I'm interrupting Avatar Week to bring you some news: this week, I became the first poet ever to be censored from KXCI's show A Poet's Moment. Although the show's host, Ron Cipriani, recorded three of my poems and had planned to air the second one for the usual cycle of time slots, someone else at the station decided to pull it after the first airing.

Although I heard that the problematic phrase "blue balled" was cited as the reason for censoring the poem, I rather agree with my friend Kristen, who suggests that the poem's overall sensuality may have triggered the pushback, since our Puritanically rooted culture is uncomfortable with sensuality and eager to make the leap from there to sexuality. The words "blue balled" would be easier to latch onto and complain about than the poem's overall tone. Ron is playing the other poem of mine that he recorded this week, one that I would call a lark, instead of this better poem, written in the voice of my husband's musical instrument, which, I imagined, might be jealous of me. That's right, this is a poem about the relationship between a musical instrument and a musician, and it was too racy for radio. So, without further ado, here is the poem.

Yeah, I see you, dude, and you're kind of an asshole.

This is what I would expect Neytiri's response to be after she makes zahelou (hair lock) with Jake Sully. (By the way, why doesn't she know everything his mind after they mate? Possible continuity flaw, or maybe lack of explanation of zahelou). I have no problem with flawed characters; in fact, I prefer them. So I was willing to see how our notorious member of the Jarhead clan might evolve over the course of James Cameron's Avatar. In the end, I was not moved.

The theatrical release did not show enough of Jake's evolution. I had little sense of how he felt about being a traitor to the Na'vi while he was actually betraying them because the movie never shows him really freaking out about it. Almost as soon as he meets her, Jake clearly has feelings for Neytiri, the chief and shaman's daughter. Yet, Jake is not merely a passive member of the science team who "knew this would happen," as Neytiri discovers when the Sky People come to attack Home Tree. He actively performs recon for Colonel Quaritch, who is not his direct superior, but who asks Jake to spy on the Na'vi based on a sense of loyalty instilled by his military background. When the colonel, head of security for the mining base, asks Jake if he'll be a double agent and report to him, Jake agrees without any sign that it bothers him. It doesn't seem to bother him either when he provides structural details about Home Tree that will later allow the attack on it to succeeded.

I've seen it twice, and I have too much to say about Avatar to get it all out in one sitting. So I'm dubbing this week Avatar week. The first point I want to make is simple: Avatar and audience responses to it put one more nail in the coffin of the myth that speculative fiction is essentially "escapist," at least any more than any fiction is essentially escapist.

Avatar, which may be on track to become the highest-grossing movie of all time, is clearly engaging people en masse. Is this because the economy is bad and everyone wants to get away from the grind of everyday life?