Exhibit a) you say that we shouldn't see the world obliquely through simile and metaphor, but your favorite 20th-Century American poet is ... John Ashbery? WTF! Oh yeah, Ashbery never uses metaphor... That "convex mirror," that "wave" that "flow chart"--those were things as they are (not played upon the blue guitar). When it comes to avoidance of metaphor, your boy should be Dr. Williams, but then again, even he succumbed to the urge, as in "The Yachts."

"How many times have you lied about a poem?" is the question Poetry Snark asks, and it's a good question.

As a former English major, I gotta love this site. It's like Television without Pity for poets. Don't miss last week's dust-up with Exquisite Corpse. I should add that I discovered this site via the more serious Contemporary Poetry Review newsletter.