I will regret that very much Fred - I enjoy reading & trying to understand
your poems, and I think it is good when someone - anyone - questions others'
assumptions, throws spanners in the works, whatever. (The fact that I don't
quite agree with your positions is of minor importance. I think the whole
question of "form & content" is made invidious by the metaphor involved -
since language functions rather differently than that metaphor implies -
and, perhaps, in different ways at different times for different folks).
I think Mark, not for the first time, was being pointlessly rude - and, in a
way, sexist, since if you were actually "afflicted" by the kind of
disadvantage he suggested you might be very offended (as you clearly were
not). But guys in the heat of battle sometimes forget their manners
(sigh)...
Best - avec mes sentiments amicaux
Martin
Wenn die ganze Zivilisation zum Teufel ginge - ich würde es nicht bedauern;
nur um die Musik tät' es mir leid.
Leo Tolstoy
----- Original Message -----
From: Frederick Pollack
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 12:59 AM
Subject: Re: Dead ends
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 6:37 PM
Subject: Re: Dead ends
> You truly are a vile little prick.
>
> Cuckolded? What year is this, 1900?
>
Now, now. No call for that. Historical fact, despite the wording.
Happened in fall '55, time of Ginsberg's reading in San Francisco. And
Rexroth was very upset by it - so much so that he made the East Coast Beats,
whom he had previously welcomed, very uncomfortable. American cultural
history might have been very different otherwise. --- Now I think I'll bow
out of this list for a while. Months or more. Before I'm kicked out for
fomenting controversy and bad feeling (which, by the way, I didn't
deliberately do.) I'll lurk - sometimes I pick up interesting news,
recommendations - but I have backchannel relationships with the three or
four people on it I actually like. These controversies may be interesting
in themselves but for me they're pointless. "Theory" of any sort is of
little interest to me and provides no guidance for my work. Which, for me,
is the main thing. And which is better than the vast majority of either
current mainstream or academic-avant-garde poetry. And which, though I
myself will undoubtedly die unknown, will be discovered - will express and
interpret this era - when you and your insults are footnotes.
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