Sure, Silliman is closing in on 100,000 visitors to his blog. But at least 700 of those visitors have been named Jonathan Mayhew.

Even within my own tradition of writing, I am only truly compelled by maybe about 20% of what I read. Many writers I ought to admire are forbidden to me. This is as it should be. Someone else will take care of the other 80%. (Ron Silliman, for example.) I've decided to stop worrying about my limitations as a reader. I will go to readings and applaud the poets I don't "get." I won't go out of my way to dismiss their work, usually.

Octopus Magazine - Issue 02, in case you missed the BAP face-off the first time around.

Number 1000.

Dale Smith and Kent Johnson in Beatnik Bob's café at the City Museum in St. Louis last night. In attendance were Jonathan Mayhew, David Hess, Aaron Belz (series organizer), and Gabriel Gudding, and others whose names I didn't catch. We all went down the slide to the ground floor afterwards and had a drink by a fire in the funky setting of the Cabin Inn. Kent read first, only four poems. Two about the Iraq that I had read before and a discomfiting poem dedicated to Aaron. (Discomfiting to Aaron I'm sure!) Then a piece from Yasusada. His style of reading is quite effective.

Dale read some aphorisms at the end that I especially liked. He had recently been in Lawrence with Ken Irby and Lee Chapman. Gabe snapped some pictures of readers and audience members that might appear on his blog in a bit. David told us about his operation (don't ask, don't tell).

From unpleasant event by way of equanimity:

"I too am a first-time reader of her work [Niedecker]. My first impression was of flat haiku-ish minimalism, which tends to leave me with a "so much depends" shrug."

My first impression of this sentences leaves me with a "fuck off you dilletante asshole idiot, who are you to use a William Carlos Williams line as an inflammatory, adjectival" shrug.

So the dogmatic person would be the one who says: "I happen to like Linda Pastan, but I refuse to say why or have my preferences questioned. It's just my personal taste." Like Fish's notorious "interpretive communities." Every individual ends up being a community of one. There can be no dialogue because once there is disagreement the community splits into two.

The fallacy of taste as a matter of individual preferences. Surely taste is social rather than individual! But I'm sure I've already said that on this blog.

Is it "dogmatic" to defend a particular point of view? To engage in spirited debate? I would think this the opposite of dogmatic. Yet when I want to engage others in debate, as opposed to maintaining a sort of easy-going, anything-goes posture, I am accused of this. Why should someone feel threatened when his "taste" is under question? If you can't defend your taste, you aren't "entitled" to it.

For some reason, I am also accused sometimes of looking down on popular culture. I love popular culture. I also love elite culture. I'm not too crazy about a lot in the middle range, it's true. Give me Clint Eastwood over Merchant-Ivory any day.

The phrase Le neveu de Silliman is not Spanish but French. In Spanish it would be "El sobrino de Silliman."

I mustn't forget to go see Dale Smith and Kent Johnson at the City Museum on Saturday. If you're in St. Louis I'll see you there. Then it's off to Kansas on Sunday. Then back in St. Louis. Then back in Kansas, etc...

I somehow missed running into Tim Yu at the MLA. It would have been good to meet him.

More MLA notes:

I had some high quality conversation at the MLA with Kasey and Michael (Magee). We had some coffee after the Marjorie Perloff session on metonymy was cancelled. Others I met in San Diego and might not have mentioned yet were David Larsen, Patrick Durgin, Walter Lew, and Juliana Spahr. Nick Lolordo is an intense, brilliant guy; we talked after the mega-reading and again after the Haryette Mullen reading/q and a the night after. I really enjoyed the Mullen event, by the way. She combines low-brow and high-brow sensibilities in a refreshing way that by-passes the middle.

I really liked the poem Joshua Clover read at the mega-reading at the art museum. Members of the audience, including David Larsen and Brent Cunningham, read contrapuntal voices in a totally unexpected way. Antin and Rothenberg did not impress me much in this setting. I maybe expected a more "performative" dimension to their reading.

Thankfully noone from the bloggers came to my own session. I don't think it went well at all, since the point I was trying to get across was interpreted in more simplistic terms. Not that I was saying anything all that complex! I realize my understanding of Spanish poetry is way "out there," compared to that of anyone/everyone else. I was critiquing certain aspects of the high/late modernist movement in contemporary Spain. I contextualized it by saying that I identified with the fundamental tenets of the movement. What some people came away with was this contextualization, not the imbedded critique.

Apparently what I missed was Gary and Nada's engagement. Congratulations to them.

I'm back. Happy new year to all. What have I missed?