Talking Points

* Acting like a weird careerist poet makes you simply a silly cliche, part of an outdated strategy that short-term office politics can gain you immortality in your art. That somehow you need to triumph over your peers and rule over them with whatever juice you''ve acquired. Some poets (obviously) don't have the social skills required to get ahead this way. Not all socially saavy poets are any good (recent anthologies have proven this). This may be part of the thing people went to school to learn (also how to carry the weapons and grudges of teachers). Poems will eventually rise up and leave their creators behind. Some of the world's great assholes have been great poets--there are also some sweet practitioners. If everyone who attended AWP in Austin this year was suddenly summarily exiled to the Phantom Dimension, there would be only a few bats of the eye. The art would carry on. Tulip and mountain and fox poem production would dip slightly in the first quarter and then come back strong. We imagine ourselves an irreplacable part of the cog. We are merely crickets in the bog. Other crickets must rise and be heard. It's up to you whether you want to be remembered as a petty tyrant or not. At least I was an amusing petty tyrant. I do enjoy casting wide aspersions on the bad ways poets act (*poets* ACT!). So if someone you know is acting like a complete dick please do be in touch. Our responsibilty to other poets is to help them be heard. This can be accomplished with little to no fanfare for ourselves. When we neglect this responsibilty we are part of the problem and it is a duty to expose those practioners. With poo and pee hopefully.

* Attorney General *not* under oath? Alan Specter must beat himself to sleep every night.

* Lester & Patrick Herron are acting like dicks. It's a little late in the game for anyone not on the flarflist to claim to be responsible for flarf in *any* way. No ideas spring whole out of the head of Zues and all things have been done. The Rolling Stones didn't invent how to play the guitar. They listened and did it their way. That some poets need to associate themselves with successful brandnames is earth-shatteringly sad. When is whining *ever* relevant? That people are interested and attracted to some work and not others? Write better poems and shut up. "I was also the first to use the robot template on blogger!!!" Yeah, what did you fill that robot up with?

* People Who Visit My Website Too Often:

1. Reston, VA [33 times]
2. Brown Univeristy Libraries [20 times]
3. Bronx, NY [20 times]
4. Cary, NC [17 times]
5. Portland, ME [16 times]
6. Muncie, IN [15 times]
7. Philadelphia University of the Arts [14 times]
8. San Francisco, CA [13 times]
9. NY, NY [12 times]
10. Palisades Park, NJ [10 times]

10+ times is just too much. I update in the middle of the night and then once again in the evening. This level of Jimmy fandom is just creepy. Get a hold of yourself. Ween yourself from my tasty milk. I am shaming you to help you.