Although I supposedly occupy an opposing position to Foley's in the notoriously divided landscape of contemporary poetry, his theoretical essays have changed and expanded my sense of the cultural moment. Although genuinely learned, Foley's theoretical essays are in no sense academic articles. They are not even conventional essays in the sense of offering a single linear argument. Like the critical work of Marshall McLuhan or Ezra Pound, two writers he admires, Foley's prose proceeds by contrast and allusion, juxtaposition and suggestive leap. He is a master of that most difficult and often abused form, experimental prose, because he understands that good innovative writing is not only original but also interesting.
Artists are usually the first to pick up the vibrations of cultural change.
Consequently, major shifts in poetics are usually registered first by practicing artists with a reflective bent. The artist witnesses something surprising in his or her own creative process or milieu that current theory does not explain or accommodate. Kafka, Borges, and Beckett preceded Kristeva, Barthes, and Baudrillard. And will also survive them. If Foley is a provocative and original theorist, he is also always a writer.