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Jamie, You say: “I’d like to apologize to the list for the tedium, and increasing exasperation, of my last few posts. It would be convenient to blame Jeff for his frustrating manner of stalling the discussion in what I see as peripheral or irrelevant argument, but obviously I share some responsibility for allowing myself to be de-railed.” Thank you for this. It is appreciated. Regarding, your last email to me, you say: “You seem to have finally accepted that I have no commitment to any “ultimate single meaning” and also to have accepted that my qualification is not a contradiction.” I’m sorry, but I still think you have a commitment to an ultimate meaning. The reason I didn’t continue pursuing this in my last email was that I wanted to move the discussion forward to ask you what criteria you would use to decide that an interpretation of a poems was (to use your word) “persuasive”. I asked you if you would use a textual basis only, seeing as you said earlier you wouldn’t use extra-textual ones (rightly in my view) in relation to Larkin. So can you now confirm that you would use only a text-based approach? You say: “With the example of the tortoise and the wall I’ve tried to give an indication of what an unconvincing reading would look like to me. I’m touched to see you defend the integrity of that reading. And to find that your posture before a poem is prayerful solipsism.” Here is what you said: “If I claim that in Frost’s ‘Mending Wall’ the opening line “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” refers to tortoises, and explain that I happen to know that tortoises are particularly averse to walls, then, in the absence of any evidence I can adduce from the poem, any reader will have a right to say I’m completely off my trolley. You may well support me by saying that it is my right to take anything I want from a poem, and I’m grateful for your support, but I don’t think you should be encouraging me.” I replied: “Why would any reader have a right to say you are off your trolley? What business is it of theirs anyway? For me reading is a private act, almost like prayer. To be concerned with the adverse opinions of other private readers would not make sense. If someone can see a link to frogs in the Frost poem, why not let them have that privilege? Texts are never stable and constantly shifting, therefore, single and authoritative meanings and interpretations are difficult to argue for.” Your response to this hasn’t really addressed my reply. For you to say, as your response to this, that you find my attitude to poems a “prayerful solipsism” misses the point, which was to compare my personal engagement and response to a poem to yours, which you seem to be suggesting is based on public approval, hence your fear that people might think you are “off your trolley” if you interpret a poem “incorrectly”. You say: “Via Terence Hawkes, you’re now calling me a liberal humanist. Perhaps labels such as these make you feel safe, but really as I’ve never argued that either texts or readers are “stable and autonomous” I’m not sure why you should wish to apply this one to me.” I applied it to you in relation to the Hawkes quote, where he says, “that to assume that texts and readers are stable and autonomous is to operate under the “ideology of liberal humanism”. I then said “which is a value-laden ideology (hence my comments regarding your value judgment statements, which reminded me of a liberal humanist position)”. I didn’t call you a liberal humanist in relation to texts being stable and autonomous, which I still think you hold to. If you don’t think that liberal humanism is a value-based theory, then you would disappoint Mathew Arnold and F. R. Leavis. You say: “You, on the other hand, have asserted the absolute autonomy of your responses to poems and their immutable quality. So maybe this is a label you should keep for yourself.” I haven’t asserted that, and have responded to Alison (Croggon) who had a similar misunderstanding, with: “You must have misunderstood me. I’m saying that individual responses to a poem should be accepted as valid responses, and that these responses should not be regarded by others as exegetically inappropriate. I’m also saying that an individual’s response to a poem, can, indeed, change for that individual over time, and new meanings can replace older ones in relation to new information and life experiences. I believe that a poem’s meanings are not set in stone but are mutable.” You say: “Likewise, since you introduced the value laden judgment of elitism to the conversation, you should be answering at the bar of Professor Hawkes. The aridity of his phrasing (“products of the unconscious process of signification”) and the vacuity of that concept should be punishment enough, only I suspect that you’d enjoy it.” In response to this, I can only reproduce the latter section of my previous email to you that you have ignored, and which clears up this accusation of yours (all of the following that is in double quotation marks are your words): ‘In this you say: “debating the problematic nature of poetic language” is not what I called “dumbing-down” and “patronizing” - I called your use of the term “elitist” potentially so”. I’m afraid this is not accurate. What you said was: “It’s arguable that pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not just a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing to those people whom the person who cries ‘elitist’ is meant to be defending.” Here, you say: “pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not just a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing”. In this, you are not responding to my saying that to stop people being allowed to interpret poems freely would be elitist, but to my saying that people should be allowed to interpret poems freely, and your response is that to allow this would be a “dumbing down” and “patronizing”. No doubt you will say this is also logic chopping and misrepresenting your position.’ As can be seen here, the context of my use of the word “elitism” is very different from the framework you have placed around it. You say: “But it makes clear to me that any definition of what might be a more valid approach, even if I was capable of shaping a coherent one, would have to run a gauntlet of misconstructions from you, and would take weeks of work without much chance of being understood.” I think it is you who is misconstruing things, rather than me, as the above extract from my email to you demonstrates. I realise, however, that I am perhaps waiting my time pointing out to you your various inconsistencies and misapprehensions of my position.