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14 April 2005: At New-Poetry, David Graham recently advised me, not for the first time, to post works by burstnorm poets and show why such poets deserve the recognition from the poetry establishment that knownstream poets get (discussion by visible critics, publication in anthologies reaching more than one or two . . . aesthrecipients, mentions in college literature classes, grants for their authors, etc.). Of course, I've done this in the past, but to no effect that I can detect, aside from garnering a few pats on the back from the few non-stasguards at New-Poetry, to balance the mockery of people like Barry Spacks and Marcus Bales. So, I thought I'd continue simply snarling at the behaviour of the American Poetry Establishment (e.g., when it gives such as Ted Kooser a Pulitzer Prize).
Thinking about it later, I tripped over an old idea of mine: an anthology of my kind of poems, with commentary. (A retort to the recent stasguard book by Camille Paglia.) Tentative title: Miles Beyond Certification: a Sampling of Significant Works by Contemporary American Poets Mining Veins Wholly Unknown to the American Academy of Poetry. I have so many ideas like this one that I never do anything with, it's not too likely I'll follow through on this one, but right now I'm enthusiastic about it. Already, I've listed over forty poets I want to include one poem from. My goal is fifty. I may drop the handful on the list who are no longer living. Only poets mixing expressive modalities--visual poets, primarily--and infraverbal poets. No poets from the official/semi-offical language poetry school--because many of them are now certified, and the rest soon will be. That I don't feel competent to do the best of them justice is a factor there, too.
Here are the poets I've so far listed (and I'm sure I've missed some very important ones) Aram Saroyan, Jonathan Brannen, Geof Huth, Robert Lax, Crag Hill, Karl Kempton, mIEKAL aND, Richard Kostelanetz, John Vieira, John M. Bennett, Kathy Ernst, Karl Young, Myself, Marilyn Rosenberg, Guy Beining, Bill Keith, Ed Conti, Mike Basinski, Doris Cross, Carol Stetser, Davide Cole, Bill Fox, Liz Was, Endwar, Scott Helmes, Joel Lipman, Harry Polkinhorn, Stephen-Paul Martin, Carlos Luis, John Martone, Irving Weiss, Nico Vassilakis, Larry Tomoyasu, Gregory St. Thomasino, Ficus strangulensis, Jim Leftwich, Jeff Hansen, Spencer Selby, Sheila Murphy, John Elsberg, Lloyd Dunn, Andy DiMichele, Bill DiMichele, Paul Collier, John Byrum, Jake Berry, Paul Zelevansky. Now that I've typed the list, I've thought of five or six aditional worthy names. I may be arbitrary and just go with the first fifty I think of. This will definitely not be a list of "best" poems, just of poems as good or better than the ones called "best" in mainstream anthologies. What will be tough is selecting one poem from any of these poets. Again, I won't be after their best, necessarily--more their best comparatively accessible, and not-hard-to-publish poems. . . . More in due course.
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