Kent,
You're right, "vaporous" is the wrong word. Of course I respect your
position in those polemics. Maybe "foggy" is better though. The
politicization of the commentary on style, on all sides of that debate,
creates a fog. There are real issues to be considered in the enormous fog
of contemporary poetics: what standards does the critic apply in
evaluating poetry? But I guess in my view whenever "political importance"
or "political efficacy" is the benchmark, you open the door to a ton of
polemics which have little to do with the actual experience of poetry.
Henry
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