Rhetorical questions are not withstanding–do not take the time to think of an answer, or even a response. Let it suffice to say, as I have said before and will likely say again and again in the future–this Review is a literary review, and by that, I mean the essays contained within are literature. By literature, I mean the result of a higher election in Letters–I do understand that there is more in the cosmos of literary values and evaluation, than could be dreamed by any one of us, even those of us who are highly literary to the point of themselves being literature. I do know that there are representations of literary excellence that are not bound by my preferences or what I like. Being literate is not merely alphabetics, or what is sometimes called having dexterity with the alphabet. Spelling one’s name correctly is not what I mean by being literate. My shopping list is not what I would call literature, although the aesthetics of this shopping list or shopping lists could be employed in the service of the literary. No? Of course it can. Poetic forms themselves are more in number than can be counted or named offhand by most who are themselves what I would call literate, educated in the study of literature–no?
A poem written in the style and manner of a shopping list is an interesting idea, and I just might try my hand at it after I finish this . . . it is necessary to make the steps toward higher election in maters of the literary sturdy enough for us to climb. Most recoil. We cannot continue to pander to our corrupting need for ease–the manner by which we turn simplicity into the simplistic is also the one that turns from necessary complexity because we misunderstand this complexity to be complications.
The Falling Leaf Review 