reading the signs

I am awfully pleased with it, awfully awfully pleased with it. I don’t believe you do me more than justice but you do me a whole lot of justice…all literature is to me me, that isn’t as bad as it sounds. Some one complained that I always stopped while I was driving to read the sign posts even when I knew the road and all I could explain was that I am fond of reading…

—Gertrude Stein, letter to Edmund Wilson in response to his piece on her in Vanity Fair, Oct. 3, 1923. Quoted by Daniel Aaron in Commonplace Book, 1934-2012 (Pressed Wafer, 2015).

each is and thus defines

It is only in poem by written poem that poetry is defined.

new you know

One would think innovative and experimental work would be self-evident, but it seems necessary for some writers to describe their work that way.

slew of new

There seem to be an astounding number of innovative poets, all of them being ‘innovative’ all at once.