Category: Uncategorized

Another kind of hothouse:

A metaphor for a poem or a book might be a hothouse.

Enclosed, fecund, allergenic, exotic, artificed, arranged, out of control, otherworldly, dimly lit, musky, inhabitable for a period of time, protected, preserved, gathering together things that would not appear in nature together, organic but formal and deliberate, stuffy, hazy.

Big major peeve:

autohagiography.

I’ve said it before.

Recently heard that a friend poet had described another friend poet as “the gateway drug to Nada.”

Wondering to whom I may be the gateway drug.

Speaking of “flate,” why must people conflate irony with harshness?

If you can’t be ironic, you can’t swing.

Irony is necessary to the potency of a cadence because it is backed up by a furious unreleased laughter.

I should have said “identi-flation.” Sounds better.

Talking on the phone with a friend about the “pride” word.

He said he’d experienced a kind of working-class pride when considering the dubious successes of some more privileged peers. I said that he was feeling proud of his own accomplishments despite not being so privileged. And that what he had been feeling in terms of being working class was resentment.

Now, no matter what semantic difficulties I may have with “pride,” I am totally down with resentment, whether it be ethnic, national, or just plain quotidian. Long live resentment!

Even though that appears to be the only road to successsssss.

What I earlier termed “group identi-inflation” makes me ill in poetry contexts, too.

More thoughts on pride.

“Pride” seems to me entirely appropriate when applied to accomplishments. That is, I am proud of having learned to speak Japanese.

I am proud of Gary for working hard on his comics.

But I don’t think it is right to say I’m proud of something given. That is to say, I’m VAIN about my hair, not PROUD of it.

Vanity is another matter altogether.

It can be annoying but to me it is not abhorrent. It is too clownish.