[New-Poetry] RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics & Poetry/Literature & Culture

[Skip Fox]

I'd forgotten about Creeley and was ready to refute, but yes, Divers Press
in Palma de Mallorca published three small volumes in 1953 and 1954. 

Berrigan's lovely _Sonnets_ were self published I believe. And he would send
them to every poet he really appreciated. He said he would rarely hear back
but sometime after he'd sent the book to Creeley, he was reading an
interview with Creeley. When Creeley was asked if he was excited about any
new poets, he didn't hesitate. Saying something like "this guy in New York,"
he named Ted.

But POD is NOT self published, and that gets me to an important point. The
fear of "every person a poet" is due to the plethora which confronts us. How
do we find the poets who are those we need to find (if you know what I
mean)? Shy of an algorithm like Pandora.com (lovely free radio station you
can simply choose) which selects songs to pump through the virtual limins by
whoever one selects as a sort of major artist (try Cage, Eno, Billy Holiday,
Coltrane), there are presses like BlazeVox (soon Ahadada?) which are very
discerning. We can "buy the list." For instance, on the basis of reading a
few poems by Aaron Belz, when I saw his name at BlazeVox, I bought a copy.
This morning I was rocking in a still chair reading. Allegrezza didn't
surprise me so much because I'd read quite a bit by him, but when I saw him
at BlazeVox, I bought his book and probably a dozen others (including
Amy's).  One can read a publisher's list and he or she becomes the
algorithm. Thus, a reader can find his or her way.

Most of the other reasons to bemoan the plethora (that I can think of) are
not flattering: wanting only the best poetry in circulation "for the
culture's health," or somesuch, while 97% of what the culture "attends" to
is something other than ANY variety of poetry; to eliminate competition for
prizes, or placement in "serious publications," etc. 

Or, as a teacher of creative writing, perhaps we'd want students who liked
Goldbarth over Collins (I'm not just trying to be nice, I'd rather have
Olson or even Bukowski over Goldbarth, but Goldbarth is "on the way" as they
say, as are we all). Instead, at a school like mine, we only occasionally
get that. But I have found that each of these students, maybe slightly less
that 50% of the time, invests some deep experience and language grace as
well as intelligence in their work (even with titles like "Living").

What would we do without these students? Teach more comp classes? Teaching
such students (I've only taught 300 level once) can be more rewarding than
graduate or senior-graduate courses. They see so much and say so much. So
why bitch about too many poets. (Esp. when some of use are contributing to
the "credentialing" of probably 500 or more MFA's and PhD's with
concentration in creative writing coming out of United States and Canadian
universities each year.)

One learns to swim.

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Halvard Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 8:00 AM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] RECONFIGURATIONS: A Journal for Poetics &
Poetry/Literature & Culture

Robert Creeley also self-published a couple early books.

Hal

"Take what you can use and let the rest go by."
     --Ken Kesey

Halvard Johnson
================
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