[Joe Crocker]

I suspect we are all too busy now Making America Great Again, to bother with recondite poetical musing, so I’m not expecting much help with my Paterson problem.

I also belatedly realise that I have mis-posted my thread under “announcements” rather than than “talk”. However, Cameron has made an announcement so perhaps it can stay here.

Re Cameron’s announcement that Literary Matters is to continue and that he and Matthew Buckley Smith will be editing the poetry section – congratulations! I sometimes dip into the Sleerickets podcast and look forward to seeing what you will post there.

Re Don Paterson. I’m not sure where you draw the line, Cameron, that distinguishes “in one’s prime” and “past it”, but I guess you mean that you hope to encourage new voices.

Paterson’s “Die” does read like an excerpt from a Culture and Media Studies essay on the semiotics of set dressing. Can anyone explain why it is published as a poem? Perhaps, being numbered as the 90th in a series of riddles, we would need to be familiar with the preceding 89 pieces). All I can say is that I (and many many others) really rate him as a poet, assume that it is worth putting some effort into fathoming his meaning and that I would appreciate some hand-holding guidance here.