Entry 615 — Excerpt from an Extended Rant
I’ve been working on a response to an essay by Jake Berry. One paragraph appeals to me, so I thought I’d post it here. Got nuttin’ else. So:
I have trouble treating (the obtuseness of academics toward otherstream poetry) as even-handedly as Jake has. It seems to me to be responsible for a state of affairs in American poetry since around 1950–a kind of unstoppable Egyptification due the unification of mediocrities in the equivalent of a trade guild who control what goes in, what stays out, of the poetry anthologies that become our college English departments’ texts, and dictate and reflect what poetry is taught there, discussed in the most visible publications by the only widely influential critics, and accepted by the huge majority of poetry-accepting publications, including all of the commercially viable ones–and, worst of all–subsidized by the imbeciles running organizations like the Poetry Foundation. Their obvious aim being to protect its members from competition from non-conformingly innovative poets.
Nothing new, needless to say, but always pleasant to repeat.
Diary Entry
Wednesday, 4 January 2012, 5:30 P.M. It’s cold for Florida, around fifty, but ith a fierce wind. My heater stopped working two years ago, so I use space heaters in two rooms with the doors shut to survive the winter. When I have to use the kitchen or bathroom, I get pretty cold. So my friend Linda invited me over for brunch and warmth for part of the day. We also did some grocery shopping. That’s my main excuse for again getting nothing done, except a very poor blog entry for the day. Ah, but I am now going to put my garbage out!
Later note: I did one exhibition-related thing: I wrote a cover letter and mailed it and a news release to the editor of the local glossy that’s part of the local newspaper.
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