Jon,
Very Vonnegut.  Thanks for the URL.
As to Pound/Frost, I enjoy much of both
of them, and for diverse reasons.  No
need to feel shy about your tastes.
==Dan

At 04:32 PM 02/01/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>This is not Pound related, but it's wonderful.  For those who like Kurt
>Vonnegut, you should not do anything else until you read this brief
>interview from "In These Times" magazine:
>
>http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C
>
>On a side note, not to start any kind of venomous bloodbath, I can't
>quite see what it is about Billy Collins that rankles so many.
>Honestly, even before he became po-it lauriat, his poems caught my
>attention.  I remembered his poem "Marginalia" from its original
>appearance in _Poetry_ a few years ago, and was quite glad to read more
>of his work.  I grant that it resembles Frost more than it does Pound
>or Ashbery, but it doesn't seem to me that "plain" diction in a poem,
>or obvious rhetorical intentions to engage readers at a non-specialist
>level are by themselves sufficient criteria to damn an entire creative
>enterprise.  Collins has a humorous and surprisingly penetrating
>manner, and his fame is not at all undeserved.  Russell Baker said
>once, "I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it
>began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a
>hostile world", and for the most part I absolutely agree with him.  For
>that reason, I was thrilled, actually, to sell Collins' work back when
>I worked in a bookstore here in Oak Park.  My customers appreciated it
>often, the few ones who would ask about new poetry, and there was a
>troup of lovely old women who worshipped his every syllable in a way I
>found infectious.  Honestly, there's nothing facile about Collins (just
>as Frost is only deceptively homely and "of the people"), and a poem
>that doesn't sound alienated in the way Baker suggests is valuable for
>lots of purposes.  _Picnic, Lightning_ for my mom on Christmas: $13.95.
>  The look on my mother's face when she understands a poem I've asked
>her to read: priceless.
>
>Sure, Collins is accessible and popular and funny and good at appealing
>to the writing teachers among us -- so why are those things insipid,
>again?
>
>Please no severe flames -- I have but my meager opinions, and have
>disposed of my asbestos suit for health reasons.  It might simply be
>that the "typical" reader of Pound enjoys a palette that tends to
>reject Collins-like straight-forwardness.  Where Pound writes
>double-black-diamond poems, Collins takes time to lay out some nice,
>steady greens for newcomers.   Everyone knows that expert skiers do not
>waste their time on the bunny slopes, but they shouldn't begrudge the
>gentle slopes their gentility.
>
>Regards to all -
>Jon

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