[New-Poetry] 100 Poets You Should Know

[Bob Grumman]

Jason Quackenbush wrote:
> 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.
Yeah, my definition of something special has mainly to do with technical 
things like ellipses that change in color, something whose inventor, I 
believe, is my friend Marton Koppany, not expressing what some people 
think of as a special personality or outlook or mind.  But the latter 
may be as important.  As for what qualifies as poetic growth, that's a 
matter too subjective for me to fool much with.  People often criticize 
Cummings, for instance, for lack of such growth, but while his outlook 
never changed much, his techniques continued to develop till the end of 
his life.  I can't say that "doing something special" is the greatest 
critical criterion to use in making a list, just can't think of a 
better, and do think it good for generating useful discussion.

>>> 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 do you think he does with syntax that's special?  From what I've 
read of his work, he doesn't nothing with it, and therefore is not a 
language poet, by my standards.  Which isn't to say he's not a good 
poet.  If it's true, and I suspect I'm missing something.
>>> 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.
You could probably help a lot.  Now we need a volunteer for leader!  
Seriousfully, I would love to devote myself a few hours a day to such a 
project but can't--just too many plates of too much stuff on my too many 
tables.  Plus, I'm a lazy lout.

--Bob