Sorry to be a bit late in responding here, but I only read the list through
the archives nowadays, & I've had a lot of trouble in the past couple of
days accessing them: had to sit here for an hour hitting the "refresh"
button to read everything.
Not sure what there is to add to what's been said. What's striking is I
suppose how the note was forwarded out of the blue: it's a month old, has
nothing to do with current exchanges, & Steve Duffy has posted nothing for a
month & included no explanation. (In fact it would appear from the
subsubpoetics note Malcolm Phillips forwarded that it was related to another
list entirely.) Indeed one reason why it's so irritating is precisely the
delay: for instance in the month-long gap since then, Kent Johnson's
certainly has proven himself as malicious as I'd said he was, while on the
other hand Gudding's posts have been entirely (& pleasingly) different from
the material he was posting in connection with Johnson's voluminous postings
(things like "On the Rectums of Peacocks"). -- I could explain a bit why I
have little interest in Gould's verse, but that would be elaborating on a
message that should not have been made public in the first place.
I've got to get going here, so I can't say more at the moment. I think
later today when I get back I'll be signing off this list, perhaps checking
back in a month or two to see if things have changed a bit. Too many of the
people whose contributions to the list I valued have signed off in the past
6 months; & I'm getting tired of dealing with flak from various sides,
especially from those who seem to think it somehow surprising that opinions
I privately express might differ in their expression from my public notes.
Such a disparity might be cause for anger if the opinions were diametrically
opposed, but I haven't to my knowledge indulged in that game: if I've
remained silent about Gould's poetry publicly while criticizing it privately
this seems hardly an unusual case, while meanwhile I've been critical of
Johnson both front- and backchannel but have expressed this criticism in
very different language. One might have thought that my avoiding blunt or
intemperate language in a public forum was the normal exercise of restraint;
too much of it makes a public forum uninhabitable (the dread "flame wars"
one gets on the internet).
Well, enough for now. If people want to get a hold of me in future write
not to this account but to [log in to unmask]
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
|