[New-Poetry] Excellence in Poetry: a New Check-List

[Bob Grumman]

James Cervantes wrote:
> How little poetry we would have if each and every poem were sui generis.
>
> - Jim
You seem to be taking "sui generis" too literally, Jim.  It doesn't mean 
in some way unlike every other poem, at least not to me; it means 
differing from all other poems in some fairly extreme way.  My check 
list doesn't have that as a requirement, only that an excellent poem be 
special in some way.  Dickinson's poems, for instance, each have a 
diction all its own, and like but not the same as the diction in her 
other poems, and unlike the diction in just about any other poet's 
poems, but not enough to make her poem sui generis, I don't think.  
Unless every good poet's oeuvre is sui generis.

--Bob