Curse and invective are strangely missing from American poetry. Poets save their invective for other poets, in hate mail that causes short circuits in post offices all over the country. After Pound slammed out at Wall Street bankers, what is there? You can find a little in Allen Ginsberg, a little in Robert Bly. But for the most part our poets are public lovers and private haters. We lack public denunciation, like this:

  And these but the stammering simulacra of the Rand Corpse wise men—
  Scientists who have lost the good of the intellect, mechanico-humanoids
  Antiseptically manufactured by the Faustian humunculus process.
  And how they dream in their gelded towers these demimen!
  (Singing of overkill, kriegspiel, singing of blindfold chess—
  Sort of ainaleckshul rasslin matches to sharpen their fantasies
  Like a scout knife.)
                       Necrophiles.
                                      Money protectors.

Thomas McGrath shows the way. This passage comes from his best book...