Kasey, bless his heart, is going to teach my book V. Imp. next semester. He wanted me to write a statement of poetics so here it is:

V. Imp. is “very important” (marginally, or as [musical] notation) but in shorthand, because not enough time or languor. V. Imp.‘s defining gesture is kicking — podiums, authority — kicking up at barriers and limits, or kicking legs up sideways in the air á la Dick Van Dyke, an important early influence. V. Imp. — serious fluff or frivolous gravitas? It’s “oscillating bimbo poetics”. The poems are my odalisques and I am their master (this is revenge for centuries of the inverse). They yearn hungrily –at the moon?– out the arched windows of the palace; the tinkling fountains, the caged birds (their pretty familiars) do not soothe them. They know there is more to experience. Anyway, forget everything you ever learned about poetry. If you don’t know anything about poetry, just forget what you don’t know. Then we can begin. The writing takes my hand (and by extension, both our heads) in another absurdly orientalist gesture, flying us about through squalor and pulchritude, delighted with its own stupid wit. “No money in buffoonerie” — oh well. Change “peace state” to “war state” : ululate. It’s urban, psychic, lexical spelunking, the old Romantic impulse but jerkier and more twisted, clumsy, raging when not just campy. Total drama: opera, porn, Bollywood, and old musicals: each word has a bared midriff and thrusting pelvis. Poetry (not mine) has become sickeningly reasonable despite the pulsating metropoli and deep illogic of everything. The “uses” of poetry more frangible… than tangible. Remember: the striped fish is still in the blank space but its jaw yammers up and down. Exercise of autonomy, rhythm in amber, song of my elf…