[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.

[Part one of this con­ver­sa­tion is here.]

John Bradley: Now, I wonder if you could talk more about my pre­vi­ous point, if you don’t mind going back to it: that polit­i­cal fig­ures are more deserv­ing of satire. They run for public office and know­ingly enter the tor­nado zone of public wrath. Writ­ers, how­ever, don’t deserve such scorn as they are not really public fig­ures. And their book photos should be off limits. Crit­i­cize the writ­ing or lit­er­ary move­ments, but not how a writer appears. That’s too easy and per­haps cruel. And don’t epi­grams about poets, epi­grams that name par­tic­u­lar poets, rein­force in some way the figure of Authorship?

Kent John­son: Only in the sense, I’d say, that words like “queer” or “nigger” rein­force big­otry when retaken and wielded openly in the faces of the bigoted…

[Ed. Note: A ver­sion of this exchange between Kent John­son and John Bradley appeared in Plantarchy #5, 2008. Thanks to Justin Katko for per­mis­sion to reprint. John Bradley is the author of Ter­res­trial Music (Curb­stone), War on Words (BlazeVOX), and You Don't Know What You Don't Know (Cleve­land St. Univ. Poetry Center, forthcoming).]

“Only those deserv­ing of scorn are appre­hen­sive of it.”
– La Rochefou­cauld

John Bradley: You’ve recently pub­lished a book titled Epi­grami­ti­tis: 118 Living Amer­i­can Poets (BlazeVOX, 2006), a large gath­er­ing of epi­grams and accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures ded­i­cated to indi­vid­ual con­tem­po­rary poets. You’re now expand­ing it to fifty or so more. I think it’s safe to say there hasn’t been any­thing like this in poetry for a long time.

I’ve been think­ing about the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of social and polit­i­cal satire with news­pa­per, online, and book ver­sions of The Onion. On TV, there’s South Park, The Daily Show, The Col­bert Report, and a BBCA show called The Thick of It. In film, there’s Bull­worth, Wag the Tail, Thank You for Smok­ing, and Borat. Amer­i­cans seem fairly com­fort­able with social and polit­i­cal satire, but not with lit­er­ary satire, specif­i­cally satire that goofs on writ­ers. What do you make of this curi­ous dichotomy? Is the poet seen as off limits? What con­tem­po­rary poets have been effec­tively employ­ing satire? Is it pos­si­ble that poetic satire is more accepted when it mocks social trends or celebri­ties as opposed to par­tic­u­lar writ­ers, lit­er­ary move­ments, and poetry politics?

Kent John­son: Yes, it’s an inter­est­ing thing.