29 April 2004. A few days ago I got a form letter from The Academy of American Poets signed by Liz Bennett, whoever she is, soliciting a donation. A postage-paid envelope was included, so I used it to send Liz the following message, "Hey, Liz, I'm a poet. I therefore can't understand why you people continually ask me to support your campaign against poetry." I sent the Academy the same message back when Richard Wilbur was personally asking me for money. I guess it got lost.

The usually automatic response of a stasguard, as I now call the kind of mediocrity who spends his life guarding the status quo in a field, to criticisms of some bastion in his field is the cry of, "Sour Grapes, Sour Grapes." Because mediocrities and submediocrities have no sense of logic, they actually believe a person's motives for attacking (but not for defending) an established belief system, or its adherents, have something to do with the validity of the person's attack. Sour grapes usually do come into it. In my case, it's a case of sour grapes on behalf of several significant schools of poetry, though, not just on my own behalf. However, let me say that I do believe absolutely that I deserve to be in The Academy of American Poets more than ninety percent of those in it, and as much as any of the rest. (Not only that, but I don't consider myself boasting when I say that.) There are others, such as Karl Kempton and John M. Bennett, whom I believe more deserve to be in it than I, but that's another story. Taking myself alone as an example, I would be interested to know from some member of the Academy why my presumption errs.

My reasons for claiming it does not are that (1) I am the leading proponent of mathematical poetry in this country (so far as I know) and probably of the world--if only because I've made more serious mathematical poems than anyone else but also because, it seems to me, I'm qualitatively among the top three or four in the field (albeit, a very tiny field); (2) I am an important visual poet (i.e., among the top hundred in the field--as judged by my colleagues); (3) I have been significantly innovative infraverbally in my solitextual poems; (4) even my conventional solitextual poems, in my view, are as good as the best solitextual poems of at least half the present members of the Academy of American Poets; (5) I have written useful prose about poetry.

Points against me? (1) I have been ignored by the certifiers. (2) My output has been sparse. (3) I am not a stasguard. (4) I may be, in the judgement of others, a lousy poet.

Okay, now to be considerate and add some constructive criticism. But, no, I have to go to work. I'll make my additions in my next entry. They'll concern some of my ideas on how to improve organizations like the Academy of American Poets.