Mr. James Behrle writes (outlining his view of Joan Houlihan's approach):

A poem *must* mean something, something that can be consumed. Like a Big Mac. A poem must be something that can be discussed in a circle, taken apart and put back together. A poem is something that can be taught and understood. There is no rigor to push language, to test sounds, to create dissonance, to make it new.

Knowledge has been identified with food since at least the Genesis story of the Tree of Knowledge.

But food means more than gobbling down protein & vitamins for "survival". The nourishment is often indistinguishable from the pleasure. What I understand Houlihan to be referring to, in her critique, is the pleasure of Pound's logopeia, the "dance of the intellect among words".

Now Mr. Behrle may be correct in saying that the poetry of his "we" often involves no simple transfer of meaning, in fact it may involve a rejection of "meaning" in this sense altogether, and still remain poetry. But it would be too bad if the rigor of his "we" style of consumption denies the pleasures of meaning altogether. Houlihan's quotes from various auto-pilot playfully ambi-meaningless experimental taste-defying word-gumbos simply underlines her argument that certain pleasures of ordered meaning are missing there.