Round 65

Yusef: "On Being Asked to Discuss Poetic Theory" by David Wagoner

Bob: "In Way of Introduction" by Gustaf Sobin

Two "metapoems," apparently. I have a verisimilitude issue with Wagoner: who would ask this particular poet to discuss poetic theory? He responds to the dubious request with a parable about snow falling on the mountain, concluding that the same snow falls even when he isn't there to watch it. A poetics based on the realization that the world exists without human consciousnesss. I get it, but he takes too many words to say it. Sobin, on the other hand, pares down his language:

poems are about. yours, though,
yours, it would seem, are
a-
bout the process of their own
depletion: about, one might assume, the sheer

aboutness of being...

I get it. I've read Char, and Heidegger, and Blanchot, and other poems by Sobin. To me, this kind of writing has a dejà vu air about it. Still, for a less jaded reader it could be effective. I give the round to Bob.

After 65

18-36-10