In Jef­frey Goldberg’s new “must-read” story about Israel and Iran, which I spent last night rant­ing about on Twit­ter, he con­cedes that “Israeli policy makers do not nec­es­sar­ily believe that Iran, should it acquire a nuclear device, would imme­di­ately launch it by mis­sile at Tel Aviv.” But he sug­gests that Israel might go ahead and bomb Iran anyway, and for three rea­sons. Prime min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu offers two of them:

“First, Iran’s mil­i­tant prox­ies would be able to fire rock­ets and engage in other terror activ­i­ties while enjoy­ing a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any con­fronta­tion that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, how­ever painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this devel­op­ment would embolden Islamic mil­i­tants far and wide, on many con­ti­nents, who would believe that this is a prov­i­den­tial sign, that this fanati­cism is on the ulti­mate road to triumph.”

The first reason seems at least min­i­mally defen­si­ble, even though it doesn’t take into account that deter­rence also affects con­ven­tional war­fare, since nei­ther side wants to see a minor scuf­fle get too far out of hand. The second reason, not so much: if mil­i­tant Muslim fanat­ics looked to the devel­op­ment of nuclear weapons as a sign from God to go more bat­shit bonkers than they already are—and that’s a big if—you would think they’d already found their clue in the com­ple­tion of Pakistan’s bomb. (And no, I don’t think the Shia/Sunni split helps the argument.)

But it’s the third reason Gold­berg cites that really caught my eye. It’s insane enough to need lengthy quo­ta­tion:

Dear Poetry Foundation:

You’ve always been good to me per­son­ally, and I hope you know that I appre­ci­ate much of what you do for the world at large—not least this, of course, but also this and this and this. And yet while I don’t want to get sen­ti­men­tal about what was always, except for a brief run, an uneven forum, it makes me a little sad that the old Har­riet had to die so that posts like this one could live.

I know that anno­tated link aggre­ga­tion is the wave of the inter­net future—er, let’s say present to near-past—and I rec­og­nize that you have far higher hopes for the Huff­in­g­ton Post’s book sec­tion (with PHOTOS!) than I’ll ever be able to muster, but I still can’t help but think you gave up a format that was orig­i­nal and often inter­est­ing for one that every­one else is repro­duc­ing ad infini­tum. (Though I didn’t rec­og­nize it at the time, it now seems strange to me that you cited Twit­ter and Face­book as rea­sons for retool­ing the blog to do pre­cisely those things that Twit­ter and Face­book are already good at: com­ment­ing on exist­ing material.)

And it’s not just format. Pos­si­bly I’m under­es­ti­mat­ing the ways in your schaden­freude about the Paris Review’s rejec­tion mis­take, the nau­se­at­ingly triv­ial “debate” over Ron Silliman’s com­ment policy, and Anis Shivani’s unal­loyed hack­i­tude are making the world a better place for poetry, but if so, I’ve yet read the argu­ment that con­vinced me. Like­wise with the run­ning record of poetry’s pop-​culture appear­ances. Poetry—the abstrac­tion, not the magazine—is not a star­let whose every public appear­ance has to be cap­tured for pos­ter­ity; if the art is to sur­vive, it will do so in the hands of read­ers, not paparazzi.

Anyway, I’m sure if we had the old Har­riet back tomor­row it wouldn’t take long before I ate these words, and that’s not the only reason I’ll prob­a­bly regret post­ing this note in, oh, about 43 min­utes. But still, and with sin­cere respect for your hard work, there’s my $0.02.

xo,

rpb

UPDATE (8/10/10): Well, it took a bit longer than 43 min­utes, but regret has come as pre­dicted. It’s not Harriet’s fault that the inter­net has gone sil­lier than usual lately, and it’s not her fault that it’s August and I’m chained to my desk with any kind of parole still at least a month away. I would like a higher class of ephemera to read in my off-​minutes online, but it’s no one’s respon­si­bil­ity to serve that up to me. Apolo­gies to all, espe­cially the Har­ri­eteers, for the grumbling.

Michael’s right that I find the scan­dale de Sil­li­man com­pletely point­less, but one small comet to achieve escape veloc­ity from the orbit of inanity is some­thing Robert Archam­beau posted today. Seems to me Bob is con­cerned not so much about Silliman’s com­ment policy as he is with why people care. He sug­gests that unknowns want these forums as a place to make them­selves known and says “we might lay the blame for the cur­rent state of affairs…on the attention-​economy of poetry, in which people want to be noticed any way they can”:

I think this attention-​seeking con­di­tion is endemic to the whole Amer­i­can poetry cul­ture now, and at root the issue is the sur­plus of supply (of poems, of opin­ions) com­pared to the demand. It is with poets as it is with aspir­ing Hol­ly­wood star­lets: there are a mul­ti­tude of them on the scene, hoping to be noticed, and few stunts are too low for some­one to stoop down to them. I haven’t seen any poets doing the “exposing under­wear while get­ting out of a limo” trick, but I’m sure it can’t be too far off — I just pray it isn’t Sil­li­man who goes there.

Which is a more-than-plausible, if not par­tic­u­larly novel, expla­na­tion for much of what gets oxygen in poet­ry­land. Bob pins the change on the internet:

When the dis­sem­i­na­tion of poems and com­men­tary was lim­ited by the tech­nol­ogy of print, rel­a­tively few people were able to dis­sem­i­nate their work, and they could imag­ine that the audi­ence for what they had to say was larger than the number of other pub­lish­ing writ­ers. Now every­one with a laptop can get their work out there, but get­ting it noticed amid the crowd is an issue…. Every­one is famous, now, to fif­teen people.

Here I’m less con­vinced. Remem­ber that in 1991, which has to count as pre-​internet by any mean­ing­ful mea­sure, Dana Gioia could write:

What makes the sit­u­a­tion of con­tem­po­rary poets par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing is that it comes at a moment of unprece­dented expan­sion for the art. There have never before been so many new books of poetry pub­lished, so many antholo­gies or lit­er­ary mag­a­zines. Never has it been so easy to earn a living as a poet…. A ‘famous’ poet now means some­one famous only to other poets. But there are enough poets to make that local fame rel­a­tively meaningful.

Even this latter isn’t a debate that I have the time or incli­na­tion to get into now, but I couldn’t help but think—because these days I’m only allowed to think—about Dante, and his own story of making a name for him­self among the young aes­thetes of 13th-century Florence.

If you’re in Hyde Park on Sat­ur­day, please come see me read my poems at Majel Con­nery’s fan­tas­tic Salon per­for­mance series.

On the Program:

Larry Zbikowski (guitar)
Harold Olivey (voice)
Michael Rob­bins (poetry)
Des Pickard (singer/songwriter)

at the home of
Sidney Nagel & Young-​Kee Kim
4913 S Kim­bark Ave.
Chicago, IL
7:30p doors
8:00p performances

& if you’re in Hyde Park tomor­row night, please come see Nick Demske & Gina Myers read their poems at Series A, at the Hyde Park Art Center!