[New-Poetry] Fw: Numbers of Books

[Anny Ballardini]

You are brilliant, I also sent from gmail.com and the mails never arrived, 
it could be, he will read this mail, 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: TheOldMole 
  To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views 
  Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 6:18 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Fw: Numbers of Books


  Does Skip have two email addresses? That happened to me for awhile -- actually it's the same address, but when I emailed through Outlook Express it registered one way, when I emailed through NetNation -- my website host -- it registered another, and the posts didn't go through.


    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Anny Ballardini 
    To: New Poetry 
    Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 12:01 PM
    Subject: [New-Poetry] Fw: Numbers of Books


    I am forwarding for Skip Fox, it seems his mails cannot reach New Poetry, maybe James knows why?


    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Skip Fox 
    To: Anny Ballardini 
    Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 4:38 PM
    Subject: Numbers of Books


    Numbers of books are interesting, although the figures seem high to me if underconsidered. How many vanity? How many micro-chaps? But most of all, if you were in a bookstore with shelves moaning under this "load," how many would be worth more than a brief perusal? One out of ten? You might quickly eliminate all of certain presses' work (which you could always reconsider if someone you respected, like Silliman perhaps, asked you to look again). But there are still hundreds of books which might bloom under your attentions. A bibliographer's nightmare. 

    It seems more useful to consider number of poets and not think of statistics (you can scare people with number of poets this way as well if we consider merely the number of graduates from BFA, MFA and PhD programs with poetry dissertations per year across simply the United States). I've been reading for decades and have not run out of poets yet. I must have come across over two dozen new exciting poets this year, some which have been around for a bit and some who are just publishing their first book or two (like like Kimberly Lyons and Jenny Boully) . Yet I doubt that there are more than a thousand poets of real interest at this moment writing. Not even considering poets who are just beginning, that's still a lot,  . . . too much for me in this lifetime. Maybe someone like Silliman . . .? 

    And that's my point. A bibliographer (which I was once) or an assiduous scholar of contemporary poetry might be very frustrated confronting such wealth. But a poet need not.

    I remember exploring my home town library decades ago. I especially loved the fact that when I went into a new area, or "deeper" into the shelves, new worlds broke open at my feet. So many writers were worth all the time I might give them. To say it simply, that is the way it is with poets for me now. As experience and not theory, the number is wonderful. 

    Silliman has employed himself as someone who takes a bibliographical/scholarly/poetic overview of the poetic world as it is happening. It's lovely that he does it no matter what one considers the results. I just think it's important to remember that there are other ways of look at this plethora. 

    I believe we are living is one of the most exciting periods for poetry in all its diversities and multiplicities(including non-textual). There is always a slight regret when I come to an older poet for the first time or when I look at all the magazines, but this is minor compared to my delight of discovery and immersion in another new world.   

    (The number of good poets certainly eliminates any need of reading careerist or stupidly derivative poetry.)


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