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"Some similar sense of fuss-of buzz-attended Joseph Epstein's "Who Killed Modern Poetry?" and Dana Gioia's "Does Poetry Matter?" essays, leading me to wonder whether poetry is not being just a little bit used-- damselized-- by her ardent defenders. She is always the pure maid whose honor has been besmirched, creating just coincidentally an occasion for her knights to show any onlookers their fighting skills and moral zealousness." This was how Sven Birkerts in the Boston Review responded to Harold Bloom's intro to Best American '88-'97; and it's similar to my reaction to Lind's piece (which is so rife with errors & blindspots they almost had to be purposeful). "They" are killing poetry. If only "they'd" write this (my) kind of poetry, the literary world would be a better place & just chockfull of poetry readers. (All readers reading the same stuff, I presume?) Of course language poetry's defacto spokesperson, Charles Berstien, coined "official verse culture" to cudgel contemporary poetry about the head from the other side. Oh poor, poor poetry. Note: Lind wrote a book-length verse epic based on the battle for the the Alamo (Tex-Mex War of 1836). Perhaps he fancies himself a defender making his heroic last stand against the Barbaric yawp, Modernist difficulty, MFA McPoems, and the other forces arrayed against his lonely outpost. Save me from he self-appointed saviors, Finnegan