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Sucking Up (My Morning Vitriol)
“The Contradiction” (by David Spear) Why am I not surprised that Michael Robbins, in “reviewing” Lyn Hejinian’s My Life and My Life in the Nineties, begins with a truth (that Language poetry is boring), then accurately characterizes Hejinian’s approach: “writing as a paradoxically polished automatism.” Robbins is obviously a bright guy. Of course, calling Hejinian’s approach paradoxical doesn’t explain or justify it; in fact, it unmasks it as an exercise in cynicism: polish gives the lie to the writing’s ersatz automatism.Read More
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Knott Politics
I don’t believe in censorship, but censure is sometimes called for. In this case, it’s a piece of pseudo-political dreck by Michael Robbins, who—in a poem tantalizingly entitled “To the Drone Vaguely Realizing Eastward”—attempts to avenge the 200-plus children so far killed by drone strikes. Here’s the first verse: This is a poem for President Drone.It was written by a camel.Can I borrow your phone?This is for President Mark Hamill. Maybe one has to be drunk on Sterno to write this way, or maybe all it takes is a PhD from the University of Chicago.Read More