Kent ...
Um ...
I'm going to answer this only in parts, because we're getting close to the
edge. And we differ in our perceptions of what was going on.
And you were there before me, and I only came in at the end, so we have
different perspectives.
So this is post is going to be a bit cautious and oblique, and won't make
much sense to to anyone who doesn't already know the background.
(I do so hope.)
But, there ...
Anyway, all excuses made, I'm going to be self-indulgent, and the hell with
making public sense.
> I think it's possible that you
> may have read eccentric kinds of Yank humor for "viciousness."
Yeah -- I was out of my depth -- tone, reference, the whole business -- so I
could have been misreading.
> Gabe
> and I, for example, were often screaming at each other while holding
> together a knife cutting through a many-layered irony cake.
Oh sure, but the edge wasn't you and Gabe.
> But the list was not wholly male in any way. Mairead Byrne posted
> frequently, as did Candice Ward, and Sharon Schultz, others, too.
Um.... Did Candice ever post? She joined the list shortly after me, and we
both arrived because you kept cross-posting to poetryetc. But I don't
remember Candice actually +posting+ to subsub.
> I
> can't remember if he said this on his Blog or on Poetics) for the demise
> of Subsub, actually, was the activity of a former member of this list (I
> honestly can't remember his name-- but I do remember he proudly
> admitted there at Subsub to being a member of the John Birch Society),
Ah, now ... Do I simply zip my mouth, or finally get booted off poetryetc by
bringing up The Man Who Must Not Be Named?
Ah, the hell, who cares.
First of all, quote me chapter-and-verse where Richard +ever+ said he was a
Bircher. Sure, he's ultra-right, but that's different.
And (at least one of) the nastier aspects of subsubpoetcs at the end was the
was the way Richard was scapegoated over his politics. The one thing
everyone seemed to agree on.
> whose more than ubiquitous posts clarioned a wacky kind of right-wing
> line, usually in absence of any reference to poetry.
Kent, are you being disingenuous? I have, blutacked to the wall in front of
me, Richard's "Big Time Shot", that came out of a post that he made to
subsub, that will be included in his forthcoming book (sometime, never) from
Phantom Rooster.
The ONLY thing that Candice and I took away from the wreck of subsubpoetics
was our personal friendship(s) with Richard Dillon.
Which, might I remind you, we only went to because of you.
> But it's certainly true
> that things became overheated in various ways in the end.
That's sort of like saying Hiroshima was a firecracker that went wrong.
> And I don;'t
> think any one person can really be blames for a complex and
> overdetermined thing.
Agreed.
> Maybe in some way it was kind of like a group suicide. This can happen
> in poetry, sometimes. The phenomenon, variously inflected, is part of the
> history of poetic schools. Maybe subsub will be seen, eventually (Jordan
> would love this) as a kind of "School."
No. It was an extreme case of how you can map Internet lists onto primate
territoriality.
subsubpoetics, by the end, was WELL below even noyau -- the only metaphor
(for me) would be a pack of starving rats devouring their living young.
That, and the bowl of pirhana fish.
<sigh>
Robin
[Randolph -- sorry. I know I said I wouldn't name names, but it's difficult
to discuss The Last Days of subsub without doing so, I now realise.
On the other hand, anyone who doesn't know all this already is probably
totally baffled, so the objection would be less Personalised Abuse than
Self-Indulgent Narcissism.
Sorry again.
R2.]
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