just say it

“In this essay I propose to study the development of...,” is an example of what makes academic essays insufferable.

ups and downs

He wrote his dissertation on the variations in iambic modulation.

I know (of) it well

There are long poems that are read and there are long poems that have reputations but aren’t read.

canon content

The canon is made of many great poems and a certain number of academic study pieces.

denatured

Definition of “necropastoral”: The uneasy feeling a professor-poet gets standing at the edge of a woods abutting the campus.

impress

Most academics don’t recognize university presses as a form of vanity publication.

at one remove

A professor so steeped in secondary sources, one could imagine a student leaving a poem on his desk and him not recognizing what it was.

little to unlearn

[Basil Bunting’s] reading (meaning here his perusal of books) was not uncommonly wide, it was even more uncommonly exact and readily recalled. Always intense and personal his response to any writing was determined by the pleasure and interest it afford him. The absence of this factor makes the academic study of literature a hollow sham, its presence a test of character and truthfulness. Bunting’s taste was formed early: he had a lot to discover but little to unlearn. His revaluation of the canon was more radical than Pound’s and less erratic.

—Kenneth Cox, “Basil Bunting,” The Art of Language: Selected Essays by Kenneth Cox (Flood Editions, 2016), edited and introduced by Jenny Penberthy.

syllabus poetry

From the moment it was written it was syllabus poetry. A 'text' that went straight to academe without even a passing wave to an audience.

harking to the barking

Another ivory tower academic harkening to the strains of street-level poetry.