A proposed poetic manifesto

1. Poetry should be poetic like sex should be erotic.

2. Don’t define your symbols.

2b. Symbols should be elaborated in symbol-space.

3. A poem should not mean but be but 5-10% of meaning is normal and healthy like a low rate of inflation is good for the economy.

4. Purely vegan poetry without supplements results in nutrient deficiencies.

4b. The crammed line is meat indeed and the run-on-sentence.

5. Rules are made to be broken but Chesterton’s Fence.

5b. The prohibition on un-selfaware repetition in close proximity will fall when the repetition is so frequent and furious and purposeful that repetition will no longer seem exceptional and the prohibition on repetition no longer justified.

6. Art for art’s sake is an abdication of responsibility; art not for art’s sake is propaganda.

7. Inauthenticity is authentically inauthentic.

8. Poetry is for everybody who has language, because poetry preceded writing.

9. Poetry is written and pickles, cheese, and sausage are refrigerated.

9b. One cannot pickle, or make cheese, or make sausage, but one can poetry, in the gulag.

5c. The prohibition on excessive self-rhyme is not a stylistic preference but moral value.

5d. The prohibition on self-rhyme should be affirmed.