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To John Kinsella (from an observer)

Despite the fact that a poetry list should welcome a large sample of
cultural ideologies--with all their inconsistencies,  contradictions and
paradoxes--  at present there seem to be a tendency not to allow people to
identify with matters of their own choice or set their own terms for what
will develop from the chosen direction.

To come out with wounded responses or to claim that because a majority of
members has asked for the expulsion of another (who has found responsible
for transgressing the set rules), this expulsion has to take place, is like
legitimizing the formation of a sort of crime tribunal with trials and
condemnations.

The rules set by this present tribunal seem to be based on a common
consensus , but are,  of course, completely arbitrary (as all rules ).

The present tendency is dangerous and should be discouraged. Poetry should
welcome diversity and be opened to discussion in whatever style.

In some countries, Parliaments are composed of no less than 5,  6
conflicting parties, ( only superficially opposed to each other or hardly
reconcilable). Nevertheless, those Parliaments are legal and active and can
make rules , transcending oppositions and conflicts of interest or
ideologies and different styles of conduct.

The recent thread (EP, personae, associated matters) wished to establish
codes and rules (but primarely it aimed to silence people which were
considered radical or whose performance did not please some participants).
As an observer, I feel one should be able to stand the presence and the
behavior of those who have different ideologies or that come from different
cultures. If a list member is using his own cultural communicative code,
feeling in good faith not to offend others, the others should start from
that very point and analyse what kind of culture that behavior originate
from and what is the meaning of that performance within its original
territory.

I have the feeling and worry that the ongoing protest against pseudo
entities is aiming to establish a hierarchy which has the power to decide
punishments and set rules as universal , permanent and uncontestable, It
seems in fact an attempt to establish a kind of totalitarism with Chief
Executives charged of various Offices for Acceptance or Expulsion.

As I read it, Acceptance is granted to a new Member only  if he or she (once
entered the established code of communication)  starts acting in a
respectful and almost servile way towards the few existing leading
personalities.

As I have argued , the recent Poetryetc World War II bears a complicated and
ambivalent relation to modernist Politics.  The dominant personalities  who
make claims baout this and that wish to impose as dominant themes their own
cultural ideologies (Australian and British mainly: no German, Spanish,
African around as yet)   and act , in turn  , as an Army aiming to plan
aggression towards any intruders to re-establish the previous "order".

In these periods of War, poetry matters seem to be hardly discussed and  one
breaths a general atmosphere of suspicion, which embitters  a growing
skepticism against the "other". Philosophical or theoretical discussions no
longer to take place , and a sustaining and  reliable relation between
subject and object, mind and matter finally fails to exist.

 In these periods, one finds in the list no moment of literary insight and
the only  constituted acts of genuine signification are those against
Imagination.

Yours

Antonio Gonzales



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