I wonder if there are still places where people approach poems together - comfortable spaces - where people approach poems as verbal-emotive-intellectual objects, having different dimensions -

sort of informal philological symposia (in Mandelstam's sense) -

places where whole poems are apprehended, experienced, evaluated - in an atmosphere of collegial craftsmanship & shared insights -

not as part of any poet's or critic's personal ambition or agenda, but focusing together on the artistic object itself -

far away from personality promotions and demotions - a place of intellectual and aesthetic objectivity -

the dream of the Petersburg Acmeists -