Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

laid to rest. And as a new generation of students arrives on the scene, I’ve
learned that they have no problems with the "meanings," in, say, Lyn’s Oxota,
which my theory class at Stanford read last year and loved. There were a
number of Russians in the class and they were especially pleased by their
"shock of recognition." Their finding the persons and places they know well in
this book.
As for Rimbaud’s "dereglement de tous les sens," I’d say that it’s very different
from the projects of the L poets even as it is from Corn’s own poetry. The point
of comparison has to be not a great poet of the 19th C (Blake, Rimbaud etc.)
whom we can all agree on but what is happening NOW. And here there’s just
no use saying that there are no differences.
I’m sorry to sound like an old grouch on this one. But I feel that as an outsider
(i.e. not a poet) I can say some of these things: to wit, that until the system of
prize-giving and award-giving changes appreciably, there is no use pretending
that the Establishment Doesn’t Exist.