[New-Poetry] The List

[David Graham]

On Oct 6, 2008, at 7:19 AM, AlMaginnes at aol.com wrote:

> All of these people have at least one book and in the case of James  
> Seay and Betty Adcock a lot of books and careers that span decades.
>
> Al

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While enjoying a recent sabbatical I gave myself a little informal  
project, which was to see how many "new" contemporary American poets  
I could discover.  "New" to me did not mean new in their careers, of  
course.  Far from it.  As Al notes, there are many poets with fairly  
well-established careers who fall under the radar of most poetry  
mavens.  Even people like myself--and I don't meet many who read  
*more* contemporary poetry than I do.  But we all seem to be reading  
different mental anthologies, it often seems, segregated by all the  
usual barriers of region, gender, class, university affiliation,  
race, style, aesthetic camp, individual bias, personal connections,  
and so forth.

Mostly I employed the web, though I also kept my eyes open at used  
bookstores, libraries, the book fair at AWP, etc.  I listened  
especially hard to recommendations from friends, former students, and  
such.  But mainly I cruised blogs, online journals, listservs, and  
the like.  And I didn't have to work very hard, as it happens. I'm  
online a lot anyway.  But I soon discovered I could turn up a couple- 
two-three good published poets new to me on a daily basis, if I wished.

All of which would be in addition to the literally thousands of poets  
already on my radar.

I wasn't very systematic about it, and no, I didn't actually compile  
any lists, though I suppose I could if there seemed much point in  
it.   I did find quite a few who were not only new to me, but  
delightful.  I bought a few more books than usual during my leave,  
alas & hooray.

Just to cite a few examples of poets I didn't know a year ago, but  
now am very fond of (in some cases I'd seen a few individual poems  
previously, but not many, and not whole books):

Erika Meitner
Adrian Metejka
Matthew Dickman
Ashley Capps
Kelle Groom
Danielle Pafunda
Jennifer L. Knox
Sean Norton
Jonah Winter
Adrian Blevins
Julianna Baggott
James Armstrong
Catherine Pierce
Paul Guest
Elizabeth Hadaway
Floyd Skloot

Some of the poets listed have had long, multi-book careers already,  
and none are published by truly obscure presses, incidentally.

Just curious:  how many poets on the above list are on *your* radar  
currently?

And even more curious:  name a few "new" ones from your own reading,  
why don't you?









========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu

Home Page:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz

Poetry Library:
http://web.mac.com/drjazz/iWeb/Site/DGPoLibrary.html
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