I heard Kent Johnson read "Baghdad Exceeds Its Object" last March. He is a powerful performer, but, as I noted at the time, the text (go to the archives of Octopus and find issue 3 — horrible design for navigation) gives little clue to that performance. I'd go hear Johnson read at any convenient opportunity, but I haven't the slightest inclination to buy or even read a borrowed copy of his Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz (available from effing press, if you feel differently).
Look, my major problem with Bill Clinton is that he was a little to the right of Richard Nixon on many issues I care about. I despise the incompetence of the current administration as much as I am appalled by its arrogance, and I'm bitterly angry at the apparent lies told to the American people and to the UN in an effort to legitimize our invasion of Iraq.
But to imply an equivalence between Bush and the disaster in Iraq, on the one hand, to Hitler and the Holocaust, on the other, is ludicrous and shameful. To attempt to lend seriousness to such tripe by borrowing the empty posturing masquerading as thought in Adorno's infamous pronouncement is intellectual cowardice. Those on the left who do so — and Kent Johnson is far from alone and far from the worst offender, especially among poets and other artists, especially among the self-styled avant garde — they are on no higher moral ground than were Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson when they claimed that 9/11 was their god's punishment for American toleration of homosexuals.
Travel tomorrow, and back to poetry on Friday.
Update 8/11/2005: At Stormy Petrel, Harry doesn't like the title either.
7:24:09 PM 
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