This Genre

It’s true that back in the day a guy could get arrested for writing this genre. Go ahead: check FBI records if you don’t believe me. That was before my time, granted, but I’ve heard about it. They’d wait for you on the corner.

“That looks like some funny enjambment you got there.” And: “We’re taking you in.”

Still, if you ask me, I’ve been rereading some of the old timers, and some of these guys were arrested without cause. Far too prolix. It was short essays they wrote, not prose poems. It was cryptic narratives at best.

If you ask me.

Thing is, one needs to wreck the china shop with the smallest possible bull--a bull the size of a shoe, but still recognizable as bull.

You step in the door, you set the bull down, and already shelves begin to fall.

That’s what this crime is about, David Lehman. Your anthology is way too fat. Most of these guys, they'd never get into Sing Sing.

E.M.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.