Membership, Authenticity, Historicity

I like this post of Tony's. The immediacy of poetry is exactly what draws me to it. I think this immediacy is what we have poetry for.

Memberships, authenticies and histories are what politics is for.

They are what poetry is against, if you will. Or, less polemically, what poetry is up against, what it faces/voices.

I don't find the political intention (or inside joke) of any poetic project illuminating when declared outside the work itself.

But I do think that the poems I read are immediately up against my own politics, i.e., membership, authenticity, historicity in regard to non-literary matters.

That is just to say that I engage with poems subjectively, i.e., from within the present state of my subjugation.

The didactic mission of the grammarian (the editor) is to improve the immediacy of language. To sharpen the edge of subjugation.