[New-Poetry] Concerning "fauxpo"

[Bob Grumman]

Anny Ballardini wrote:
> I agree with Dick Allen.
> I'll answer the third question:
I don't believe you, Anny!  I've rarely read anything so obtuse.  One of 
those  blodge-gushers that contains so much stupidity, one wonders how 
to respond to it.  Sure, to take one of its stupidities, some language 
poets are "unemotional," but many are not.  I wonder, can there be an 
unemotional poem?  I'd like to see one.  As for "understandable," why do 
Philistines always assume that if they can't understand some poem, it is 
not understandable?  And I'm no champion of language poetry.  I do think 
that some poets are too easily satisfied with babble that occasionally 
baubles, and some engagents too easily satisfied with babble they can 
free-associate wherever they want to from, without regard for any 
over-all unifying principle that could exponentiate (that's a 
Grummanism, folks) all they can reasonably free-associate to into a 
final meaning vastly superior to the sum of the trivial meanings they 
free-associate to.

Plus, your answer to the third question could not have been more faulty: 
you left out my name!  My answer to what is eternal: everything. 

--Bob G.