Ron Silliman asks, today, why J. Moxley is appreciated despite apparent lack of postmodern irony, by the same crowd who touts Stroffolino (as I do). Maybe the obvious answer is that she is squarely within that post-Ashbery, Susan Schultz/Stroffolino tradition. What Ron reads "straight" I read as a sort of finely-tuned dead-pan. Take the line "All this in route to a two-car garage," coming after a series of deliberately overwrought lines about death and angst. Pure Ashbery. When someone like this over-writes, it is part of an elaborate put-on. Or maybe I'm missing something here? Would I reject this "fine writing" if I thought it meant seriously? I don't mean it's a total parody, but that it is "beautiful" writing in the same way late Ashbery is beautiful.

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Why I dropped out of the poetics list: relentless clutter, personal attacks among people I don't know or care about, defenses of the Taliban by someone from New Zealand. I tried to rejoin the list just to publicize my blog, but was unsuccessful. I joined originally to hear opinions from poets I respected. The blog is a far superior form. And I don't need to read it to discover Bush is an idiot. The problem, precisely, is that he is extremely savvy and the Left underestimates his political adeptness. Kind of like Reagan!