pondhop | snippets (Reply)

David Orr is given to pronouncements about the professional poetry scene and its foibles. Reading them is a guilty pleasure for me. From 2007:

The history of American poetry, like the history of America itself, is a story of ingenuity, sacrifice, hard work and sticking it to people when they least expect it. Whether it’s Ezra Pound dismissing his benefactor Amy Lowell as a "hippopoetess" or Yvor Winters accusing his friend Hart Crane of possessing flaws akin to a "public catastrophe," you can count on the occasional bushwhacking in the land of what Horace called "the touchy tribe."

And from this past Sunday:

The audience for poetry is like a vastly reduced version of the audience for college football — superstitious, gossipy and divided into factions no less fervent for having only an occasional idea of what’s going on outside their own campuses. It’s a hard crowd to write for, and the critic who sets himself up as a color commentator inevitably struggles to find a style that can please Peter without needlessly riling up Paul.

Like Mary, I have been going through some of my old files. Here's an SASE from 2001 where the postmark action amused me:

And here are some stamps from 2004, when I was thinking of submitting more frequently to Canadian markets. I shall use them on letters later this year...