Pastoral poetry has a long tradition in poetry – going back to the idylls of the ancient Greeks. Am I a bad person/poet for not being a particular fan of the genre?

I have always been an creature of the urban world. Not in the sense of coming from some conception of the “streets” emerging out of hip hop. My youth in Tampa Bay, the Larchmont neighborhood of Norfolk, and Montgomery is better seen as being suburban, rather than true city life. It was only later in life, when I lived in Los Angeles and Washington that I truly experienced city life (and Washington hasa surprising small town feel to it). No,I say urban strictly as a counterpoint to a more rural, less densely populated community.

Like most poets I know, I am a great fan of the Romantics – and one thinks of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey’s connection to England’s rural Lake District, as as well as the luscious descriptions of Southern Europe in Byron’s Childe Harold. But I have always loved Wordsworth’s interior-minded Prelude more than The Excursion and Shelley’s claustrophoic Prometheus more than Byron’s expansive and natural Childe Harold.

Am I alone in this? Or has poetry, like most of the world, moved into an urban realm? Is there a place for traditional, yet also contemporary, pastoral poetry outside of the politically minded eco-poetics of Snyder and Merwin?

I don’t have answer to that. But I am happy to be proven wrong.

There are certain things that drive me crazy. Republicans, for one. I get very particular when it comes to things coming into contact with my clean clothes. Shopping at Wal-Mart for any reason.

And people telling me “they don’t have time to read.”

An old friend told me that he doesn’t have time to read fiction these days. Leaving aside the fact that this was part of a fairly passive-aggressive conversation (the implications being that his life is much fuller and more important than mine – he is too busy doing other critical and intellectual things to read fiction), I want to object to a society that lets people get away with saying “I don’t have time to read” – whether it’s fiction, prose, newspapers or whatever. The very concept is offensive.

I can accept “I’ve been very busy lately and haven’t had much the energy to read much this past week,” but claiming a lack of time is false and should be unacceptable.

And I suspect that most of us who love books have heard this from someone. It’s a way of putting us frivolous bibliophiles in our place and excusing themselves from turning off the television and picking up something whose purpose is to broadly improve the life of the mind.

So – don’t tell me you don’t have time to read. At least be man enough to admit the truth – you have chosen not to read. But you won’t say that, of course. Because that would confront you with the choices you have made instead – to watch American Idol or see the latest bit of trash by Adam Sandler, instead of picking up a book.

It seems to me that fantasy doesn’t get quite the same level of respect that science fiction gets.

While there have been a number of fantasy novels that have won widespread literary acclaim (I’m thinking of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea novels), it seems that in the academic world, fantasy gets short shrift compared to science fiction. There is something a little shameful about fantasy that is less present in science fiction.

Some of this may be a sort of gender bias. Not strictly speaking, in terms of “male/female,” but rather, more nebulous conceptions of “masculine/feminine.” Science fiction, because of its relationship to science – relates to to masculine conceptions of the empirical and rational. Though fantasy may be as internally consistent as science fiction, it explicitly does not relate to those empirical conceptions.

In the still gendered world of academia, this makes an interest in science fiction more acceptable than an interest in fantasy. An interest in science fiction, the meme goes, can lead to a career in science or math, providing benefits for science. An interest in fantasy merely leads to a detachment from reality.

Ok, fine. I have mixed feelings about the “School of Quietude.” I’m pretty sure that, if Ron Silliman ever deigned to notice me, he would be very disapproving and would probably label me a “quietist” of the worst and most shameful sort.

But, it’s clear that this meme has taken hold. You could probably go on almost any lit blog you wanted, drop the abbreviation “SoQ” and people will know what you’re talking about.

On the Newer Metaphysicals, there is an interesting idea. He would like to see someone on American Idol or some other mainstream, cultural artifact reference someone or something as being part of the “School of Quietude.” This, he says, would be a clear indication that the language of poetry is starting to break through.

I first came across Les Figues several years ago at the West Hollywood Book Fair. The small, nonprofit publisher had a booth there and I purchased a copy of Christine Wertheim’s +’me’ S-pace.

Now, I must confess, that having dived into +’me’ S-pace several times, I still have very little idea what she is talking about. Ms. Wertheim does not traffic in easy intelligibilities, but it is no less enjoyable for being difficult.

The literature of Les Figues will always feel deeply tied to a certain avant garde, Southern California aesthetic. I spent several years living in Hollywood, and we knew that the artistes of Northern California (NoCal) looked down on us, but we clung to a belief in our own merit. To me, Les Figues (and also the bookstore, Skylight Books) is deeply representative of this ineffable SoCal aesthetic. It is nothing you might think – nothing to do with Hollywood, celebrity, or surface meaning. Or maybe I’m just talking out of my a–. Your call.

Les Figues is holding a promotion right now – buy two books and get a third free.

For myself, I chose a, re:evolution, and Voice of Ice.

Much like I did for Salt Publishing, I am a sucker for publishers of contemporary poetry and am an easy target for these kinds of promotions. But this is a damn good deal. And they only charge $3 for shipping! I will be getting all three books for only $33 or just $11 each. That’s a steal, as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t like Billy Collins.

There. I said it.

It’s nothing personal. I don’t know the man personally. I just don’t like his poetry.

I don’t necessarily object to poetry that is – shall we say – middlebrow? Without getting into a long discussion, I think we can agree the Collins is not an avatar of the high modernism, or post-avant, or what not. That alone is not a statement on his quality as a poet. Robert Frost is not any of those things either, but I think we can all agree that he’s still pretty awesome.

Picnic, Lightning is why I don’t like him.

Collins specializes in a classic American anti-intellectualism (if you want to argue about this topic, let me just direct you to Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life and let him argue with you for me). It’s a sort of populist,  “aw shucks” demeanor that posits a faux pragmatism against the silly, nerdy obfuscators.

Fine. Peter Meinke‘s The Poet, Trying to Surprise God is a poem I greatly enjoy and is in the same “aw shucks” vein – as are many of Meinke’s poems.

What I object to is the shameless way Collins tries to have it both ways. Playing the anti-intellectual card and then taking the name of his collection from Nabokov – one of the most intellectual, arch, and hyper-literate writers this side of James Joyce.

I do not appreciate him playing the populist card and then turning to the university English departments and winking at them, as if to say, “I really didn’t mean it.”