Joshua and Ange are circling the issue of poetic agency, agenda, agonistes, agin it, ag ag ag ag (Popeye laugh).

I think what I said in the car was that we poets put ourselves six or seven launches back when we compare the impact we make on the culture at large with that made by musicians, filmmakers, fictionwriters, advertisers.

Concepts are fragile, much like sculptures. Parts break off. What stays, though, passes for permanent. When Kenneth's collected arrives, though, I won't have to paraphrase from memory: Poetry, which is written while no one is looking, is meant for all time. I always assumed that meant speaking to a moment so utterly completely that they'd have to come up with a new kind of Hot 100 chart to handle the intensity. You know, Howl and The Waste Land.

I'm probably not hearing the conversation correctly, but if we're passing the cup to raise funds to keep poetry innocent of our insidious moment, I can't help you. If we're saying the poem probably won't sound like "What do we want?/Immortality?/When do we want it?/Now!" then we all know how seriously to take poetry's internal politics.

Considering this conversation was set off by the two most ambitious poets I know -- for their work, I mean, not for the trinkets of the circuit -- I'd say we've been put on alert: time to build your bonfires and make your noise.