*

When people dismiss certain poetics as “fashions” or “mannerisms,” they’re again anxious about Art.

Anxious about poets falling “under the influence” of “fashion.”

I’m more interested in Alexander McQueen than Ron Silliman.

When people are dismissing poems are too “poetic,” they’re participating in a long tradition of anti-kitsch rhetoric.

As Daniel Tiffany has shown, things are not dismissed as kitsch because they are lacking in beauty, it’s because they exhibit “excessive beauty.”

A Ballet: “The Red Detachment of Women.”

A Ballet: “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” (about Mao’s sparrows)

I’m more interested in excessive beauty than in “rigorous” poetry.

Any time someone talks about “rigor” and art, they’re trying to temper the excessive beauty of art.

They will inevitably claim they are doing it for health of literature.

For the future of literature.

Art has no future. It is sick. It is wasting away.