SHRUG

IF CRITICISM = I’s clutch, I’s certainty/ highchair/satellite from which to view a skyscraper énorme in the dead center all the way up lots of men in it talking

in suit-and-tie metaphors, in food (canned fruit cocktail/cut-up hot dog) metaphors, in tool metaphors, in mottoes, in future metaphors:

Mr Pug: “At their best, criticism and art do a lively square dance, one frillier-dressed [which one? depends.[. separate, reversing positions, do-see-doing, even occasionally touching hands…”

count West-West: “Criticism = a funnel for verbal energy that’s a reaction to. Meaning writing too. Acting as a banging on logical confines. I think about it all the time, even at work.”

Ms. Anti-Parallax: “Part of the earth is green and part blue. I clap my hands over Jameson’s ‘properly’ tin ears. In a dusty office, I proofread essays about sonnets.”

Professor: “Why this awkward admixture of colloquial and lit-crit talk?”

Ms Anti-perfection (squalling):” It’s the figurative polylogic I perceive through. My head screens work(s) with lots of different codes BLAT BLAT BLAT. In academia I’m an artistic specimen slushing around on the algae water of a slide. I try to speak and out come multiple spheres…”

count West-West: “Criticism = search for method. In it I look to justify practices, find new practices, expand perceptual and conceptual realms (in which terms = buying power).

Editor: “Non-critical people have no right to expect anything better of the world. But they’re no stupider than the people who think the frames they’ve built (no matter how artfully) can substitute for the picture — as if the picture didn’t always demand its own frame!”

Professor: “Someone’s said that before. Doesn’t it all just come down to an equivalence of onions.”

[as published in Ottotole sometime in the late 80s.]