"Briggflatts is a poem: it needs no explanation"
B A S I L B U N T I N G
I enjoy any book by or about
L A R R Y E I G N E R
including by academics going on & on
in the long run it seems where
the outsiders —
and Eigner was one,
like Philip Whalen —
will be rescued and petted
by the academic Red Cross
but perhaps keep in mind
what John Berryman
once wrote to Ezra Pound
then residing in St. Elizabeth's Hospital
far from the academy,
"Thirty years ago the
("intellectual") public knew nothing,
at present it is only too damned
apparently familiar with every-
thing — among others, with all
of you. . . There is a whole school
of now-academic criticism
to be broken down also (Ransom,
Winters Tate Blackmur Warren), which I
am convinced is stifling talent."
John Berryman 1947
________________
New Mexico, 2020
