To WH

Poetry memorable speech? Poetry's not speech, it is writing, & though it might aspire to memorability, most of it — even if great — goes unremembered: that's why we need books. Of course, being or wanting to be memorable are not the same as being re- membered, but if you mean to define poetry as such, & the fact is most poetry fails as such, your definition fails too. We don't define things by what they intend or ought to be, because we define them by what they are.

& as for 'makes nothing happen' — well, it made this happen, didn't it?

I know it's going to make me cycle to Blackwell's today.

I think you mean 'happen' in the booming sense of 'happening' — noun + indefinite article. Being flippantly intentionalist, I'd insert a mulish '[of consequence]' before the verb. I think, WH, in your complexly motivated efforts to bring poetry down a peg, you distinguish your own. (Fucksake, I remembered it, didn't I?) But one motive: you tried to do this because you valued poetry, which perhaps could be said to have made it happen.