On Infinite Difference
The attention given "innovative" poetries by mainstream press on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years is impressive but I fear this attention may be functioning as a sort of kettling tactic that effectively neutralizes or cordons these poetries off, reducing them to carnival status and displaying them publicly on a sort of vaudeville stage way off Broadway. Rae Armantrout got a Pulitzer. Good times. The TLS addresses British poetries beyond the pale of the larger publishing industry once and again. Grand. But these gestures often come off as a weirdly condescending pat on the head or a strategy engineered to rope in readers located beyond the main.
Read the rest at damn the caesars.