, it is also a place where con artists lurk.
2 Responses to Will the Real Amari Hamadene Please Stand Up!
From Amari Hamadene in Reply to your Diary of a Bad Editor
Dear editor:
The USA don’t miss shotguns at this moment as I know and no more of hens but perhaps you prefer and is better for you to go hunt it elsewhere. In what it concerns me sir as your last book title The Moon Makes No Difference to Me, The poetry and the plagiarism also makes no difference for me. I don’t have alas never visited your country a big and beautiful country I am sure where I am not welcome I know that and never known than some American who I meet here in Algeria but life has learned me that as here and everywhere, there are always the good and the bad people. judge as you like, am I or I am not a plagiarist? ? ? you are free to decide what you want, this is the democracy… no? The poetry will never be online and you know it. Anyway there are no place anymore and anywhere to the poetry in this century. But I will always remeber your wonderful words as any word count in this life, and I will remember this beautiful magical sentence all my life “There was a time when we would have formed posse and escorted this guy out of town at the point of a shotgun! Ah, but how times have changed.” And yes how times have changed, when it’s possible to see just hunters making literature and Nobel prizewinners. I am now sure that the American literature is only in its academies and not elsewhere where also the plagiarism is so popular and a fashion. But are the hate and rascism also fashionable these days? Fortunately, I had the luck to know some American who merits all the respect of the great persons.
Dear Mr. Hamadene, or whoever the hell you are:
I am astonished by your continued insistance that you have been wronged. When proof of your crimes first came to light in March 2005, your immediate response was the tried and true, “It wasn’t me” defense. Then, when that didn’t stick, you began accusing any and all critics of your actions of racism — just like you’ve done in this email! Funny thing is, I’ve never met you or seen your picture. Even if I were a race-hater, what possible basis would I have to hate you? If I have judged you, I have done so solely based on your actions and your complete inability to accept responsibility for those actions. Your race has nothing to do with it. You say that you would not be welcomed in America, yet were welcomed, were you not, when you submitted poetry to many American publishers who gladly accepted material they believed original and your own. They accepted that work in good faith and bestowed their faith in you, only to have that faith betrayed in the end. If you find that you are now unwelcome — well . . . you’ve brought this fate upon yourself. For my part, I do not hate you — I pity you. As to who you really are and why you did what you did, I no longer care. You are a thief and a liar.
Goodbye, Mr. Hamadene and good riddance.