The idea that “anything can be art” is a
destructive notion that devalues art:
equating pop-cult’s levelling Cuisinart
with masterpieces like that Mona Lizza:
I stood in line to see her once, La Giaconda;
room 711, cheek-to-jowl, nose-to-fart,
but her behind her glass, a world apart,
petite, obscure, untroubled by wokisma,
modernism, deconstruction, Yale
and Harvard, Palestine, Marcel Duchamp,
bugbearless belle who proves my thesis that
beauty is truth, and truth is always pale—
life in images d’Épinal my psychopomp
and heaven as suburban habitat.