In introductory essays, Fox critiques the work of each poet included in this anthology and also writes a summarizing appendix. He reprints a statement from John M. Bennett about his poem BLENDER published in GHOST DANCE No.38, 1983. In an inquiry directed to explaining the poem BLENDER, Bennett responded. In general about my work I would say that it differs basically from mainstream American poetries in that it doesn't attempt to provide recipes for life or to conclude with "correct" moral postures, or to be in any other way didactic. My writing wants to be a life; complete and full of it all, a symbolic representation of the universe as perceived through my experience, my consciousness, and my writing itself.... BLENDER specifically seems to represent a transition phase between two styles of mine-from a kind of surrealist narrative toward an anaphoric style (one where the poems were structured around repetitions of key nouns or verbs in each phrase, or repetitions of short phrases or pronouns). The latter style resulted in a book called SPITTING (still unpublished), finished around 1986, . . . In what I am writing today, there are still elements of narrative structure in knitting the poems together, as well as elements of the anaphoric "spitting" style. And previous and subsequent "strategies."The title BLENDER, then, perhaps refers to this mixing of two styles; I think I felt that the idea of a swirling swarm somehow described the content of the poems too-it implies a sense of identity or self as a swarm, constantly spinning around and remixing, rather than being a static, linear being. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.