Jonathan Mayhew writes:

But we are all vehement! Henry Gould and Jean Hooligan as much as Jonathan Mayhem. It's called passion! If elegance could be measured it wouldn't be elegant any longer. If poetry were written in "normal" language it wouldn't be poetry at all. All this reminds me of some books my Grandpa had by Robert Hillyer, a guy who used to write a column for the Saturday Review or Saturday Evening Post. He would quote a poem by Cummings or Williams or Auden and sneer at it. Modern poetry was crap. Half the time he was right, but that just shows bad poetry will always be more plentiful than good. The poetry he advocated was worse than crap. That's why the badness of Houlihan's own poetry matters in this debate.

But JM, I'm not against vehemence per se; only struck by it in this context. Houlihan's biting comments seem to stir not engagement but defensive vituperation. & no, the fact that Hillyer advocated crap poems does not justify quoting Houlihan's poems to deny her critical acumen. Houlihan does not present her poems as alternative models within her essays. The one poem (that I found, anyway) which she offered as exemplary, by Franz Wright, was pretty good, though I thought the final line spoiled it (snow like "millions of bees" : seems facile, a kind of well-worn flourish).

I agree that her criticism is satirical & negative, and does not really offer a "way forward" in terms of a new or exemplary poetics. But I find her closet-cleaning a breath of fresh air.