[Stephen Collington]

¡Abajo el vanguardismo! ¡Viva el shamguardismo!

[Roger Slater]

Shopping lists? Woody Allen already did laundry lists.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Good one, Roger. And wasn't it Rossini who said: Give me your laundry list and I'll write an opera. Still nothing new under the sun.

[Rick Mullin]

"Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry"--Richard Wilbur

[Rose Kelleher]

Nemo and Bill have a point that it's a big sandbox. I wonder, though, if Kenneth Goldsmith shares that view, and is equally magnanimous when he encounters the work of others outside his corner of the box. I don't know the man, but I bet he would feel perfectly free to dismiss, say, Nemo and Bill as backward-looking formalist hacks - whether in reviews, or in other ways having to do with publication, prizes and grants. Same with whatsisname who got all huffy here a while back and called everyone a bunch of nobodies because they had never appeared in the New Yorker. He didn't feel any particular need to open his mind to alternative points of view; in his mind, there was his way of doing it, and the wrong way.

I don't remember seeing a bunch of formalists in the issue of BAP that was edited by Lyn Hejinian, nor would it be reasonable to expect that. Artists are partisan. Eratosphere's membership is hardly unique in this regard. Yet when we behave the way most artists do, we are seen as narrow-minded bigots, whereas Lyn Hejinian is just doing her job. How nice it must be to belong to the group that's considered broad-minded by default, whether they really are or not.

I tend to like the "big sandbox" idea, personally, because I'm a coward, and I'd rather hear "not my cup of tea" than something that might really hurt my feelings. But not everyone takes the big sandbox view; those who most benefit from it, perhaps least of all.

And is the sandbox really all that big? Wasn't this thread originally about arts funding or lack thereof?

I'm also suspicious of this idea that someone can prove by logical argument, or by showing his credentials, that my aesthetic is wrong. That seems a bloodless view of art. Or maybe a Catholic view, as opposed to the Protestant "every man is his own priest." I am suspicious of these highly trained poetry priests - mostly male, of course - who want to stand between me and poetry, administering sacraments and granting indulgences.

[Allen Tice]

Originally Posted by w.f. Lantry

nemo's right on this one, i'm afraid.

Wrong.

Originally Posted by janice d. Soderling

...at eratosphere there are no normals.

Wrong.

[Rick Mullin]

Quincy: "I suspect there's a certain sly hyperbole in many of the formulations used, a "Let's see if the normals get the joke. Hehehe."

It's true that everyone's gone to the circus. Not so much Richard Wilbur, but certainly Goldsmith. We can't be afraid of the clowns, but we cant stay at the circus all our lives either. I just don't see sides in this thing.

But, Jesus Christ!:

I went to the right school, he knew my wife's family, I have many of his poems by heart, he praised my first volume, Robert (he let us call him that)....

Gimme the Flying Gambini Brothers!

RM

[Ed Shacklee]

Rose said much of what I would think, if I were so thoughtful. Even when they make me gag or recoil, I don't find it difficult to forgive a good poet for bad prose or interviews, or even posing, largely because I'll forget all that -- it's the good poems I'll remember; the gold, not the dross. Has Goldsmith written good poems? If not, why is he being interviewed by Poetry?

Ed

[John Whitworth]

I'm sure Rossini could make a fine opera out of a laundry list. But he would have to make it. This guy doesn't make anything. As I said, he needs to be killed or at least kicked. But I expect he'd like that - the kicking I mean.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Ed, et al. More background.

http://poetrycenter.arizona.edu/enew...oet_read.shtml

and

http://www.sibila.com.br/index.php/s...eptual-poetics