Response to "The English Society"

“It is well known and widely if tacitly acknowledged that poetry is a retarded practice, close to absurdity as counting for nothing in a real world: it surely does make nothing happen. Really we know this, outside the hot-house, because by now we are grown up past the fancy that language could ever tell us more than we already recognise from daytime TV. To draw anyone’s attention to a newly published poem-sequence, therefore, must seem like a solemn prank, essentially surplus to serious business, by winks and nods from within the expiring cohort of revivalists.” J. H. Prynne 2009.

After publishing an unwatered down version of this poem on the Facebook page of The University of Liverpool's English Society, I received an unexpectedly aggressive and personal response from, otherwise placid and charitable people of good breeding. I was also almost immediately banned from their site.
I penned a lengthy response, regarding the speaking voices in poetry and metaphor and such like but then decided that the quote above would adequately explain any position I might hold.