Please Write Poetry

Good morning. Fence has over the past recent years been implicated, or included, in a number of references to some kind of idea of "hybrid" form in poetry or of a "third way," for example here (post dated 3/22, toward the end of it). The problem with relating these notions to Fence lies in that they are prescriptive, and proscriptive, and Fence is never that, is none of that, will have no part in that. A hard thing to articulate about Fence--but it is done in slow motion throughout our under-read collection A Best of Fence, if you're interested--is that while Fence has functionally represented writing from the proposed two-party system, acting as a kind of vessel of containment--or more obviously as a fence upon which it all can sit together--really the positivist support Fence wishes to give is not to some new "third" or hybrid kind of writing but rather to the continuous impulse that has been there all along and has shown itself throughout centuries, in various landscapes and cultural productions, to write however the F**K one feels like writing, free from overdetermining forces. Of course, the way one feels is determined by all sorts of forces, including the personally historical, the socially ideological, how late one stayed up, and the poetry one read. But remains inviolable for all that. Not to be denied. And that's how the beautiful subjectivity lives on, holding hands with the stunningly tumescent cultural materiality. Just back from AWP, and dealing with the strong desire to continue putting books in people's hands that way forever. I'm not supposed to use Harriet as a way to sell books, so please go on over to the Fence Blog for this same post with a little extra link. Our comments field is active, and though I don't promise to respond I will of course be interested in anything anyone has to say.