Socrates: Hen, can we get back to yr polemicks now? When you were talking a few days ago about how the US oppositional poetry of idiomatic communities reflect the denial of a general Tradition somewhut in TS Eliot's sense. . . well, weren't you sort of practicing "transumption", which is what Milton did to the other Epicks & is a nice word for one-upmanship by absorption? No wonder they snubs you sometimes.

Henry: I got a rejection letter about a year ago from the editor of Jacket, John Tranter. He said that my poems were too "literary" - I guess he meant too stylized with clunky old-fashioned devices - & that people didn't talk that way & that Frank O'Hara taught us we didn't have to write like that anymore. Well, now that I think about it, his letter seems emblematic of the (contemporary, int'l) NY School.

Socrates: But, Hen, didn't you say once that you cut your teeth on the NY School poets back in the 60s & early 70s? & couldn't people accuse you (in fact as I recall they did) of always arguing from the negative, that is, complaining about what's "missing" from poetry these days, sorta like the way Bush talks about hidden things in Iraq, or like the proverbial shell game?

Henry: Now, Socky, that was a low blow.

Socrates: But look at it Hen - it could be argued that yer complaints about the balkanized poetry idioms is just a way of deflecting your own problem - that you FELL AWAY from your own early path (NY poets) & now are blaming 'em for not following you downhill? & now yer so far downhill that you can't see the fine grain of what other poets are trying to do - you just go into your transumpt mode.

Henry: Gee whiz, Socky, you are tough on me today. Well, I would say IMOD ("In My Own Defense" in legal jargon) that hey, it's all a work in progress. By that I mean that I don't claim to stand outside the working-out of my own poetickal problems in taking these positions. & I would say that my hesitation or skepticism about the 3 or 4 "schools" ongoing in US poetry is a genuine poet's problem of modelling a style I can believe in. Does it work for me? Does my strenuous & somewhat comical search for templates (Mandelstam, Crane, Pound) represent merely a personal safety symptom, or a more natural (if wayward & partial) search for a "fusion" idiom (I mean a poetic diction that fuses with past poetry history in a real way)?

Socrates: Duh, or both? Can I have some of that cookie?

Henry: The schools of counter-poetics in the US run counter to the "workshop" or "mainstream" product by emphasizing style dialects. But maybe neither style nor dialect can be channeled too narrowly - otherwise they end up as a "manner". & I go on in my midwestern way, annoying both coasts & everyone coasting. But I'm annoyed with THEM.

Socrates: O, Hen.

Henry: O, Socky.