POETICKS

To keep posting a daily entry, here’s a post I wrote a month-and-a-half ago in response to David Graham, who near-perfectly personifies the Wilshberian:

Let’s run a bit with the sports analogy. Wilshberia as Bob tends to define it would not just include the major & minor leagues of pro baseball, but every single college, high school, middle school, and community league. Plus sandlot games, softball at company picnics & family reunions.  Fathers playing catch with kids in the back yard, too, of course.  Oh, and naturally all games overseas, not to mention computer baseball games & fantasy leagues.

What wouldn’t the label encompass?

Well, such things as two guys in Havre, Montana who like to kick a deer skull back & forth and call it “baseball.”  Sure, there’s no bat, ball, gloves, diamond, fans, pitcher, or catcher– but they do call it baseball, and wonder why the mainstream media consistently fails to mention their game.

Our minds seem to be running in parallel, David.  I was just thinking that the reason no academics have or can come up with a (better) term for Wilshberia (which they consider derogatory although I consider it descriptive) is that they think it the whole of poetry, so not needing a name.  In other words, for them the range of poetry from Wilbur’s to Ashbery’s is the complete range of poetry.  And people like me, who compose things we think are poems but which are considerably different from anything Wilshberian poets are composing should not mind being considered no more poets than “two guys in Havre, Montana who like to kick a deer skull back & forth” are baseball players.