[New-Poetry] Concerning "fauxpo"

[Rsgwynn1 at cs.com]

In a message dated 10/6/2008 4:56:31 PM Central Daylight Time, 
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: 
> 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.
> 
My standard answer to this is that if I can't understand it, it may well be 
ununderstandable.  After all, I've devoted 2/3 of my life to writing, writing 
about, and teaching the stuff, and I've anthologized and taught a lot of 
different kinds of poetry--most of us highly unlike anything I might write.  So if I
, arrogant Sam the expert, cannot understand it, then who can?  If the answer 
to this is "arrogant Sam the expert, you are obtuse," then my life's work has 
been in vain. And I don't equate "understanding it" with 
"understanding-what-it's-doing-but-I-could-not-care-less."  Poetry that is randomly generated by a 
computer falls into this latter category.  Whoop-de-doo!   
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