Douglas Rothschild gave an engaging talk at the Zinc Bar tonight in which he put forward the not very disputable premise that we are living through a history loop that repeats the major elements of the Third Reich.

I’m hoping that Drew, who was taking notes, will give a more complete report on this talk.

I have issues with Douglas’ conclusion, though, that we *ought* to, subversively, imbue our poetry with subversive content. Didactic/subversive content.

I say that not just because I like poetry to give the effect of a kind of rarefied hothouse bordello/hamam/jungle, though that is true, or because I experience it often as a kind of flight of consciousness away from banality and even fact into perspective-giving absurdity or outrageousness. These are merely my preferences, and I acknowledge them as such.

It’s just that, and here I parrot Gary, poetry has to be interesting. That’s its primal directive. Any other “ought”, to me, raises alarums. Or no, let me rephrase that. Poetry can be boring, but it has to be boring in an interesting way.