Zukofsky does not appeal to equal numbers of male and female readers. Horrors! Western civilization is in peril, clearly. No matter that, of the two most prominent poetry critics, Perloff and Vendler, one does in fact work on Zuke.

There is no reason, other than aesthetic, to read Zukofsky. There was exactly one "gendered" reading of him at the recent conference at Columbia. This was one too many for a few people, apparently.

If one looks at the most widely publicized and read poetry crtiicism in this country, it is pretty easy to see that aesthetic concerns are at the forefront. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the most widely read critics are Harold Bloom, Helen Vendler, Marjorie Perloff, Charles Bernstein, and Stephen Burt. Harold sells a lot of copies of his anthologies and critical compendia. Vendler is a Harvard Professor and has published many books on mainstream, canonical authors (Heaney, Graham, etc..). Perloff has enormous influence on the non-mainstream stream. Bernstein's books come out through major university presses and are often assigned in college courses. Burt writes for publications that are circulated widely. Add to these names James Fenton, who writes for the NYRB. Now it would be hard to say that any of these critics doesn't care about aesthetics. They promote different agenda, but all are pretty much committed to the idea that poetry is an art form. So where is the threat that Curtis Faville (whoever he is!) sees? I'm not saying I like all these critics equally, or that there aren't problems with poetry criticism, but the problem is not that poetry is only read for its political content or for the "victim" status of the author.