I don't really understand this angst about difference & consensus.  Perhaps
I'm not following the thread carefully enough.  It seems to me that it
requires a huge amount of attentiveness combined with a great deal
of luck, synchronicity, happenstance, & psychological readiness
to be able to respond to poems with understanding & pleasure.  None of
us are ready & prepared in nearly the same way on the same day.  Critical
judgement may convince with an absolute sense of rightness, yet at
the same time it's always exploratory, there's always more to find & say
as long as the poems are read.  If someone wants to cry "rubbish" my
response would be "so what?"  The point is not the formation of consensus.
Poems & critical statements stand there ready to convince or not - while
to paraphrase the old Possum, "the poetry club doesn't matter".
Am I over-simplifying?  Or missing the point?  If the point is that
Peter R. is having difficulty even having a dialogue with other poets
on this list, that IS a serious problem:  it means that he & they
are simply not reading or taking an interest in any of the same work.
I don't happen to believe it's true.  Others are listening.
And it seems a rather scattershot approach to badmouth the rubbish
man for problems one is having with OTHER interlocutors.  The disagreements
Peter & Keston & others raised about the frameworks within which
poetry is made/received seem very much worth pursuing. But I think it would
be better to take it on faith that everyone here follows poetry with
great interest, and leave consensus to the circling vultures.
Cheers to the rubbish man & the rest of us garbage pickers.

peace & silence now from little Rhody...

- Henry G.


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