A poetry blast from the past--how some of my cynicism developed.

From an old Cobalt Poets listing in the last decade.  Here's Richard Beban, one-time Hyperpoet, talking to Bowerbird Intelligentleman, performance poet, about me.  Beban gets in a shot at a poem of mine, that, interestingly enough, was published in the first Tebot Bach anthology SO LUMINOUS THE WILDFLOWERS (highlighting is mine):
Bird:

I'd have to agree with you about it being "certainly no worse
than much of the stuff out there." High praise from you.

Much of the stuff out there is also prosaic polemic, little
angry essays that probably work in high school "satire"
magazines, but bear little resemblance to crafted poetry.

Terry is a PROSE writer, Bird; there's little difference between
one of his angry posts and one of his angry "poems," generally
about failure in Hollywood.

Just because you break a line where you want it, instead of
where the typesetter wants it, that doesn't make you a poet.

It's truly hard to tell, in a McCarthy performance, where the
incohate rant stops and the poetry begins. And it's hard to
find the music, the poetic craft, on the page of one of his
chapbooks, either.

Here's a "list poem" from the Wildflower anthology that's
big on list and small on poem. Gee, it's a satire about
showbiz. Well beat me over the head with a Princeton New
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, I hadn't noticed how
deft and brilliant the satire was. (Last sentence satire.)

Aside from the occasional stabs at assonance and consonance
picked up and dropped so quickly they make me think they
were the kind of random typing accidents that happen
when monkeys try Shakespeare, show me the poetry in this piece:


Icarus' Itinerary

Fly high in the sky.
Allow wings to be melted
by the sun.
Fall to Earth.
Suffer painful injuries.
Hire a PR firm to do damage control.
Apologize to Jay, Dave, Conan,
Larry, Connie, lyanla,
Dr. Phil, Barbara and Oprah.
Confess past sins
to a sympathetic journalist.
Do a photo shoot for
VANITY FAIR.
Get a suspended sentence,
contingent on completing
200 hours of community service.
Go to a rehab center in Malibu.
Become clean and sober.
Get a new pair of wings.
Feel immortal.
Repeat all of the above.

> but richard, why do you keep blasting terry's work?
>
> while i haven't heard much of it, what i have heard
> seems to me to be at an acceptable level of quality,
> certainly no worse than much of the stuff out there.

>
> -bowerbird
>