The Lord of the Rings

I hate Ron Silliman. Should we have met in a boxing ring, he would’ve of knocked me out nine out of ten times. He’s got that way of beating me to the punch. He’s so stubborn that he’ll just jab at anything, so that eventually he finds your jaw, though not with a jab but with that twinkling right cross.

Ron is so stubborn that he now apparently takes innocence as the exclusivity clause of some camp. You got to be sharp to do that, jump rope for months, run for years. That a nine-year-old could write what a mature School of Quietude poet could write any day is just further proof of his theorem. And it’s convincing; seemingly, were it not possible to write what Silliman writes from a grammar school perspective. I’ll not step into the ring with him.

I had something else in mind. Innocence—indeed innocent ignorance—of schools of thought, styles, forms, ethnic backgrounds, politics, growing up, would surely result in something different. Ron’s example is poor and fails because it results in a School of Quietude example of poetics. My, even a ten year old writes like them, and she can do it better. Unfairness—even by Ron's admission—results in cheap tricks. Artists often do that, but dissapearence acts are, well, tricks.

Innocence isn’t that, nor is it purity in poetics. Innocence is awareness of what surrounds, what hurts, what pains, what disappoints: What is. That may or may not be poetry, but surely it isn’t form. It isn’t your predilection for & or that. Poetry eventually drowns on that shit. A child of ten doesn’t know that. Tnakfully (sic). & we must thank Ron for that reminder.