Just noticed that the good folks at Silk Road are using my poem to represent Issue One online. I thank them for the honor!
Contributed to a discussion over at Jeanine's place about the use of labels to classify poets. The gist of it was discomfort (ranging as high as offense) with Ron Silliman's use of the phrase "School of Quietude" to lump a lot of "us" together as artists failing to push the boundaries of poetry. You can read the discussion in its original form, but it reminded me of a time I described myself to a more experimental artist as a "mainstream poet", my point being that I tended to write accessibly and narratively. She barked at me: "What the hell is a mainstream poet? If it's poetry, it's not mainstream." That, to me, should be the point: even if we don't like a poem or poetics, if we recognize the craft, we should speak of it with some amount of respect. Using descriptors within the discussion of differences in style for our own purposes should be OK with us.
UOP (Unintended Offense to Poets) #1: Please don't stop at the end of the first line and ask me what it means. I don't stop in the foyer of your home and ask you to explain the coat hooks, do I?
Middle of a tiring week; more to come. But I'm not giving up this posting momentum!
1 comment:
Yay! I really liked that poem. Glad the new Silk Road editors finally got a real web site put together, like a real journal and everything!
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