There are two levels of poets in America

It sometimes seems that there are two levels of poets in America: the famous who have been the Poet Laureate and/or have won the Pulitzer Prize and/or National Book Award, whose books sell from a large publisher with a major distributor; and the rest of us, just getting along in good faith or in desperation, lucky to find publishers so that our books will exist, lucky to get a thousand copies of a book around. The twenty-five or so stars will pack a hall, folks will line up to get books inscribed, Bill Moyers will interview them, anthologists will never leave them out. We others are the underground or compost. Some few of the famous will remain famous, most will join us as the compost of the age, and some of our poets currently without laurels will rise into consequential identity in Time. And all is as it should be.

A Conversation With William Heyen by Philip Brady, Artful Dodge December 27, 2001

Top 2010 poetry books, proclaimed by Amazon & The New Yorker

Amazon.com Top Ten Poetry Books of 2010

TEN GREAT POETRY COLLECTIONS OF 2010 posted by Paul Muldoon @ The New Yorker December 16, 2010

Eleven Best Poetry Books of 2010 posted by Dan Chiasson @ The New Yorker December 6, 2010

How To Review A Book Without Reading It

How To Review A Book Without Reading It Gawker

The Onion’s A.V. Club has forthrightly apologized after discovering that one of their writers wrote a review of a book without reading it. Because it hadn’t been published yet. How’d the writer manage to fool his editors? Watch and learn.

Identity Parade

Books of the Year: Poetry An exciting new band of names is causing a stir
By Stephen Knight – The Independent 12/12/10

In a year which saw new books from three doyens of English-language poetry – Seamus Heaney, Les Murray and Derek Walcott – Roddy Lumsden presents the new generation from Britain and Ireland in Identity Parade (Bloodaxe, £12), anthologising 85 poets from an estimated 1,000 who have either published first collections over the past 15 years or are on the point of doing so.

Traveling Light

Traveling Light
Linda Pastan – W. W. Norton & Company -January 31, 2010

Traveling Light

I’m only leaving you
for a handful of days,
but it feels as though
I’ll be gone forever—
the way the door closes

Read rest of poem @ HUGOSCHWYZER.NET

To not know a poet’s book is to not know the poet as a whole

I’m disturbed that, increasingly, people are becoming acquainted with poets only by reading their poems on the Internet. And then, after reading say five or six poems, they say, “There, now I know the poet’s work. I don’t have to buy and read his book.” The thing is, a poet’s book is the entire experience, not individual poems. To not know a poet’s book is to not know the poet as a whole—only as a toe, a left arm, maybe a calf, an elbow, a kneecap. The parable about blind men and an elephant relates to this. Finding a poem or poet on the Internet is wonderful, but only if it doesn’t stop there. -Dick Allen

Dick Allen Interview, with Kaite Hillenbrand – Connotation Press Issue IV, Volume II : December 2010

Huffington Post’s 17 Most Important Poetry Books of Fall 2010

The 17 Most Important Poetry Books of Fall 2010 – Anis Shivani – Huffington Post December 15, 2010

Fall 2010 has been a great season for poetry. There are important retrospectives of H. L. Hix’s remarkable career and that of the leading Arab poet, Adonis; new work by exciting young African American poets Thomas Sayers Ellis and Major Jackson; politically charged poetry by C. D. Wright and Anna Rabinowitz; late-career flourishes by veterans Paul Muldoon and Charles Simic; engaging experimental poetry by John Taggart and Julie Carr; and solidifying entries by poets of international stature like Kamau Brathwaite and Wislawa Szymborska.