I like that quote Mark; well chosen.
Re. cudgels and bats, I don't know anything about the pomo academy but there seem to be plenty of self-appointed pomo poets/academics out there who are more than ready to pronounce on the unworthiness of various poems/poets and 'poetics'. Far from insisting that all poems are cudgels, they are highly particular about which poems fit that category.
Ron Silliman is an example. His VERY popular site can be interesting (I''ve sent off for a couple of books he's recommended), and he seems extremely well-informed on 20th/21st Century American poetry. But his blind spots and narrow-mindedness can be astonishing. Yeats is dismissed as of 'no use', Auden's imagery is 'bland' (!!!!) and, as I understand it, any poet guilty of unbridled lyricism (probably ALL of 'mainstream') is lumped into his ridiculous 'School of Quietitude':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Silliman
[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited September 20, 2006).]