I’m not sure how many times you read this book. I would like to suggest you re-examine The Ancient Book of Hip.

If you put these poems together like a puzzle, I think you will find that they each become more clear, and the longer you spend with the book the more you will get out of them. What you’ve done here is criticized a concept album for having incomplete songs. I repeat: the album is the song.

That, to me, is poetry, and if it can be accomplished without form, line, diction, pacing, structure, allusion, metaphor, rhyme, voice, stanzas, and political consciousness——then it’s that much closer to the source of creation. If that isn’t your goal … why are you writing poetry?

I do invite you to answer this here or directly to me @ karpekarp@gmail.com, or I wouldn’t ask. Thanks.