Steven Fama, the world’s #1 John Olson fan, is at it again with a brilliant new review of Olson’s latest. How bout this cherry-picked quote on poetics:
“You favored a type of poetry that was wild and surreal. A poetry full of phantasmagoria and fugitive meaning. The poetry of delirium. A poetry that did not point in one direction but in many directions. A poetry that capitalized on the inherently hallucinatory properties of language. It had been your experience that most people did not care for this type of poetry. People preferred a more transparent poetry which presented a single lyrical emotion in an anecdotal setting. The bland and acceptable poetry which was generally featured on NPR, read by Garrison Keillor, and got all the NEA grants.