Hello All,

Nice to be bandied about on Petcetera again! I'm too ill at the moment to
become a regular again, but am glad to pop in via Robin with A Few Choice
Remarks on what's apparently become a tapestry of threads by now.

Everybody's right but Canute, sez one who knows not whether she's waving or
merely drowning:

Kent (hellooo dearie!) is right about my having posted on subsub, although I
don't believe he accused me of having "participated in its wreckage." I'd
stopped posting by that meltdown point and merely slipped away a bit before
Jordan threw in the proverbial towel. (Are people reading his book, btw? I
love the excerpted poems I've seen here and there, so do buy it if you're
better fixed financially than I am right now. Also buy Gabe Gudding's book
if you're really flush.) Okay, back to the Matter At Hand. I was far from
the only woman who participated on subsub, and in fact was drawn to the list
by not only those already named by Kent but also Nada Gordon and Rachel
Loden. Subsub even had the distinction for awhile of being the only list
where Rachel didn't merely lurk. I also liked it for its New-Yorkiness--a
certain rough-edged tongue or tone that never lost its good humor, but never
lost an opportunity for a wicked joke at another's expense. This may be what
Kent was getting at in his description of himself and Gabe as the Fighting
Ironics. Nobody shied away from in-your-face full frontals over whatever was
important to him/her poetically, and nobody needed to be skittish about tone
because it was understood that nothing was to be taken personally (i.e.,
viciously) except between parties who'd known each other in biblical or
equally intimate ways for yonks and knew too that a certain degree of dirty
fighting was expected and enjoyed all round. There was also a wonderfully
relaxed attitude toward sick humor (my personal fave), as in the memorable
Tourette's project, e.g. (the kind of humor Dennis Miller displayed when he
described Saddam's toppling statue as "a narcoleptic trying to hail a
cab"--speaking as a narcoleptic myself, that's a brilliant line!).

On the other hand (if you're so fortunate as to have a spare), the males did
outnumber the females on subsub (at least among the posters--dunno how many
lurkers of either gender there were), so a certain Boys Own Zone atmosphere
did prevail. Maybe the tone's turning nasty and the list's finally going
doolally had something to do with an overendowment of testosterone because
the fights that wrecked things were all between males, as I recall. One
particularly nasty set-to occurred between Richard Dillon and Patrick
Herron, but that at least led to the formation of Imitation Poetics (a good
list for awhile 'til it too went belly up to the bar more than was prudent
or interesting). Jordan's refusal to police subsub versus Patrick's
insistence on doing so with Imitato-Po may be instructive here, somehow. As
a former listowner myself (of this one, in fact), I know how tricky their
leadership can be. But what I most remember about the Last Days of Subsub
was that it seemed to become all about Kent--which I say without blaming
Kent for that necessarily. He'd always been a provocateur, but the list had
rolled with it (rocked with it too, at times), and we'd always found plenty
to discuss besides Kent and his latest hoo-haa. Then, all of a sudden, it
seemed that nobody had anything else to say but whether they were for or
agin' the feller, which got boring as well as unpleasant. Once Jordan
started making "let's call it a day" noises, the end seemed inevitable and
people began to drift away, when they weren't storming off in a huff. And
then it was over, sadly--one of the best lists I've ever joined, for awhile,
but maybe awhile is all you can ask of anything, including life its own
self, as they say here in the southern colonies.

Well, I've run on at length and probably to no good purpose, so will end it
there, or almost. If my post is prolix, the appended poem is at least
petite. (Please pardon the unsolicited appendage, but it's been "awhile"
since I've posted anything here and would simply like to make it a poem as
well.)

Warm regards to all,
Candice


_leave us not_

in haste his moth
still beating a tree

respiring to
deciduous speech

lean air withdrawn
under a clothesline

no express stars
no denim studs

curious
amorous