Since I have nothing better to do than juggle 45 boxes of cheese-flavored cheerios with my feet while translating Mandelstam into pig Latin, I thought I'd paste in here a portion of a letter written many many years ago to Agatha Trillenta, who was living at the time over a bicycle shop run by a collective of Italian film-makers (the year was 1947) in Rome:

Cara Agatha,

You ask about my poetics. Well, this is a subject dear (as in "expensive") to my heart, as I spent many years during World War 2 fighting a certain amalgam of abstract flotillae ranged against me in that epistemological episteme, or steam-pit, as it were, then.

Generally, or "kernelly", as we say in midwestern corn country, I think it may be said, and I think it has been said, by several thinkers in the range of nations between the 15th and 17th Parallels, and not only by myself, I might add (sorry for the prolixity here), that my approach, or, as it were, technique, in poetry, involves treading a narrow middle path between fromagitude on the one bank, and the avant-gouda on the rocks t'other side o'me. To begin with, I think it is fairly obvious, I never, at least to my knowledge, and I should know, I think, if anyone should, that, in the main, in my writing, I never, for the most part, or should I say, ever, in fact, use, usually, commas, or, to put it plainly, in laymen's terms, but perhaps more precisely, I, that is, me, here, now, and also then, whenever, tend, most often, to, at least most of the time, anyway, avoid, you know, cara amica, subordinate, as they are called, phrases, if, and this is a very, in fact, huge, large, if, possible, that is, if, in other words, it, what I say, is, duh duh ain't it obvious, can, like, be, y'know, done.

This kind of writing, this avoidance of the necessary along with the unnecessary foci of syntactical abrasion, has gotten me in lots of trouble with the gatekeepers of literary decorum, I mean, the slop-happy statisticians of the jail yard, like, I mean all of Boston, most of Buffalo, 99 percent of San Francisco, and NY faggeddabaddit. Rhode Island is a wee very tiny small state; and why, you ask? my dear & extremely radiant charisma-saturated poet of Italia? Why, well, because we have no GATES here; all the stuffing of Rhode-Island goes runnin' through the sluices, skippin' trew the rye, hoppin' down the bunny path, smack into the Gates of dem other States, whammo!! That's why we is small and that's why we is an island that is no island, that's why, I tell you that's why [sing to tune of "Well Drop My Rrrrrs Blues"].

Agatha, my pet, molte molte grazie for sending the Lambrusco-soaked pettini; I will return the favor as soon as my corn bread rises and the cheese is duly somnolent. Until then, arriv', baby!!!