Thomas Fink called yesterday. Always a pleasure talking to him. We've only met in person once; but we e-mail, talk on the telephone,and have worked on poetic and interview collaborations together. Talking with Tom always leaves me feeling a little better about human beings than I usually do. He's a remarkable person.

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Hot and humid in Northeastern Ohio today.

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I don't know how your minds work. Occasionally I get all Wittgensteinian and wonder about the reality of other minds; then I slap myself and get over it for a while.

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I know, of course, that Others exist. I just don't often think I have any reality for them. And sometimes that bothers me because I don't always feel very real within myself. I feel blotted out, written over. This isn't a particularly original problem.

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Writing is a perilous act,a succession of dangerous steps.

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I've been struck recently by blog threads about toxic comments. Those threads go to the heart of ego-positions in the poetry world. It's easy to be dismissive and it's easy to be dismissive of the dismissive. Things need to be a little more nuanced and the balance is hard to find.

One of the most influential things I read as a college student back in the early 1970's was Herbert Marcuse's essay "On Repressive Tolerance" in which he advanced the thesis that liberal tolerance has a repressive effect, that "tolerating" an alternative idea or lifestyle was a way of placing under brackets, a way of according a secondary status to that group or belief system.

Problematizing tolerance struck me as problematic but useful and real. I mean I want to treat others with respect and kindness, but I want to be able to confront the aporia of unbridgable differences honestly too. Sometimes you can't say that difference is OK. Sometimes you have to contest things or persons. But you need to learn to choose your battles wisely.

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