AGAINST CONTENT by Brian Henry To discuss the form and content divide, to privilege one over the other, is to assume both exist, to presuppose a common ground that is far from, for assumptions without clarification or definition are as convincing as a broken steam pipe in the basement, an arbitrary simile hanging by a nail (bent), for considerations of content are considerations of that which does not exist. Form must exist; without form, nothing could occur - on the page, in the air, in the air of the mind. To assert content does not exist is not entirely accurate, however: it is always the same, so it exists, but because "it is always the same" it ceases to exist, i.e., considerations of it cease to matter; and if something never changes and ceases to matter, the significance of considerations of it ceases to exist / matter. Form, however, undergoes constant change. Inner and outer. If one insisted content indeed changed, one would have to concede the change is outer, it is surface. Everything has content and this is how content ceases to exist. Everything has content and works of art fail because of their failures in form not because of their failures in content; bad content prefigures failed form. Everything has content and everything has form, but while manipulations of content affect a work of art not at all, manipulations of form change it totally. A work of art is not trivial because its content is trivial - that which does not matter cannot be trivial - but because its form fails to matter, lacks significance. Hence the everpresent complaints against the workshop poem, the confessional poem, the piece of writing purposefully artless yet witlessly propagating formlessness within the confines of content so monochromatic the shades between cease, so varations that occur occur in outer concerns rather than in form. BRIAN HENRY's first book of poetry, Astronaut, was published recently in the UK. His criticism has appeared recently in The TLS, The Kenyon Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Prairie Schooner, Contemporary Poetry Review, Stand and Salt. He is editing a collection of essays on James Tate's poetry for University of Michigan Press.