Jonathan may have a valid argument here. Sometimes I don't have the energy or focus to deal with this stuff.

Yet it seems to me that it may be a good thing that non-mainstream poetry remains non-mainstream; that it's not aimed at a general audience anyway; that the mainstream often has insightful & appropriate things to say about non-mainstream writing (ie. the review of E. Pound's new Library of America anthology in yesterday's NYTRB), which would not be said if naturally "marginal" work were forced into the mainstream; that most non-mainstream writing - even the "high quality" sophisticated stuff - does not deserve a mainstream audience (because it's tailored to a coterie elite); that comparing non-mainstream poetry to poetry which has achieved mainstream or canonical status - whether good or bad - is like comparing apples and oranges; that the attacks on a "cabal" of SoQ literary mavens ignores the fact that literary establishments naturally reflect achieved mainstream examples of mainstream taste - that is, this is not a conspiracy but an effect of publishing per se; that multitudinous avenues of exploration are open to any reader willing to venture beyond the mainstream; that non-mainstream writing often does enter the mainstream, through the efforts of its promoters, but that no realignment of the "system" will (or should) make this an automatic process; & so on.

I myself am not satisfied with elite or coterie audiences for my own or others' poetry. What I believe in, is the fortitude of those who do take up the advocacy & promotion of writers & works of talent, which eventually can lead works worthy of a mainstream audience, to same. That this does not happen automatically or with perfect justice does not mean the system should be replaced by a team or categorical approach to literary prestige, some kind of anti-SoQ counter-establishment. I don't think Ron Silliman or anyone else is in a position to set standards for taste on such a universal basis. This would only mirror the current establishment in a much more corroded form.