Yeah, well, excuse me for being gladiatorial. I suppose I should just leave being provocative to the people who aren't any good at it. The mamby-pamby, the secretly careerist, the whiners, the gossip-spreaders, those unwilling to let themselves be made fun of. Intimidating reviewers, shouting down the blogs, whisper campaigns, let's leave that to "the poetic movement." All someone needs to do to misbehave online is apparently travel with a posse of yespeople. They hang lone gunmen, don't they?

A friend said 5 minutes ago "The blogs deserve better than flarf." Of course they do.

What happens when "the poetic community" is as unproductive a force as any other? What happens when those that feel bullied bully others?

We can only hope that there will be enough books out of the movement to satisfy the souls of the hungry, hungry hippos. Only books matter in poetry, you see. If you publish lots of books you are a real poet. No matter what you have to do to get to that point, Bookfulness, do it. John Ashbery is only John Ashbery because he published every single scrap of paper ever. This we have learned from the mainstream: 2 books is better than 1, 3 books is better than 2, 4 books is better than 3. Never mind the actual quality of the books. If your friends say they're good (loud enough, over and over again) they must be good. And although I'm happy when people get books, c'mon. You're gonna be a poet a long time, your whole life. Grow up.

I have defended them through the years as much as I have attacked. But any slight against one is a slight against all. They need new leadership, the vocal guards have become shrill jerks. Lighten up: get back to what made what you were doing fun. Strap on some old high tops and a cassette of old raps. You've lost that loving feeling: you spend too much time defending, apologizing, bending over backwards to be accepted by people who don't accept you. People smell fear. And also fun. I guess everyone worries about being remembered after they're dead. Most people just have kids and hope for the best. Will they be remembered as being passive-aggressive bullies who didn't write much worth crowing. The shadow knows. Call for new elections and write better poems: your comfort zone is killing your zeitgeist. It's not really a poetry movement: it's a clique filled with some good poets and some hangers-on. Will you be defending them all your whole damn life?

At the end of the day, who will want to be friends with *you*? I would have thought these guys would have invented more, moved on to something else by now. But this is really it, this is what they got, this is what they wanna be remembered for. Can you imagine Ted writing nothing but cut-ups for the rest of his life? The first 100 or so Dream Songs were great: after that it's bone against bone. The best things know when to stop. But like a flarf poem, it keeps going on for waaay too long and there never seems to be a punchline.