I assume you read Jack Kimball's blog so I needn't perform linkage, but I enjoyed his visit to the realms of James Tate poetry in Harvard Square. Tate came to Franconia College whoop whoop 35 years ago, I guess at the behest of Robert Grenier. I say I guess because of the readers who (I remember) read at the school whilst Grenier, and I, were there, Tate sticks out as different from the others. those others were Coolidge, Eigner, Ashbery, Creeley. Tate would have been in his late 20s then, long-haired, nervous cool. he read well-paced and funny. I think I was impressed that he had a book titled The Oblivion Ha Ha (I was easy to impress). at one point, Grenier started laughing for no apparent reason. or maybe there was a reason, but Grenier kept laughing beyond the social okay. whichever, Tate got distracted, wondering if Grenier were crazy. Tate possessed (probably still possesses) a certain intensity, an edge of absurdity. humour has been described as a sort of disaster that upsets expectations. Tate's humour is compelling, or I should say potentially compelling, because I think there's that about Tate fighting the implications of the disaster. Grenier seeming to lose it made Tate wary. I'm suggesting the difference between a 'real' poet and an entertainer, at least a little bit, somehow or other.