We’re entirely for artifice, stock in trade. When J Schuyler remembers J Brainard and F O’Hara, what’s biographically accurate beyond artifice is the entirety of the kinship, the tubby, transfixing emotional sustenance that comes with love and ebullience among friends. T Towle dreaming of O’Hara seems credible as both artifice and credible proposition on similar if more ‘platonic ’ grounds. R Creeley evoked J Wieners alive and, to more tragic effect, vice versa. Friendship and love are components of the vetting process the onlooker or reader-writer follows to decide for herself whether a writer, beyond artifice, walks among the ardent ghosts, the likes of Wieners or a budding O’Hara.