I just emailed this

to a poet friend:



My mind's not really on poetry, but here are a couple of quick thoughs on your chapbook: The playfulness is fine, but at some points, the reader needs to be convinced that you are deadly serious, and I don't think this came through in the chap. If you look at [name deleted]. His verbal pyrotechnics is very, very impressive, but after a while, one feels that he's not trying to get at anything, that he's not working through his own pains, or anyone else's pains, for that matter, to write those lines. You, too, need to get to a more psychically dangerous, alarming place to write more resonant poetry. If you look at my Cheese Orgy, I'm not just goofing around. I clown, but I'm deadly serious. I'm so serious that I turn off a bunch of people, I'm sure, but that's where a, ahem, serious writer needs to be, I insist. Also, I think you need to mix your language better. Use the whole spectrum. Go from really bad to really good English. Strut from the street right into the lecture hall, into the bedroom, etc.






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Speaking of poems, here are four from yours truly at the Poetry Foundation.



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