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>But as far as I can make out from the responses, they seem to include your >earlier idea of appointing an "editor" or "ringmaster" by rotation or >something, and posting poems to the list, and then discussing them. If >this is (roughly) right, I've no hesitation in applauding, agreeing, >appointing you first ringmaster and wishing you every success. John should step in here, but this seems some distance from his suggestion. It is lacking in crucial elements that render his proposal a serious one with potential to demonstrate something that can be AN articulation of policy. John is making a provocative intervention in editorial waters. What he suggests is a gradual (contextualised and historised) process of anthology that could form a measurable 'public' face of 'the list itself' - be a collective production and collective authorship / ownership. Dead cool geeky hip po-mo cyber stuff. - the patriarchy or matriarchy of 'being appointed' and the invitation to hierarchically implemented exercise of 'power' is circumvented by suggestion of arbitrary selection from the members of the list. I'm presuming that the mechanism for such arbitrary selection would be as post-structuralist as possible (this is deliberate irony, for those who can't read tone on lists - heck, in respect of tone what's the difference between reading the words here and in a book ? ? anyone?). There is a simple procedure that John could suggest for achieving sufficiency of arbitrariness. But will anybody be prepared to do the work, the reading, the necessary ? Presumably not everyday here would accept if selected ? - the infrastructure that John suggests is 'intended' to produce texts that are then 'publications of the list', taken on board as such and open for debate as such and challengable as such and to be 'corrected' as 'policy' by dialectics of selection through negotiation / discussion, discursion as the 'publications of the list' accrete into a substantiable 'body of works'. I see John's idea as realpolitik in this given medium now. A hopefully radicalising approach. How about a pilot run - for say five occurences? count me in love and love cris %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%