On random poetry

If you haven’t already, check out the Harriet blog, and especially Christian Bök’s series of 7 posts on ‘random poetry.’ Watch his inventive mind at work as he ‘writes through’  “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges. I appreciate Bök’s  observation, “The outrage expressed by academics when faced with the work of the aleatory writer almost mimics the outrage expressed by moralists when faced with the vice of the gambling addict,” he says. “The critics who balk at such poetry refuse to take a chance, even though they speculate on literary legacies, trading in them like shares on a stock index in the casino of aesthetic tradition.”