Perhaps we might label this particular strain the Hruska school, after the Senator of the same name who advocated just such a rationale during Supreme Court confirmations. I'm sure Parcelli would be less inclined to bother himself with the fits and starts of so-called contemporary poetry if there were venues in which to publish and discuss poetry and poetic concepts other than those that result from the vagaries of one's personal interactions or lack thereof. Perhaps if creative writing departments were something other than conveyor belts and actually encouraged novice poets to energetically engage the body of poetical work that precedes them, sophisticated artists like Parcelli wouldn't waste the time or the effort in belaboring the obviously contrived work of poets exemplified by Robert Hass, a former recipient of the good government seal of approval. I wouldn't want Parcelli to turn his withering gaze in my direction and dismiss my work as a desperate and flabby concoction . Perhaps Parcelli is angry because Bob Perelman isn't.
E poetry is well documented.
Perhaps the questions that arise from the dead are too embarrassing. The commonplace epiphanies of personal experience which Parcelli claims shackles these poets are only so by virtue of the unexceptional nature of what tends to be sought after. From my viewpoint, the only ambition of importance is in the demand that art be allowed to continue to develop its capacity to express its contact with the real . If art is trivialized or compromised, so too are the perspectives it provides and the criticism it engenders. The passivity of the Moyers' coterie is directly related to the solipsistic models by which they were indoctrinated in creative writing programs, the proliferation of said programs occurring principally to inflate the departmental body count following the precipitous drop in enrollments that resulted from the reduction of English requirements that occurred in the Sixties and Seventies.