Ah, the Internet, where anyone can express an opinion however vociferously. It makes one long for the days before virtuality. Trolls. And print. I still enjoy reading books and magazines and recently learned of Renaissance poet Laura Battiferri in an excellent article by art critic Peter Schjeldahl, whom I admire greatly.

PETER IS A POET

“Art has many mansions,”
according to Peter Schjeldahl.
“Today the most compelling
tend to the tumbledown.”
I ponder “tumbledown”
and how it applies.
Are we to the point
where we ache for the past so badly,
we plaster on anything
vintage or gaudy?

Interrupted by a ding-
I forgot to turn off Notifications-
a comment from a supposed friend
taking umbrage with a quote I’d posted.
“In a sense we haven’t got an identity
until somebody tells our story.
The fiction makes us real.”-Robert Kroetsch.
DF: So Harry Potter is real? Lots of books
about him. How about Spiderman?
Ask a 10-year-old. Both are pretty fucking
real to that crowd.

DF: Huh?
No doubt Kroetch meant “real” figuratively.
DF employs the word, “bullshit.”
It’s vital to explain my folly, prove his point.
Troll. I don’t type “troll.”
I may curse like a laid-off oil rig worker
but refrain from further verbal engagement,
employ the Block option.
I can live without winning,
will take my triumphs elsewhere,
return to the New Yorker
and Schjeldahl’s The Medici at the Met
to marvel.

Oh, he’s a poet as well as a critic,
according to Wikipedia.
The highest form of literature.
Explains his facility with language.
I highlight resonant phrases in yellow:
“…virtuosic artifice.”
Yes, feigning demands feigning well,
going for the gusto.
“…ornamenting a milieu of preening style
and often freewheeling Eros,”
a reference to the Medici state.

Helldogs. Vulgate.
I must use those!
“…accidently burlesque ways.”
I wish to employ “burlesque” thusly
but these days most people
associate the term with strippers
instead of its true meaning, “parody.”

Misogyny.
I suspect that’s DF’s problem.
I dared to eschew
“…the golden circle of his regard.”