"What are you afraid of learning?"

      Editors Note:  When we left our heroes they were confronted by a typical ConPoet.

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Earl the Squirrel's Rule #115

     "It's like they are giving PhDs in Convenient Poetics!" I said.  My friend, the Saint, nodded, conceding that they were legion.

     We ruminated together about how we dealt with disingenuous ConPoets going on about poetry being alive because so many people are trying to write it.  (Needless to say, without success.)  The Saint produced an incisive counter:

     "I ask them to recite some."

      Interesting.

      "When they start I say:  'Contemporary poetry.'  After they pause I add:  'Written by someone other than yourself.'  That usually shuts them up."

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #111

      "It wouldn't in my experience," I complained.  "They'd simply deny that people ever knew any verse."

      "How do they explain poetry in preliterate societies?"

      "They don't.  They really don't think things through."

      They never do.  It's a blissful, thought-free and fact-free existence.

     Apparently, the Saint and I were heading in the same direction as he pronounced the word:

    "Teabaggers."

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #124

      That's it!  ConPoets are like Faux Snooze viewers!  Oh, sure, their politics may be different, more likely liberal than conservative, but look at their need for a diet rich on confirmation bias.  Watch them parrot talking points that have already been refuted--sorry, "refudiated".  People who don't know verse from free verse love to go on and on about "poetry" in blogs, social media and preambles with no regard for responses, let alone anyone else's opinion or poetry.  The salient difference is that while Tea Partiers revel in their anti-intellectualism, ConPoets seem genuinely unaware of theirs, seeing and presenting themselves as--of all things--thinkers.  We appreciate their apparent familiarity with  other arts, with philosophy, psychology and linguistics, but where is their interest in poetry?  Why can't it sustain them for the 45 minutes it takes to read some articles on meter and sonics?

      What are they afraid of learning?

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