I believe the stasguards, as I call members of the poetry establishment (from the ones in the Association of American Poets or teachings at Harvard, Yale or the like down to backwater English professors at places like Ripon College in Wisconsin), are afflicted by one or more of the following three provincialities: (1) indifference or hostility toward anything not verbal in a poem; (2) indifference or hostility toward the mechanics of poetry; and (3) indifference or hostility toward anything uncertified in a poem. Cummings's influence has been via visual, mechanical, unconventional (and still not certified) devices, in poetry outside the mainstream--in poetry in what I called the mimeostream in another entry of mine.

In my essay, I discuss these provincialities for a couple of pages, but I'm not at all satisfied with the way I do so. I'm clumsy, and too condescendingly hostile toward the . . . oafs who fail to recognize the value of Cummings or to so much as turn their attention briefly toward those influenced by him. I am, as almost always, neological, too, and don't have to be. I want to be entertaining, and only hostile enough toward the establishment to generate a little sizzle--friendly sizzle, if possible. Which wouldn't be hypocritical, since it's only in a few places in my outlook on contemporary poetry that I DESPISE those who are indifferent to me and my kind.

Ah, I'm beginning to see a possible organizing principle: I can blame the establishment's blindness to Cummings's influence on their ignorance of the mimeostream (a neology I will keep!). Then I can list the three provincialities, which I'll call "conditions," as what has caused their ignorance of the mimeostream. (I have been connecting indifference to the mimeostream only to their indifference or hostility toward the uncertified.) Okay, I may have it. I'll post what I come up with, at some point.