Dear Mr. Pinsky,

Welcome to Poems Fray...which hasn't been the most sedate of places of late, explaining in part why I haven't been on it (the other part has been insane busy-ness). I hope you have the time to answer some questions I've been longing to ask you for a long time.

I don't know how much you've read the Fraysters' comments in the years I've been here, but surely you must know something about the reactions of many of us to the Tuesday Poems (especially many of those of yesteryear). Some of them were so impenetrable, and in the end seemingly so meaningless and/or even unethical, that some of us (often with me holding the banner in the charge) started calling them the Tuesday Tripe. Perhaps the defining example of the genre was a poem called "Gossamer", an epic piece of irrelevance published the week of 09/26/2007. This was one of those poems that triggered what has become known as my (in)famous "parody gene" (these days most often expressed to the tune of "Home on the Range"), and you may find the thread that resulted here (in imitation of "Bud Light: Real Men of Genius").

Mr. Pinsky, I've seen you write some very deft posts here today, showing a great flexibility and (to me) a surprising fairness of mind. I've seen some good to top-notch contemporary poems that you've posted in other media (usually thanks to MaryAnn reposting them here). My questions (as best as I can phrase them in short order) are:

1) Why did you spend so many years posting poems taken (so far as many of us could see) from the slush pile of so many authors (especially since we sometimes could see much better ones by the same authors posted by you elsewhere?
2) We thank you for the general improvement in quality of content and accessibility in form in the Tuesday Poems, but I'm still left wondering: would you agree that the primary function of poety is to communicate? If so, then why do you seem to favor contemporary poetry that fails so badly at that primary function?

(Great poetry of the past and the present -- I often submit -- is like an onion. There is an outer level that can appeal to everyone. Go deeper, and one finds layers that can be appreciated by those with the training and experience to appreciate it. My academic specialty -- such as it is -- is biblical Hebrew poetry, or more properly melopoesis: very onion-like indeed.)

3) This week's poetry certainly communicates clearly, and thus its form follows its function. But I ask rhetorically: at the end of the day, what are we left with? Doesn't its subject matter fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy (what is, is good, or at least is worth discussing)? What about the ancient ethic that "it is a shame even to speak of what they do in secret"? In other words, our ancestors (even not all that long ago) used to understand that poetry, like music, has moral power, and should be treated accordingly. Why have contemporary poets abandoned that ethic? Why (apparently) have you? Or have poets done so, and are they rather twisting it to make what should not be accepted, acceptable? (And it's a sign of our times that the below is a relatively mild example: part of "growing up" for too many. I regret my own exposure, trust me.)

These are honest questions. I'm not trying to hector you. I'm just expressing things that I've consistently expressed in one form or another for a long time, as many here (and some no longer here) will testify. Now I get to do it face-to-face, not behind your back. I look forward to seeing your response.

Sincerely,
White_Rabbit

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We read lingerie as lingering.
An innocent mistake, yes, though

we didn't dally in Patel's humid
newsstand amid hanks of cigared

tobacco and men in coveralls logger-
heading with the Pennsylvania Lotto

to expand our budding tongues
but to confuse the single shelf

of cryptograms and crosswords
with the candied shelves of pornos.

Despite our lousy decoding, we
proved adept disrobers, kid-minds

keen to peel what we'd later call satin
from skin like we peeled bright, waxy

clementines slipped in our stockings,
our reward for a year of skirting Satan.

Nonchalant as bubble gum, we thumbed
them cover to cover, lingered, elbowed

one another while we dittoed each
sweet image deep in memory's folds:

love's coy postures, saddle-stapled.
And that is how we imagined

it would be for us on those winter
afternoons: flimsy resistance, a finger's

steady pressure, the split of soft fruit.
We'd puzzle over language later.

For now, we had more important
things on our hands to misread.