Since the Houlihan controversy won't go away, I might as well address her comments head on. Henry, quite correctly, has pointed out our collective failure to take her arguments seriously. I will now do so.

This is her approach to the poem I cited a few days ago:

[Is an axle's excavation
an axiom's inversion
that muzzles
the ventriloquist breath

of a nipple. The revolving door
of its throat.]

"It seems that not only are these words not best (or worst), they are not even among a specifically selected few [????]. All word choices seem equally good (or bad) for this poem because the poem does not want to add up to anything, does not want to become anything, it only wants to resist becoming, to remain a baby in the continuum of its utterance. Therefore:



Is an axiom's evacuation
an axle's inversion
that snubs
the ventriloquist bread

of a testicle. The spinning jenny
of its lashes.

Why not? How does this version differ from the original? Only in its words. And since the words don't count, since they don't have to be best, better, bad or in any way related to any potential meaning, my poem is as 'good' as the original. In fact, I would argue my poem is the original. It is exactly the same poem, albeit with different words?but neither set of words makes any difference to the meaning."

How solid is this critique? A ventriloquist produces sounds in his or her throat, so "lashes" does not mean the same thing. Since the ventriloquist seems not to be talking, her breath might be imagined to be "muzzled." I fail to see why snubbing bread is equivalent to muzzling breath! I am somewhat confused by the conclusion: "my poem is the original. It is exactly the same poem, albeit with different words..." How can the same poem have different words? Since when does a testicle mean the same thing as a nipple?

If the point is that the poet chose her words at random, this is clearly not the case. Joan H. assumes that the point is to create a random, meaningless utterance, but the poem is ABOUT meaning and the production of an axiomatic utterance. (Where the critic reads it simply as the unwillingness or failure to produce such an utterance). I'm not saying everyone has to like this poem (although I do). A more intelligent critique, though, would entail having read and understood the poem.