But can you actually be an ‘outsider’ when Dana Gioia is your champion? Outside what exactly?

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Obnoxious editor: Touché! Yet even Mr. Gioia must have his reckless, rebellious days, days when he is not himself, days on which he says You know what, to hell with my instinctive conservatism, I’m gonna go nuts! Bust out a little. Why I’ll just, I’ll, I’ll, what I’ll do is, I know! I’ll read some poems by this here lesbian language-driven poet! Why not, eh? What can it hurt?? Because that’s the wacky kinda guy I am.

You know, of the devil’s party without knowing it and all that. Then the next day he wakes up with a hangover, in someone else’s clothes, and having mysteriously gone over his credit card limit. And also somehow having blurbed Kay Ryan without remembering when.

Having said all that, you’re totally right: it’s absolutely a reverse imprimatur, in my book (um, that would be my unpublished book of course), when Gioia likes your work.