This just in--

--from Mark, as a comment: good enough to post above the fold:

Eric ol' bean--

You don't have to pretend to be Ann Coulter just because you don't like a poem -- indeed, it's likely to provoke me to pretend to be Jane Fonda. And neither of us look very good in those skirts.

The poem offers me a compact array of pleasures, most of them rather minor: I like the awkwardness (not necessarily "prissiness") of the obscenities, the degree to which they are precisely *not* natural-sounding. (Indeed, one of the oddities of the poem is that it works most naturally if imagined in the voice of someone who doesn't speak English as a first language --which might by HP's impression of Americans, who knows?) I like the very slight off-centeredness of some of the phrases. I like the flatness of "It works" and "We did it." I like the minor (you would say "cheap" & would probably be right) payoff of the last line.

Pinter is not a very good poet. Period. This particular poem has been all over the internet as part of the inevitable pillorying of the Nobel committee as anti-American Euro-liberals. I kinda enjoyed it. Oh yeah, and football ("American" football) has always made me physically sick -- no cliché.

Love and kisses from the politburo,
Mark

Well now--that's more like it! You talk pleasure, you speak-a my language, old friend. De gustibus, and all that.

I'll take a second look--but then, I've always rather enjoyed football, on the sly. (And I love teasing Euro-liberals, especially if it means I get to wear a skirt.)

--E