NOT FIT TO LICK

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Do you know this anthol:
 

• Contemporary American Poetry, 8th Edition
• A. Poulin, Jr. - Late of State University of New York, College at Brockport
• Michael Waters - Salisbury University
• ISBN-10: 0618527850  ISBN-13: 9780618527854 
• 720 Pages  Paperback 
• ©2006     Published

Contemporary American Poetry, the 8th Edition, published 2006 by Wadsworth Publishing Company. 

The paperback list price is $119.95, though you can get it on Amazon for less.

One hundred and nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents.

Its editors are listed as A. Poulin, Jr. and Michael Waters, though Poulin's been dead well over a decade now, the last edition he did was I think the 6th, published in 1996.  Waters has edited the last two editions by himself (though he may have retained some of Poulin's picks).
 
A new version of this anthology used to be published every five years, but no 9th edition has appeared, and this 8th from 2006 is still in print (I copied the image above from the Wadsworth online catalog just minutes ago—)

I wonder if this is still read in schools today—Are any higher-ed courses in poetry using this anthology?  

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The 7th edition came out in 2001. 

And I was in the 7th edition!—

Yes, there I was, right after the Pulitzer Prize winning poets Kinnell and Kizer,

and right before the Pulitzer Prize winning poets Komunyakaa and Kumin,

there was the Knotthead with several pages of pokey little poems,

and everybody who looked at that suspicious insert surely said:

'Now how the fuck did that weako sneak in there between those REAL poets, those PULITZER poets?'

However it happened, I was in the 7th edition. For half a decade, I was part of "Contemporary American Poetry."

I was included! After so many years of excludedness, I was in. In the 7th edition.

But I ain't in the 8th. 

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Anyway, there I was, for one bright shining hour (okay, five years), right in the midst of those authentic poets as if I was one of them somehow.

It was like a TV reality show (American Poetry Idol) where they pluck some schmuck out of nowhere

and suddenly he's sharing the screen with allstars whose plaque in the sidewalk he's not fit to lick.

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...

appreciation of a Rutger Kopland poem

this and my other "appreciations" have been transferred 

to the 'good' prose blog (see top link sidebar)

appreciation of a Camille Martin sonnet—

this and the other "appreciations" have been transferred 

to the 'good' prose blog (see top link sidebar)

appreciation of a Carol Ann Duffy poem

this and the other "appreciations" have been transferred 

to the 'good' prose blog (see top link sidebar)

some thoughts on "Another Elegy" by Jericho Brown:

this and the other "appreciations" have been transferred 

to the 'good' prose blog (see top link sidebar)

too many

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Are you reading this as outraged and offended as I am by the weekly postings by Anis Shivani et al about how horrible it is that there are so many poets, 

oh there are too many poets these experts ubiquitously complain, Marjory Perloff this past week for a recent example—

Too many poets?  Too many poets!?— Are these people out of their fucking minds?—


I can think of lots of occupations there are too many of, every position in the military for a start: there are too many marines and too many bomber pilots and fighter pilots and drone-missile technicians, and too many infantry soldiers and too many of any kind of combat soldiers, and too many navy warship sailors, etc.,


but too many poets?  Really?   Compared to what?   How about the clergy, the priests of any every bloody religion polluting this planet: to me personally as an atheist, one of those assholes is too many.


Too many politicians, too many millionaires and billionaires (whose wealth in a just society would be returned, reparationed to the masses they robbed it from), 


but too many poets?  There can never be too many poets, there will never be too many poets in this world.   

But consider this:


Shivani Perloff and similar decrying criticrats are in essence advocating genocide against poets.  

That's their real message. 

To whom are these diatribes addressed?  They are subliminal petitions directed at the police-state officials, the FBI CIA National Guard et al,

urging those agencies to raise their yearly quotas for the murder of poets.


Shivani Perloff and their ilk in the Lit Establishment are imploring governmental authorities to institute pogroms to kill poets (or rather, kill more poets than usual),


to exterminate the vermin plague of poets, to eradicate this pestilent verse menace.

That's the hidden agenda behind their endless propaganda attacks against us.

That's their secret mission. 

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Some future headlines for this Final Solution:

Tea Party designates May 1st as annual "Kill a Poet for Christ Day."

Romney campaign pledges "A Guantanamo in every state" if poet census does not subside.

Congress vows to stop poets "Before they reach MFA doors."

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