Ah, in the post immediately prior I said I couldn't find the comments I'd originally posted at Ron Silliman's blog, those from which Joan Houlihan excerpted one sentence. I found the comments and here's what I said Monday September 15, 2003:

Hi Ron,

I've been reading your blog for some weeks now. You're a pretty sharp guy. And willing to put in the time! My own blog is rather dormant and I was never so on top of it.

As regards Joan Houlihan: I hung out at Web del Sol's poetry bulletin board a couple years ago, even became a board moderator for a month or three, but Mike Neff, WdS's master, descended upon the bulletin board in an avenging fury -- he was offended by people posting poetry he didn't like & too much of it! He called us moderators all sorts of bad names and I swore off the place. Joan Houlihan proved to be his attack puppy and went around to other comment boards slagging the ex-moderators. The woman's arguments are logical fallacies -- sarcasm, ad hominem, scorn. Fact is, her usual resorts are look-at-that-isn't-that-great and look-at-that-isn't-that-stupid. I haven't read Boston Comment in ages, and I'm not feeling the urge now. But the nicest thing about her style is the way she quotes from the poets she slags (or swoons over); thus the reader can see for himself whether she's got a point. I remember in her review of a past Best American Poetry anthology Houlihan quotes lines from a Hejinian in a round-up of lines so obviously bad Houlihan was left speechless. Should be her usual state, right? I liked the Hejinian she quoted, didn't care for much Houlihan thought fab and thereupon realized that Houlie had nothing to say. When I like what Houlie likes, it's coincidence, not a shared aesthetic. (Whereas, when I agree with you, Mr S, it's surely because I'm gradually learning not to be so dumb.)

cheers,
G

I hadn't realized that three days later (9/18) an anonymous poster threw up this bile:

headline: "Ingersoll's Dementia"

It's sad the way perennial malcontents like Glen Ingersoll can erupt on a forum and soil it with their juvenile axe grinding.

The incident referred to by Ingersoll re Michael Neff took place two years ago on an poetry forum owned and operated by Web del Sol. A specific person who called himself Native Prancer or Dancer or some such (too shadowy to risk his own name) was attacking a poster who had rightfully criticized his miserably bad scribblings and was doing so in a manner that was both obscene and rant-like. It was board policy to take rants and mean-mouthing to another board designed for more "open debate," but Native Rancid decided to poke at that rule and disguised his rant as "poetry" simply by truncating the lines so that it went something like this:

Who are you to tell
me what the fuck about my
poetry when you don't know
fuck about anything, you
little bastard motherfucker

Well, you get the idea. Since this idiot had been active at this type of trash for weeks and was littering the board with his garbage, Neff asked him to take it elsewhere. At that point, two board editors (one of them a bipolar attorney who actually posted child porn on Neff's board) who were friends of Native convinced the others to abandon the poetry forum in protest of Neff daring to ask an abusive, childish bore to leave.

Ingersoll was among the "editor" mob of hangers-on who had turned the WDS board into their own private playground and effectively chased away anyone serious about getting feedback on their poetry.

FON [Friend of Neff]

**

Hmf. This is one way of describing what happened. The comment is unsigned but it reads like Houlihan. Who knows, eh?

James Lineberger posted under the name "native dancer" on web del sol's Writer's Block. That was easy enough to find out via a google search, even if you didn't immediately know who "native dancer" was. Mr Lineberger posted excessively and those of us who were named "editors" had tried to persuade him to post less frequently. (By the way, I quite like James Lineberger's writing.) FON puts "'editor'" in quotes, as I just did because we certainly didn't edit anything. We didn't even have the power to delete obnoxious posts. We were just volunteer moderators, there to make the place feel looked after. There weren't even specified duties. When Neff asked me to be an "editor" I asked him what that entailed, and he said, "What you're doing right now." I figured I'd think about it a couple days and get back to him. Next time I visited the site my name was in the masthead. Well. Whatever. Like he said, I figured I'd just go on doing what I'd been doing. I did feel a little more responsible for making sure poets got comments on their poems so I did spend more time there than I would have otherwise. Reading, thinking, writing. It was useful.

These open boards get messy. And people misbehaved. Other editors who were trying to be conscientious had a chat with Neff and got at last some ground rules and seemingly were given Neff's assurance that he'd support us Blockheads more. Maybe give us the power to delete attack posts? Instead Neff started reading the board and insulting people, one of them native dancer. Native dancer did say something like "you can't tell me what poetry is" when replying to somebody who'd commented on one of his poems. As flame wars go it was cold sparks. But Neff came on like an avenging angel. When editors protested he declared us all the problem and there were mass resignations. I never resigned. I hadn't ever really signed up, I figured. I didn't go at Neff directly but did say something snarky about him when commenting on someone else's thread. Oh such hot heads we have. And that was that. If anything has gone on there since (this was two years or more past) it's proceeded without my witness.

FON's final word:
Oh, and Forgot to Add

For Ingersoll: good job of kissing Ron Silliman's butt, Glen.
You always were a brown-noser.