Can you have a good poem without ideas?

There’s an interesting discussion on Elisa Gabbert’s The French Exit about whether good poems must have ideas. Darby Larson, energetic and risk-friendly editor of the terrific web journal Abjective, proposes my “Aquamarine” in Caketrain 7 as an example of a poem so radical that it has no ideas. That’s a smart thought. I don’t know Darby, but I appreciate that he reads enough stuff to have read my stuff. More recently, he commented on “Stillness” in the PANK blog. Be sure to check out Abjective.