But to add, Janice, my mentioning Menashe's supercilious, condescending attitude is not necessarily of particular moment when one is looking at a particular poem. But as far as I'm concerned, Menashe the poet is someone whose main impact on me and several of my closest collaborators has been as an "establishment" figure who was, as compared to the vast majority of well-established poets I've met, quite committed to letting you know where he felt you stood in relationship to him. And while this may have no bearing on what one sees on the page in Sweden, I still have the emails from the time of that reading, and we lot were pretty upset. We considered going public at the time, but cooler heads prevailed. Perhaps it was that Ray Pospisil, who suffered a neglect far greater, was the main guy in the line of fire, that made me not hold my tongue this time.
The thing is, you never know with whom you're dealing, not really, and the guy treated friends of mine (one of them now dead) like garbage. And Menashe, if his Selected is anything to go by, has yet to write a poem that is a touch on Pospisil's "Insomnia" or "The Bell," and even were this not the case, it still rankles.
Quincy
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