[New-Poetry] 100 Poets You Should Know

[Jason Quackenbush]

Bob Grumman wrote:
> Jason Quackenbush wrote:
>> I don't know about that. James agreed that Alice Notley probably 
>> belongs on his list and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a 
>> better living poet.
> I don't know here work well enough to argue that.  I never had the 
> impression she was doing anything special in it, though
It depends on what you mean by something special i suppose, but I find 
her work terribly interesting, funny, and amusing and I tend to think 
it's interesting the way she's extended a lot of the typical 2nd Wave 
New York School stuff (common language, weird parataxis, that sort of 
Koch-y wry humor) with language-y insights about the weight and nature 
of language. What I find most interesting about her though is that i 
feel like when i've been reading her later books she's someone who is 
still learning and growing as a poet, which after so many years of 
activity is something pretty special on its own. It's not something you 
see from Ashbery or Collins to pick a couple of fairly obvious examples.
>> I've been absorbed with "In The Pines" for the last week or so, and I 
>> can't remember being this knocked out by a book of poetry by a living 
>> poet. And I don't know that there are many achievements among living 
>> poets that are more impressive than Silliman's The Alphabet.
>>
> He may be one of the few who'd be on my list of most important 100 
> living American poets, Jason--but, I'm curious (and not trying to 
> score points or something): what is special about The Alphabet?  
> People whose opinion I respect greatly admire it, but I dunno. . . .
It's like an erector set of meaning, and when I said The Alphabet, I 
meant Ketjak but said Alphabet because I'm very excited about the 
upcoming publication. But anyway, it's the approach to structure in 
Ketjak that makes the whole thing so interesting. Every chunk of it that 
i've read, although i haven't read all of it, comes at the idea of 
structure in language from a different way. I'll fully admit that 
"Chinese Notebook" was very formative for me when i first started taking 
poetry seriously in my mid twenties, and that it's a sentimental pick 
for that reason. But the thing I really enjoy about Silliman is that I 
can read him and get the stimulation of the brain that the other 
Language poets are so good at, but there's an underlying sensibility of 
a less cerebral aesthetic there that I don't see in, for example, 
Barrett Watten or Rae Armentrout, and which I think lifts Silliman above 
the other 1st Generation Language poets. That is I think that Silliman 
is actually up to something more than he lets on, and tracing it out has 
been something that's been endlessly fascinating an experience for me, 
kind of like reading My Life but everytime i get to the end of a poem i 
seem to be turning around and having to read yet another poem which is 
part of a poem I've just finished. So I guess if you have to pin me down 
about what's special about The Alphabet, it's that it's an interesting 
part of a labyrinth that i enjoy trying to get to the center of.
>> What I think would be interesting would not be a list of the most 
>> visible poets, but something along the lines of what you suggested as 
>> what a critic should know. Some sort of list of what the requirements 
>> are for poetry literacy. I think that would be a much wider field 
>> that would have to include ancient and non-english language poets as 
>> well, but it might be an interesting criteria for a list of modern 
>> poets. Who then should someone be familiar with in contemporary 
>> poetry in order to be literate enough in poetry to be a critic of it? 
>> That I think is a very interesting question.
> Right--literate enough in poetry to be a first-rate /general /critic 
> of it.  As opposed to someone like William Logan whom I consider a 
> first-rate critic, but only of a very narrow slice of the general 
> scene.  Which, whaddya know, brings us back to the need for a decent 
> full list of the viable schools of current American Poetry that I keep 
> asking for help making, and get just about none.
I don't know how much help I'd be, but I certainly wouldn't mind being 
sort of a gofer and general research assistant for such a project.