C'mon, Mrs. Zucker, wouldn't this posting be more appropriate for another blog? Do you consider this found material excellent literary criticism? Is this some kind of critique? A joke?

Kevin, I agree that this material is more appropriate for another blog (and it did, in fact, come from another website). That's part of why I wanted to post it here. I am hoping to address some of related issues: language, irreverence, archetypal stories, identity politics, audience, etc. in future posts.

Thanks for commenting,
(Ms.) Rachel Zucker

I applaud Rachel Zucker for being the first of the poetry bloggers to be scolded for inappropriateness. In today’s cultural climate I think receiving such a scolding is always a good sign. Lenny Bruce and Joe Wenderoth would both be proud (correct me if I’m wrong, Joe). And the use of inappropriateness–to keep us off-guard, to get us muttering, “she didn’t just say that..,” to trick us into enjoying ourselves while we’re thinking deeply—is very Zuckeresque, if I may say so. I’d like to add an answer to her scolder’s question, “Is this a joke?” Ah, yes it is. And I laughed, hard. But let’s not make the mistake of thinking all jokes operate in the same way. In the process of blogging about poetry, and doing it (whatever “it” is) quite well, Zucker has encountered another online conversation taking place, one that also takes itself seriously. Relocating the penis conversation to the poetry blog creates a juxtaposition that is, I think, very funny. In this post, Zucker employs a self-deprecating mode of humor that has a longstanding tradition particularly in Jewish circles. The irreverence is also a Jewish tradition. Even as she’s writing blogs that offer insight into her process and poetics, she’s asking, “wait a second... what am I doing here? Why is this important? Why does whether or not I’ve written a poem recently, or how I understand that fact, matter to anyone any more or differently than whether Mark Wahlberg is well-hung?” That Mark Walhberg’s jewishness or goyishness is to be located in his penis-shape or berg-ladened last name is also funny and meaningfully funny and reflects on my previous overconfident proclamations that irreverence and self-deprecation were somehow Jewish. (I heard a rumor that Zucker isn’t really even Jewish, can this be true?) One job of a blogging-poet might very well be to help reveal meaning in odd juxtapositions such as that Zucker makes here. That the penis conversation makes several literary allusions – prosthetic penises and kabbalistic golems, the Jewishness of Dr. Frankenstein -- is just icing on the cake.

Josh,

I wasn't scolding Mrs. Zucker. Her previous post was illuminating and dovetailed very brilliantly with poetry, which, as I see it, these entries ultimately address. (I know that everything "touches" these days and I'm not suggesting that we enjoy these bloggers in some kind of poetry-only vacuum but this is a website dedicated to poetry. I was hoping to find the question and the probing and the possible answers in her entry--much like I'd find all of that in a good poem.) So I was surprised and disappointed with her simple (and seemingly lazy) parenthetical at the end.

But you know what? I have no idea what the Poetry Foundation asks of these bloggers. Some cut and paste links and leave it up to us to make meaning while others work a bit harder by engaging (however haltingly)an idea or problem or struggle or whatever else, making for a conversation.

Perhaps I spoke too soon. It seems that the last post is part of Mrs. Zucker's larger enterprise "to address some of related issues: language, irreverence, archetypal stories, identity politics, audience, etc."

I look forward to these conversations. And I hope they take place here mostly.

Rachel,

This is fun and sneakily thought-provoking in a delightfully Zuckeresque way! I like laughing and thinking at the same time. Of course your flexible, omnivorous poet-mind finds its way to mark Wahlberg’s penis, and invites us to explore said penis’s connections in largely overlooked stretches of the culture’s (un)consciousness with literary expression, not-so literary expression, identity-politics,identity-fantasies, Jewishness/non-Jewishness, Frankenstein, and the Golem. No one else could manage such deft, witty, mental sleight-of-hand with such wicked élan (and so few of your own words-- in this case, so few needed!) except maybe Mary Shelley reincarnated in altered circumstances. No one else would. I’m glad over and over that you just keep waking up sleepy bits of us. By the way, I want to make a book of your essays required reading for my poetry classes. But there isn’t one. Yet. Dammit!