[New-Poetry] 100 Poets You Should Know

[Anny Ballardini]

I agree on much of what you are saying. I also appreciate the fact that you 
mention Alan Sondheim, I am a supporter of his work.

From: "Bob Grumman" <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2007 1:48 AM


> 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.
>