21 May 2004. Orr, to continue my rant of the past two or three days, gets my goat one more time when he muses about Dennis as "a poet so conscious of the sorrow of lost chances (who) would sometimes shy away from taking them in his own poems." I shouldn't be bothered. Orr is just repeating his belief that poets should take what I call anthroceptual or people-related chances in their poems, and his easy assumption that taking such chances is what poetry is all about. No hint he is aware that it's possible to take technical chances in poetry. Subject matter and point of view. "Sensitivity," meaning, it would seem, sensitivity to human problems much more than sensitivity to words, and the latter infinitely more than sensitivity to what can be done with fresh techniques.

That's all I have to say about Orr's review. I don't feel I did a very good job on it. I hope to improve, then integrate what I've written into the "State of Conemporary American Poetry" I've mentioned and believe I may be slowly writing. Meanwhile, to make up for the shortness of this entry so far, and its probable duddity, I have--yes!--another neology for you! It's my replacement for "plainlay": "plainrune." I probably thought of "rune" years ago but discarded it because of its connotations of antiquity and bardic magnitude. But it's probably best to avoid the jokes of the kind of attention-deficit high-schoolers of all ages who can't let a word like "plainlay" pass without sitcommocking it (as two so far have at New-Poetry). I intend the term to mean any conventional free verse poem. "Iowa plainrune" is my tentative label for what many in poetry know as the "Iowa Workshop Poem," or serious contemporary freeverse poem most used by poets published by commercial and university presses. I continue hunting for a substitute for "Iowa," though. "Arch plainrune?" I dunno. I suspect I'll keep "Iowa," rationalizing that it give the term a touch of color, and follows the precedent of the attachment of "Italian" to "sonnet." I do want the term to come to represent a form almost as exactly as "Italian sonnet" represents the form it names.