While annoying the estabniks at New-Poetry with my criticism of the Rothenberg/Joris anthology for not inculding all the kinds of poetry I think should be in it, I got to thinking about the kind of anthology American poetry most needs. It would, needless to say, include all the schools of poetry extant. School being group of people producing work that adheres to my definition of poetry and is significantly different from the poetry produced everywhere else. Determining whether a group qualifies as a school would, of course, be subjective. I have ideas on how to set up the project so as to minimize this defect:
(1) Assuming there’s lots of money behind the effort, and there would have to be, appoint one person First-Editor. He could be almost anyone–perhaps someone selected from names in a hat of people voluteering for the position Allow him to name all the schools that should be in the anthology and select works to represent each school. Hire people to get permissions for their publication. Post the result on the Internet and publicize it as widely as possible.
(2) Solicit critiques of Version 1 of the anthology. Try to get people to say what’s missing and why, what is in and shouldn’t be and why. Pay everyone posting a critique of value $1000, a critique of value being what a panel of ten randomly chosen from the volunteers previously mentioned and including First-Editor change the anthology because of. Give $10,000 to the ten best critiues in the view of the panel, or to as many that deserve it if less than ten seem especially good.
(3) Make the person writing the best critique, according to the panel, Second-Editor and require him to revise the anthology, but not make any changes not recommended by one or more of the critiques of value.
(4) Repeat step (2), then (3) and so on, back and forth until just about everyone agrees that the anthology truly covers the entire poetry continuum.
The Internet makes a project like this feasible for the first time. If the government or the Macarthur morons choosing mediocrities to call geniuses or like dolts really cared about poetry, they’d back it. It’s as neutral as can be, it seems to me.
Reflecting on the above idea, I thought to myself that I’d be pretty good at listing the schools of pluraesthetic poetry such as visual poetry and mathematical poetry, but not too good at listing the schools of standard poetry–the poetry I call linguexpressive (using words only). I decided to try to make a list of the latter, anyway. Here it is:
1. Edwardian poetry–the kind of standard formal poetry written by most American poets as the twentieth century began.
2. some school between the above and the next?
3. imagistic poetry
4. country poetry, the kind Frost would be the exemplar of–and, yes, I need a much better name for it. Quotidian subject matter, formal techniques
5. surrealistic poetry
6. plaintext poetry (the kind of which Williams would be the exemplar)
7. objectivist poetry (if that’s different enough from 5.)
8. neo-formalist poetry
9. language poetry
10. infraverbal poetry
11. New York School poetry
12. beat poetry
13. ethnic poetry
14. contra-genteel poetry (Bukowski, and his followers)
15. feminist poetry
16. Haiku
17. Neo-Hopkins Poetry–what Dylan Thomas wrote at his best, sord-splash, not the sprung rhythm.
Additons welcome. I know I’ve missed some, almost certainly one or more important ones.