Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Only in the Lit World

Only in the lit world are standards suspended, so that a nice guy apparatchik can win multiple awards and be eulogized nationally as a great poet while being hardly a poet at all.

It would be like in football if an inept friend of a team's owner were allowed to suit up and run with the ball during a game, and score, real players not permitted to touch him. Hey, he's a nice guy! A good friend of Ms. Thernstrom up in the owner's box. Let's give him the Super Bowl trophy while we're at it.

Isn't this how the lit world operates?

How much of this nonsense are we expected to stomach?

Line up the Academy's most awarded poets, Ashbery on down, I'll pick undergrounders who'll blow them out of the water.

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