I have decided

                                         
                                             
 outside of what I've been doing--placing a .txt copy
of each of my posts in an appropriate offline folder--
that in spite of the inevitability of the structuring of
canons by individuals and groups of individuals, I favor
saving as much as can reasonably be saved.  Why?
Because canons, whether they are compendiums
arrived at by popular acclamation or by the aesthetic
stance of this one / that one / these / those, cannot
be other than interesting introductions, and because
the course of every human's death journey is of value
beyond any vaunted canonicity.  Death begins at birth.
Therefore, death is the only life worth living.  Thus
one should try to live for as long as one rationally
can since it is not possible to know what engendering
encounters will occur before that moment one actually
dies.                                               
                                                     
To be clear:  I am not against canons or manifestoes
or explications.  Interesting introductions are fine by me.
I have several such in this blog's Poetry Oases section.    
My barriers are these:  
1) a general openness which dissuades me from  
adopting a method other than what emanates from   
the thing being made/ even when I have chosen
beforehand/ the form of that thing/ because
words are wicked wonders/ often having designs
of their own 
2) as widely as I have read, over the years I
have drifted in and out of realms pertaining to
poetry, and so have read less widely in those
realms than I otherwise would have 
3) I have an above average intelligence which    
only on occasion, and then only through diligent 
effort, have I been able to ratchet above 140,
and so my memory is weak and likewise my 
spatial recognition abilities 
4) emotions seem to direct my choices more than 
do common and not-so-common logics, although    
rational thinking is not foreign to me.        
                                                
These days there are so many makers of poems using
so many different styles and languages, I doubt any
one person could get through that cornucopia, and the
robots cannot be trusted.  Back in the 1980s when I
was into poetics, mathematics, and market analytics
all at the same time, Derrida's strong deconstruction
position effectively ended my curiosity about those
approaches to literature.  To me it seemed he was not
only deconstructing others but also himself, to which
the only proper response was laughter.  Recently I
have been reading (possibly rereading) Hannah Arendt's
The Human Condition, a complex, provocative delving
into where humans have been, are, and are heading.
On page 255 of the Doubleday Anchor edition I own
is an insight that may seem too obvious today, but 
which I think merits repeating:                          
                                                  
"The seen tree may be real enough
for the sensation of vision, just
as the dreamed tree is real enough
for the dreamer as long as the
dream lasts, but neither can ever
become a real tree."                            
                                                
Poets and scientists can refine and refine how they
depict realities of atomic substance by means of   
their envisionings, and I would suggest the more  
angles of vision the better, but those realities  
will continue to be bark-on, wave-whacking, wind-
dervishing incomprehensible.  That is the sadness
and that is the joy, and that is the truth and the
beauty of it.  I don't care how compellingly this
Era of humanity draws us to irony and satire, the
persistence of natura naturans, the ongoing, tells
us transcendence remains.  Language itself is an  
eminent example: meaning created out of nothing.
Swing the side of your fist against what we call a
"tree" and you might come back calling that object
an "uuh".                                           
                                                 
So who were my literary progenitors?  Who cares.
But the answer is: anything and anyone.  Sure I was
influenced by him and her and her and him somewhere
along my journey.  Being as I am easily influenced,
even now I am being influenced; but I still wend my
own way.  Heck, Ron Silliman's The New Sentence
influenced me, but not in ways he would have thought
possible.  You see, just like all others who enjoy
interacting with words, I draw from the happenings
around me and the happenings in my mind. You've read
one or two of my poems and did not like it (them).
That's okay.  I'm inexhaustible--ha ha.  Look for me
in the cracks in your walls.                       
                                                    
                                                    
                                                     
                                                 
Rho00140