[Part one of this con­ver­sa­tion is here; part two is here.]

John Bradley: Robert Pinsky’s “Dissed in Verse: The Art of the Poetic Insult,” recently pub­lished in Slate, offers a short but infor­ma­tive his­tory of the “insult” poem. He includes this mar­velous exam­ple, from Poems from the Greek Anthol­ogy, trans­lated by Dudley Fitts, sup­pos­edly writ­ten by the Emperor Trajan:

Lift sun­ward your con­sid­er­able nose,
Fling wide the’abyss of your mouth,
And you’ll make a pre­sentable sun-​dial for all who pass by.

I was sur­prised to find Edward Lear, of all people, boldly mock­ing him­self, and how T.S. Eliot, trying to pay homage to Lear by mock­ing Eliot, utterly lacks the verve and nerve of Lear. But I wonder why Pinsky doesn’t include any con­tem­po­rary “diss­ing.” He must not have read Epigramititis.

Kent John­son: I was glad to see the essay. He did give some good war-​horse exam­ples. But my ques­tion to Pinsky is, “So what’s hap­pened to in-your-face, poet to poet satire?” He never men­tions that it’s vir­tu­ally non-​existent on the scene today.

No, I don’t think he knows about Epi­grami­ti­tis, where there is a poem for him. The photo accom­pa­ny­ing it is of a questionable-​looking used car salesman…

Now, let me say again, this has noth­ing to do with Robert Pinsky as a person–nor even as a poet, speak­ing in the main. I mean, Pinsky is a gifted, very intel­li­gent man, I don’t think many people doubt that. But talent or per­son­al­ity have noth­ing to do with it: He has a star­ring role in the whole insti­tu­tional drama titled “Poetry Biz and Its Dis­con­tents,” and the soap opera (post-​avant poets as the token minor­ity char­ac­ters) is just awful–a tragi­com­edy of stupid plot and embar­rass­ingly cheap scenery. Exactly what used auto­mo­biles have to do with it, admit­tedly, I’m not cer­tain, but I sus­pect there is some con­nec­tion there…

JB: The use of illus­tra­tions in your book could be the sub­ject of another dis­cus­sion, on the use of visual rhetoric. Let me repeat, for what it’s worth, that across from the Pinsky epi­gram there’s a photo of a whistling gen­tle­man in fedora, white shirt, and tie. He appears to be a used car sales­man. But to get back to our topic. . . There’s been some fine satire writ­ten by women poets over the eras. But it seems there is a mas­cu­line pre­pon­der­ance in the genre. Any thoughts on that?

KJ: I’d say it’s largely a matter of patri­ar­chal his­tory, which unfor­tu­nately has struc­tured poetry as it does soci­eties at large. But I don’t think it has any­thing to do with the nature of satire proper. Sexism in our trade is a vast and vul­ner­a­ble field for ridicule, obvi­ously. Let it fly on ter­ri­ble wings, I say. And may names get named. But most women poets, like most men poets, are extremely pro­fes­sional and cau­tious these days. One must be, at best, indi­rect. It’s very sad. But it’s cer­tainly not because women are “nicer” or some­thing. Some of the most cut-​throat, back­stab­bing, nasty people in the poetry world happen to have vaginas.

JB: Is there ever a sit­u­a­tion when humor is inap­pro­pri­ate? Where it’s funny partly because it dares to be polit­i­cally incor­rect, but then it can also be inappropriate?

KJ: This is tough… Maybe one of the other things that good satire does is help clar­ify the ways humor is always con­tin­gent and con­tex­tual. We can laugh at cer­tain times and in cer­tain places. The lance of honest Satire is aimed—and this is why it’s hon­estly funny when it hits– at people who have hypocrisy, dirt, and cru­elty in their hearts (as we all do) but who shame­lessly dis­sim­u­late blame­less­ness and good inten­tions. Like mem­bers of the Bush cab­i­net, for obvi­ous exam­ple. Or to take an exam­ple–let’s say a purely hypo­thet­i­cal one–from poetry: a poet who claims to be guided by the prin­ci­ples of an ancient reli­gion, and who pro­claims widely for its com­pas­sion­ate prin­ci­ples, citing scrip­ture, etc, and who uses this as cloak for oblique but elab­o­rate defama­tion of another poet, because he per­ceives that such thinly veiled char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion will curry him favor with cer­tain “inside” groups on the scene.

And, of course, he will win favor, since the poet he is defam­ing has strongly cri­tiqued the poet­ics and cliquish prac­tices of these “inside” groups. I mean, I’m just talk­ing off the top of my head here, but this would be a the­atri­cal exam­ple of the wide-​scale shadow barter that is now indi­vis­i­ble, as under­belly, from the poetry market of the United States. Again, this all goes back to the ways that Autho­r­ial iden­tity has become ever-​more fetishis­tic com­mod­ity within the poetic econ­omy, its sex drive, so to speak. Per­ver­sions proliferate.

It all gets quite ugly. Every­one knows–hush-​hush–that it goes on reg­u­larly. And that’s cer­tainly one of the most impor­tant func­tions of the satirist: to bring to light the very mean-​spiritedness, the manip­u­la­tive position-​taking, that sub­tends the cozy, polite, fake pro­to­cols that struc­ture sys­tems of cul­tural power. And to accept, with equa­nim­ity and good humor, the price for doing so…

But let me ask you here: How do you feel about putting, as you have with your last book, words in the mouth of a world-​famous poet, having him say things he never really said? Talk about cheek­i­ness! And what has been his reac­tion to your transgression?

JB: Silence. Tomaz Sala­mun has yet to respond, at least to me, on his thoughts on the pub­li­ca­tion of War on Words. I have mixed feel­ings about my “act of trans­gres­sion.” I hope Sala­mun has a good laugh and sees the parody as it was intended, as the ulti­mate com­pli­ment of his poetry. And, of course, I worry that some read­ers might mis­un­der­stand what I’ve done, see it as ridicule. There’s always that risk. And yet this risk is what gives satire its sting, makes a reader go, “I can’t believe he said that.” Or am I totally mis­char­ac­ter­iz­ing it?

KJ: I say if the man can’t take a big com­pli­men­tary zinger, then screw him. Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll sue you.

JB: Well, as I said, he’d be suing some­one who is merely doff­ing his hat. But going back to Epi­grami­ti­tis: In its “Author’s Note,” you state: “This book is fated to be assid­u­ously ignored by the Poetry Estab­lish­ment, ‘main­stream’ and ‘exper­i­men­tal,’ the two sides of its ancient coin… This is to be expected, espe­cially from the ‘exper­i­men­tal’ side, where silence has been raised (imag­ine silence being ‘raised’—what could that mean?) to the level of an Occult Art.” Why the pre­dic­tion? Has it been greeted with arctic silence?

KJ: In fact, I am delighted to have been so vision­ary there. There have been some reviews, and more dis­cus­sion of the book is forth­com­ing, I believe. A couple of the reviews have been quite neg­a­tive, com­plain­ing that the poems are “clunky” (uh, hello?) and that (even fun­nier) they don’t rhyme in 18th cen­tury fash­ion. But silence has been the bulk of it. I’m clear that most poets, espe­cially younger ones, ner­vous as they are of their posi­tions, are bound to remain mum on a book like this. That’s OK. And there is, too, a heavy dose of dis­sem­bled indif­fer­ence from cer­tain man­i­fest quar­ters. That dimen­sion of the silence is most amus­ing and sat­is­fy­ing. Better than any loud, anx­ious complaint… So yes, I meant it. And like any other sorry fail­ure, I enjoy being–every once in a blue moon–correct.