morality and the (post-)avant

Reading Silliman's post (and, especially, the battle in the comment box between Joan Houlihan and others) regarding Billy Collins' attack on "inaccessible" poetry, it seems to me that those on a crusade against (post-)avant writing often take a distinctly moralistic tone. As in: "How COULD you write a poem that doesn't 'make sense'? It's wrong, I tell you, wrong!"

Consider, for example, the third question of Houlihan's rountable debate on post-avant writing:

Can you find pleasure in a poem that does not display some kind of organization and context, however loosely constructed? In other words, do you enjoy reading a collection of individual, unconnected lines? If yes, please explain. If no, same.

Maybe it's just the way the question is phrased, but I get a palpable sense of moral condemnation here. Like anyone who could possibly enjoy reading a "collection of individual, unconnected lines" (never mind that very notion of such a collection doesn't hold water, as several of the commentators point out) should be sent to do forced labor until they've been "re-educated".

It seems, though, that we who admit to indulging in such perverse and forbidden pleasures are more apt to rationalize our preferences than we are to present them in similarly moral terms. E.g., we might say that we like post-avant work because it "complicates the subject" or because it "doesn't take our being situated in language for granted". But we probably wouldn't say "I like being able to think for myself; how could you possibly enjoy a poem that tries to tell you what to think or feel?"

I suppose this is all just a microcosmic rehashing (or a personal projection from my own subconscious) of political left/right debates -- we on the left try to argue our positions rationally, whereas those on the right speak an entirely different language. Same words and basic syntax, perhaps, but entirely different languages nonetheless. It couldn't hurt to learn to speak their language. They certainly aren't going to bother learning ours.