I've found the Gioia essay on Bly. There is another one on Howard Moss that bears re-reading. I had remembered it as demolishing Moss, but it actually praises him--but in a way that demolishes him in my eyes. At one point he talks about how a certain Moss poems "discuss serious human issues." Anyone who can talk about poetry in such language! Poetry discusses nothing, certainly not "issues." If it does, it might be expected that they be "human" ones, not vegetable or mineral ones.

I haven't been able to locate the Hass essay on translation yet. I find his "Twentieth Century Pleasures" not devoid of interest but ultimately rather bland, sort of Pinskyesque. I get more out of Gioia's reactionary provocations.

Gioia says that since he encountered Ginsberg's poetry in the classroom of an elite private university, he could not see it as revolutionary in any way. Talk about a failure of imagination! I can imagine, reading Gioia, what it is like to be a person for whom Howard Moss is a compelling poet. I am not that person, but reading Gioia, I can put myself in that place for a moment. Otherwise, I would see Moss simply as a dull mediocrity who exemplifies a certain period style. That is one good reason for reading criticism. Gioia seems unable to imagine himself as a reader in 1959 picking up "Howl" for the first time. He also seems to think people read Ginsberg only for his ideology, not for its radical use of language.