[Norman Ball]

Aha a fellow writer on this thread! It's nice to make your acquaintance Bill, in this, the Baking Season. I think we cross-posted. I've never sampled your brownies. But I'll take you on your word.

Keystone coppery and broken crockery, the urban legend of vanishing threads.

The prohibition against ad hominem attacks is one of those received wisdom-isms that rarely warrants a mention. Now, I realize refraining from such attacks is a rule of this forum and I will abide by the norms of this community. But I must say, it reminds me a little of the anti-abortion candidate who pounds the dais against the practice only to allow for a series of extenuations: 'except in cases of rape, incest and endangerment to the mother's life.'

We nod approvingly at his lawyerly sense of balance (which nudges him back, I must say, from the abyss of sheer conviction) as those tack-ons are horrible things indeed. Who could argue? And yet, the devil is often in the mitigations. The fact is, he remains a partially pregnant baby-killer.

I cling to a romantic notion that, in poetry, it's never as easy as the hominem being escorted out of his or her own poetry to sit in some batter's cage while the statisticians compile his stats. Is poetry personal or is it more like laundry? An upstanding gentlemen can still have smelly socks. That evening, they're washed and bleached so that off he can go to tomorrow's upstanding events. Appraising his well-starched demeanor, no one will suspect the lefts sock is riddled with holes. It's only because I invented him, that I know his bunions protrude.

Literary blow-ups are legendary: Wolfe vs Updike, Hemingway vs Fitzgerald. But are these unfortunate break-downs in civility (what, petulant artists?) or organic and essential responses to the art produced? Maybe the art has to rise to a level of momentousness that coaxes the fellow luminary to strike --for the integrity of the canon if nothing else. Maybe they're all just a bunch of jostling, jealous little shits.

So I ask, is the consternation here a indicator of how little, in most cases, is at stake? It could be a slow news day. MSNBC's headline swaps are occurring at a glacial pace. So we exploit the holiday by taking huge offense.