[New-Poetry] Fw: Numbers of Books

[Halvard Johnson]

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you're mailing from. I, e.g., can opt for either my
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Hal

On Jul 4, 2006, at 11:41 AM, Anny Ballardini wrote:

> 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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