[New-Poetry] 100 Poets You Should Know

[Bob Grumman]

Here are ten for your list, Jim, each of whom is at least as important a 
poet as anyone on the original list: John M. Bennett, Crag Hill, Geof 
Huth, Carlos Luis, K.S. Ernst, Scott Helmes, Carol Stetser, Guy Beining, 
Karl Kempton, mIEKAL aND.  They aren't necessarily the best ten living  
American visual poets I know, just the first ten whose names occurred to 
me.  I'm too lazy to keep going, but I know I could list twenty more, 
none of whom is inferior as a poet to the majority of poets on the other 
list.  And that's sticking to poets whose forte is visual poetry.  There 
are many I consider at or near the level of these in other overlooked 
schools--such as what I'd call the Modern Haiku school of American 
haiku, because most of the best writers of conventional haiku are 
published in Modern Haiku.  And there are P. Inman, Clark Coolidge and 
other language poets.  Endwar and other infraverbal poets.  Alan 
Sondheim would have to be on the list.  I'm not sure what school he is 
most prominently in, but he's certainly prominent in several computer 
and computer-language schools, with several others I don't know much 
about.  I'm glad you put Bob Holman on your list, but there are a good 
many other important performance poets--and sound poets.  All these 
poets I've been mentioning are important for poetry because you can 
learn things from them you can't learn from the poets of the fifties and 
their current very visible imitators.  I wouldn't call Coolidge obscure, 
but most of the others are, certainly by Rita Dove/Billy Collins standards.

--Bob G.