There's
some back n forth--including a rather long-winded response from yours truly--over at Brenda Schmidt's place concerning the alleged problems of aesthetic tribes and the mean-spirited brute squad of poetry reviewing.
It's been said in that conversation that the poetry world of Montreal is schismatic. Aesthetically, this is no doubt true, but socially I've found the opposite to be the case. While I was living in Montreal and in subsequent visits, I've had very pleasant exchanges, and in some cases friendships, with Robert Allen, Oana Avasilichioaei, Stephanie Bolster, Asa Boxer, Suzanne Buffam, Jason Camlot, Angela Carr, Geoffrey Cook, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Corey Frost (whose apartment I took over when he moved to NY), Ian Ferrier, Gabe Foreman, Zach Gaviller, Susan Gillis, Katia Grubisic, Michael Harris, Jack Illingworth, Catherine Kidd, Leigh Kotsilidis, Michael Lista, John Lofranco, Dave McGimpsey, Sachiko Murakami, Eric Ormsby, Peter Richardson, Robyn Sarah, Carmine Starnino, Joshua Trotter, Melissa Weinstein. (And some fiction writers, too, but they don't count, now do they?) Now, some of these folks have aesthetic leanings similar to my own, but many of them write in very different directions. To say nothing of the fact that I met my wife while living in Montreal and our aesthetics couldn't be much more different; she writes historical documentary long poem/prose sequences and I tend to write isolated short lyrics, inclined towards the accentual/metrical. I would suggest that if a person finds the poetry communities of Montreal divided, it is more of a reflection on that person than on any irreconcilable rifts in the social fabric.
