Notes on the Boxer Rebellion


Man is a wonderful creature; he sees through the layers of fat (eyes), hears through a bone (ears) and speaks through a lump of flesh (tongue). =Emir Ali ibn Abi Taleb, Commander of the Faithful, May Allah be pleased with him, from the ever wonderful and sublime, Peak of Eloquence (Najul al Balagha)

With each one of these instantaneous purviews, I find myself more intrigued with what this earth shattering occurrence means to 'people' (if you could call poets that). It's so bad that I haven't even watched Nancy Grace in two days! This, believe it or not, is more important to me than missing children. Hint: Someone please do the milk carton graphic for me pulease?

This has got to be one of the most brilliantly funny though. It says to me or at least I think it says, Has Ron lost his marbles?

Or it might be saying, is Ron Silliman pointing a finger at all of the er...friends...who communicate via his comments box...and they deserve so much blame and are so utterly blameworthy as to warrant a cut off of electrical power to their slums?

http://isola-di-rifiuti.blogspot.com/2010/08/he-that-gathereth-togither-nothing.html

The gods and goddesses, who attend to the spurious and foolish (and all the accompanying -fuel’d antics)’d probably conclude Jessica Smith and Ron Silliman a match made at heaven’s gate, that glory-portal to exaggeration and deceit. (Like Dylan’s Desolation Row, nobody knows if the aim’s to enter or exit.) Smith, sounding the alarums: “poetry’s youth is being trampled, discouraged and undermined with a potential long-term detrimental effect on Poetry.” Or: “If a talented young poet like Massey is turned off of writing for even a few days or weeks as a result of being skewered by a few robotic-hearted cyberbullies, even that brief interlude is a loss for Poetry.” (Great wringing of hands, tearing out hair, &c. in a maenad frenzy for Poetry.) I suspect that high-mind’d rhetorical claptrap’s a direct descendent of Silliman’s own “tactical” excesses—just how many extravagant claims’s he made? (Something I entirely suspect’s a disservice particularly to younger poets, stymieing or stultifying one at some “minimal” point (de repère) rather than spurring one onwards.) Statements like Silliman’s “I routinely reject a half dozen comments every day that are sexist, homophobic or anti-Semitic. Moderating the comments stream at times makes me want to take a shower” smack of the kind of “unverifiable” governments routinely use to prop up security arguments. (Silliman’s odd brand of “govspeak” is evident, too, in awkward phrases like “gender rebalancing” and “the self-destructive credo of the poet-as-addict.”)

And I might add...you have just got to take a look at the photo at the bottom of that wonderfully wonderful acerbic wordfest with the caption:

Ron Silliman Caught Stowing Public Comments in a Bag