WhimsyLand

When I was younger, I used to drive over to Wally Ryder's house and go through the new edition of Britannica with him.  It had a set of Macropedia that was organized in accord with a hierarchy for all human knowledge that was printed in the first volume.  I was pretty sure that by this age, I would know all there was to know about everything.  For years, I would go to bed with a volume of the Britannica, reading about some Burmese bird or the Three False Dimitrys.  Time went by, as it does, and eventually I realized that most of the knowledge I retained, even the work from my graduate degrees, was the recognizable surface of the original understanding.  I might be absolutely certain that I understood partial differential equations, but when I actually had to do the math with Ky, I would stop short and say "Hell, how did that work again?".  The same seems to be true of macroeconomics, 19th century history, and poets I've read more than five years ago.  That's why Billy Collins' Forgetfulness is so perfect for those of us in this state:

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

It is also why I read BC's introduction to this year's BAP with more forbearance than most of my blogroll would, Seth in particular.  I have come to the point where my worldview is a structure which, though flexible, requires significant evidence to make me rearrange things. One consequence of this is what Junie would call a certain degree of opinionated stance, a debating technique in which one throws out a certainty just to see what the esteemed opposition has to say that may modify my view.  One reason I read BC's introduction with more smiles than rancor is that he doesn't seem to be afraid, at this stage in his life, to say what seems to be pretty obvious, even if it rankles a few sensitive feathers.  How can you read his suggestion that the NEA fund poets to lay fallow for a year without cracking up?  What aspect of his statement that "much of what's published isn't worth reading" disagrees with your view of modern poetry?  My guess, having read a whole lot of poetry blogs in the last two years is:  not much.  The difference, of course, is what poetry should have been consigned to the dustbin and what should have dominated the litmags — but that's a whole different issue, and one in which, for example, CDY, Seth, TT, Clover, and Silliman (just to name a few) would disagree. 

Anyway, more on that in the coming days.  I drove over to Borders and it's not on the shelves yet.  Jimmy must have connections, or perhaps Lehman makes sure the New York market gets it first.  I have to update my databases and report back on the current statistics vis a vis aesthetic, gender, age, and establishment suckup factors.  Having read the list of final 75, it's pretty clear that this is a slightly more conservative issue, leaving room for Mary Oliver and Charles Simic.  Lest you forget, Mary Oliver is one of the best-selling poets in America.  So do you leave her out?  In other words, is BAP the Academy Awards or the Sundance Film Festival.  Beats me, I just do the numbers.