*
I can't imagine the frustration the critics of Billy Collins must feel—
especially the avant-hick ones—
how, armed with their grad degrees in poetics, in post-posty theory,
they can prove, semiotically, scientifically prove,
how inadequate the verse of Collins is—
and yet, despite their poeticspeak (Orwellian emphasis),
his books continue to be bought and read and enjoyed
by tens of thousands (surely hundreds of thousands by now) of poetry readers:
Count me among them.
*
Avant-hicks: I used to call them avanthacks, hacks, but hicks is I think more appropriate for these impoverished pockets so cut off from the rest of the world, and yet so convinced that their sect is righteous: how saved and holy they are in their isolation, incestuous, bristling, mad.
///
I can't imagine the frustration the critics of Billy Collins must feel—
especially the avant-hick ones—
how, armed with their grad degrees in poetics, in post-posty theory,
they can prove, semiotically, scientifically prove,
how inadequate the verse of Collins is—
and yet, despite their poeticspeak (Orwellian emphasis),
his books continue to be bought and read and enjoyed
by tens of thousands (surely hundreds of thousands by now) of poetry readers:
Count me among them.
*
Avant-hicks: I used to call them avanthacks, hacks, but hicks is I think more appropriate for these impoverished pockets so cut off from the rest of the world, and yet so convinced that their sect is righteous: how saved and holy they are in their isolation, incestuous, bristling, mad.
///
