No poem has escaped my notebook in two years. Not because I’m scared by the many physical beatings San Francisco poets endure, but because I’m traumatized by not living up to my own inflated sense of potential. That’s where the real psychic violence lies—in excuses that didn’t stop anyone brave enough to throw himself on the slush pile.
The poor craftsman blames his tools, and the cowardly poet who refuses to write blames his ex-scene. Most of the poetry I fled from had no guts, no feeling, and no passion that I could discern. It was more concerned with avoiding the bourgeoisie trap of narrative or the literary trap of being confessional, than with expressing genuine concern for anything. Much of this self-consciously experimental writing reads like spam, nonsense that abjures meaning in hopes of fooling the filters.
I liked the poets, with their intelligent wild eyes and their refusal to shop, but I hated the poetry readings that were their social staple.
I have seen the same poets who beat each other endure the unendurable without a flicker of offense taken. They sit in postures fixed by verse so experimental that it strangles the flow of time. Nothing moves but a cud of words on the pulpit:
"I will read sections three and four of my 20-part poem on the limits of language in inducing human emotion. You know this is my homage to the overheated instruction-manual school." My people listen.