This week in the books section, I wrote about the Poet Populist and Poetry on the Bus programs. Here is the first paragraph:

Did you know that Seattle has an official Poet Populist, elected by internet vote? Did you know that Seattle's newly crowned Poet Populist, and the ninth person to be elected to the role, is named Mike Hickey? Now that you know, do you care?

In the comments field to that post, Bob Redmond, the head of the Poet Populist program, responded to my story. I'm actually going to run his whole comment here, because it seems fair to give him equal time. Plus, it's a funny and intelligent post:

Hi Paul,

Here are some _lengthy_ notes for you to consider on the Poet Populist piece. Thanks for giving attention to the program and generating conversation about some interesting questions.

1 - The candidates. Your readers should know that the candidates were nominated by local arts organizations, including 826 Seattle, ArtsCorps, CD Forum, Cheap Wine and Poetry, Jack Straw Productions, Vital 5 Productions, and 7 others. All of these organizations want to get the work of poets and writers into the public, so your criticism of "public poetry" as "almost always bad" is quite an indictment of these organizations and their constituents, not to mention 2500 voters. (Info at http://www.poetpopulist.org)

2 - The vote. I'm glad you liked the work of candidates Elizabeth Austen and Karen Finneyfrock; I hope you voted for one of them. You could have also supported their candidacy in SLOG or in the printed paper. You could have followed up on your idea before the election started to nominate Blue Scholars' Geologic and could have organized a write-in effort for him. If you did none of these things, especially vote, then you missed the point of the program: to offer people a way to get involved and make a difference.

3 - On "public" poetry: you say "Public poetry is almost always very bad." What's a logical response to this, if it were true? Either (a) poetry should not relate to the public; (b) poetry should not be read in public; or (c) only fascists should write poetry? But luckily, your assertion is not true: the history of poetry as a private practice is only a few hundred years old, while the whole history of poetry is thousands of years old, and most of that as a social enterprise.

4 - On comprehending poetry: you say "Poetry, by its very definition, is a difficult thing to write and to comprehend." Certainly you can't mean this, or perhaps you are simply uninformed. Since Mallarmé and especially since TS Eliot, perhaps, poetry's hallmark is to be difficult, but again this is recent history given the history of bards: the Odyssey was the equivalent of a pulp fiction bestseller or action-adventure flick, ditto Beowulf and the Eddas. The Canterbury Tales, the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost were intended to be blockbusters, not PhD theses. Shakespeare was not looking to mystify the objects of his love sonnets, nor is the work of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Ntozake Shange, Sharon Olds, Saul Williams, Li-Young Lee or in fact most poets worth their salt supposed to be incomprehensible or even that difficult. As for difficult to write, that's like saying if Usain Bolt didn't have a hard time winning the 100m dash, then he shouldn't really win, or if Mozart didn't have a hard time writing an opera, then nope, not genius. Of course, practice never hurt nobody, least of all an artist.

5 - On critics: Why do literary critics (and in fact critics in all arts except music) insist on incomprehension by the public as a criterion for success? Here's why: because maintaining such a criterion is job security for critics, who can then decode the art. First of all, the idea of "art" as a secular pursuit needing criticism and demystification is only 270 years old (since Baumgarten, Kant, Hegel, on through Lyotard). This short history is dwarfed by the hundreds of millennia that preceded it—in all cultures—and the object of art therein: as Tolstoy puts it (in "What Is Art"): "The business of art consists precisely in making understandable and accessible that which might be incomprehensible and inaccessible in the form of reasoning. Good art is always understood by everyone."

(The same book says this about critics: "Critics are the stupid discussing the clever," a definition, says Tolstoy, that "however one-sided, imprecise, and crude, still contains a partial truth, and is incomparably more correct than the one according to which critics are supposed to explain works of art.")
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So poetry should be comprehensible, and it is the audience's responsibility to communicate their degree of comprehension. Conversely and necessarily, artists should be beholden to their audiences, as you correctly quoted me. If an artist can't communicate with his or her audience, then—taking nothing away from their rights to express themselves—they don't deserve a public audience for that expression.

6 - On Spoken Word and Kenny G: You represent the program and poets reading in public as "spoken word poets." Five of the 13 candidates have experience doing spoken word; the rest do not. Nor do almost all of the 14 write-in candidates. I disagree that spoken word (which is a format) is qualitatively bad (in content). That's like saying that , OR that, god forgive me for saying this, that Kenny G is automatically that bad. Personally, I like Rahsaan Roland Kirk or Cannonball Adderley. But I wouldn't ban everyone everywhere from playing soprano, and if someone held an election, I'd vote for one of the good ones.

7 - On Nobility: you say that the program is a noble idea. Thanks for the sentiment, but it's not a noble idea at all. It's based on this regular, run-of-the mill idea: language lives among us, and like a good dog, we should treat it better.

8 - Correction: The goal of the program is not to support a medium or mediocrity, as you suggest, but to cultivate a relationship between artists and audiences, in effect instituting some accountability for public art. This actually sounds like something you would like—except perhaps that authority resides with the public. Since we live now more than ever in the age of open source and access, though—not to mention desperate times—I think you will not succeed in trying to serve as the arbiter of quality. The doors are way off those jambs…

So, yes—thanks for the coverage, however belated. See what you're generating though? (unless this long tome kills the thread). Next time, start this dialogue sooner! You could have had a big impact on the election and education of the general public about how we are (or are not?) important to the perception/ reception/ rejection/ appreciation of art.

You can comment on Bob's thoughts and mine over here.

There is an open mic today. There are no other readings. See yesterday's post for the importance of shopping at independent bookstores.

Here is Robert Anton Wilson talking with someone about his "IlluminAYtus TriloGEE" and conspiracy theories.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.