You wash & wash, Washington - but never come clean.

                     *

You buff & buff, Buffalo - your moon still mean.

                     *

You prove & prove, Providence - moan, laundrymen.


- Henry the Cleaning Lady






[Note: In the phantom digital-terminal world, we are all still learning to
let our fingers do the talking.  Through 1998 I was working on a very long
poem called STUBBORN GREW (which will be published this year by
Spuyten Duyvil Press in Brooklyn).  Occasionally there are conjunctions
between events internal to the poem and the travails of the Clinton presidency.
Strangely, toward the end of 1998, I found myself enmeshed with others
in an internet struggle for legitimacy which paralleled events in Washington.
I found myself "impeached" (via censorship) from the influential "Poetics
List" poetry discussion sponsored by the Electronic Poetry Center at
SUNY Buffalo (http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc).  The strains of this struggle
in November-December brought about the "resignation" of two of the list
managers, just as two Speakers of the House were brought down by the
impeachment battle.  Now the Poetics List has been re-organized into a
more tightly-controlled discussion - "fully moderated", in list lingo;
and I, along with a few others, have been denied membership to the new
formation.

An entire spectrum of opinions has been voiced about what happened
on the Poetics List, portions of which can be found in the List's own
archives. This is not the place to argue the point one way or another;
my brief poem simply expresses what it feels like to be exiled, shut
out of a valued community. And I would like people interested in the
 "poetry scene" to be aware of the depths and nuances entailed by any
form of editing or censorship (another name for "moderation").  I am not
saying that "editing" is always negative or unnecessary; only that it is
important to be aware of it, of how and in what forms it exists.

--Henry Gould]