. . . Lots of funny contemporary twists on this artifact/communication dilemma. The vogue of the "informal", the "talk poem", the poem which parlays documents & news items as a way to "get it across", the vogue of the poet as a function of a bohemian clique, of poetry as "performance" - all these postmodernist reactions against the modernist aesthetic artifact reveal one glaring Achilles' heel : the lack of anything in particular to communicate. Thus a dressed-down, informal, performance clubhouse party poetry becomes its own kind of artifact or fashion statement.

But if they had a theme, if they had something to say, they would look more carefully at the "formal" elements of style, the "prose virtues", etc.

. . . So if we think of the poet as one with a special faculty or aptitude for pleasing speech acts, then in this dilemma, this split between artifact & communication, we are confronted today with something analogous to the situation faced by the medieval poets who had to choose between Latin and the vernacular. The "model" or artifact tendency is, paradoxically, also a form of communication - but only within the coterie of fellow modernist-postmodern-post-postmodernists. The problem of the other tendency - the problem of communication - remains undeveloped, consigned (disingenuously) to the "mainstream", the vulgar herd; and it remains a problem so long as the poet refuses to grapple with the fundamental issue : how to communicate value in a shrinking, single Babel-world of variant, often conflicting languages, dialects and worldviews.