[Pedro Poitevin]

I happen to sympathize with everyone. I agree that the sandbox is big, and am grateful for it. I wouldn't have a published book (of palindromes) if not for it. On the other hand, I think Oulipo's successors aren't quite as inventive as they think they are, and I don't see the point in making (more than once) poetry not meant to be read. More disturbingly, I think that the fact that someone like Goldsmith can publish his shopping lists as poetry and I can't publish the list of all the words I misspelled last week (kudos, Janice!) says something sociologically disturbing about the relationship between power and aesthetics.

Here's a light (I don't take these things very seriously, really) take.

Conceptual Sonnet

A book-length poem that spins the New York Times,
a list of all the words I spoke one week,
the top ten hits when googling "Google's crimes"
arranged to make the riddle more oblique.

A palindrome not meant to be read twice
nor even once, indeed, a shopping list
selected with a rolling of the dice,
a pamphlet naming poets that I've pissed.

An ars combinatoria in reverse,
Oulipo's games redone without the wit,
a manifesto--verse is junk is verse--
that sees itself as loopy but legit.

My algorithms crank nine poems per hour,
no clearer demonstration of my power.