Monday, April 14, 2003

I wish I liked squabbling for squabbling's sake. Jeez, David. If I'm so boring why am I worthy of attack? Or as you apparently perceive it, counterattack? I'm simply trying to understand, in my own boring language, the roots of your objections to the Watten-ization of poetry. Perhaps I was overly reductive, given that reductiveness seems to be one of the things you're fighting against. Or maybe I'm just a convenient representative of the academy that poets of all stripes like to symbolically tar and feather once and a while, even and especially if this means they're biting the hand that feeds them.

You're so quick to react to my academic language (or is it my academic status? am I really so threatening because I don't pretend not to be a grad student?) that you didn't notice how sympathetic I am to your desire to see poetry in an extra-linguistic way. And I wasn't trying to answer your question as if you were my student; I wasn't trying to answer your question at all. I was trying to answer my question, which your musings had inspired, about what poetry's good for. Why are you so quick to feel attacked? If you, David, or anyone else reading this think it's boring, don't read it for fuck's sake.

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