Overwriting: I need excess in poetry, something that goes "over the top." I find this exuberant excess (in different ways) in Blake, Keats, Yeats, Miguel Hernández, Vallejo, Lezama, Lorca, Ginsberg, Schuyler, O'Hara, Koch, Gimferrer...

It's in Walcott or Merrill, whom I don't like. Or Sandra MacPherson? But I prefer them to school of underwriting, the "poets without qualities."

On the other hand, I like austere styles as well: Beckett, Valente.

I like the poetry of everyday life in Mayer, in many blogs I admire. Yet I cannot stand banality. There is no contradiction here. It can't be a smugly banal poet's life.

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I'd love to have Gary collect his posts on Dan into a small chapbook of some kind. This is superb, unforgettable writing transcending mere bloggery. Getting thrown out of the library while reading Joe Brainard's comics! I love it. Where's the word "poignant" when you need it? I hate that word but that's the exact word for it.

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Speaking of superb writing, I love Julia's scarf poem. I have no problem with her poems being better than my awkward sestina. A beloved writing teacher at the University here passed away recently. In the newspaper story it said that she had taught students never to adapt the perspective of an inanimate object. Obviously, she had never read "Poems by Ships at Sea" or "I want to be a door."