Buggeryville

I was debating whether to file a report here on what I saw of the Rethinking Poetics conference, which was only a success inasmuch as it was a complete failure, and will hopefully force those who thought they were going to rethink poetics to rethink their process of rethinking poetics. (Hint: If you really want to rethink something, don't ask a few of your friends to invite a few of their friends. That is not a good strategy for rethinking.)

Personally, I met a few interesting people and heard a few interesting talks (Ben Friedlander, Kasey Mohammad, Monica de la Torre, Mark Nowak, Joan Retallack, to name a few highlights) but I left halfway through the second day out of frustration and despair (though I especially regret not hearing the panel of Canadians later that day).

But -- well, surely anyone reading this has read Stephanie Young's report by now, but if not, it will give you the flavor of the event. And the fact that much of the discussion around the event has happened in Facebook suggests that Facebook is enabling the sort of closed-door power brokering (well, "power") of poetics that allows Marjorie Perloffs to roam the world clearcutting the landscape to exploit its resources. If I haven't jammed together too many metaphors there. The Facebookification of poetics conversation is enough to drive one to blog. Or at least tweet.

Anyway, I rambled on about this at Rodney Koerneke's blog, so you can read that if you want.

BAH.

UPDATE: Go read Michael Kelleher on all this. He says a lot of things I would say if I weren't so lazy.