[New-Poetry] Muldoon

[Jason Quackenbush]

I liked a lot of the poems in Muldoon's year, although now that you  
mention it, it did skew a bit old. A couple of the poets in it were  
several years dead from old age as a matter of fact. But it did  
strike me that he was making an attempt to be broad with it,  
including Armentrout, as well as Lyn Heijinian and Clayton Eshleman.  
There were some good poems in it. But then, there were also a lot of  
poems that were by poets I'd never heard of before and whose poems I  
didn't like. But then, it's "Best American Poetry" and you kind of  
just learn to accept that, at least for the years I've been around  
and paying attention. I think there's an irony in that statement that  
could possibly say something illuminating about American Democracy as  
well, but it's too late at night to unpack it.

-JFQ


On Mar 5, 2008, at 3:07 AM, Ron Silliman wrote:

> I think it was Howard Junker who looked at Muldoon's edition in the  
> "Best American Poetry" series and noted just what a high percentage  
> of contributors were over the age of 50 -- I think that's very much  
> what you will continue to see at the New Yorker. He did ask Rae  
> Armantrout for work, tho she's been in the journal before, and is  
> over 50, but that is about as far afield as I expect it to get.
>
> Ron
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