The News In Poetry:
Gates to the Academy of the Future Slam Wide Open!
Dateline: 5/18/99
Poetry was, until recently, an art that shared the same flat latitude as mime and macramé. Suddenly, and astonishingly, its found its voice. And it’s the Voice itself, bringing us the spoken and performed poem, that is driving this resurgence. Take a look at what’s happened just this past year:
- This past April, the third National Poetry Month saw poetry book sales increase over 25%.
- Robert Pinsky, our most visible Poet Laureate ever, continues the Favorite Poem Project, recording citizens from all walks of life reading their fave verses.
- The Academy of American Poets, the nation’s largest and most venerable poetry institution and the prime sponsor of NatPoMo, has completely restructured itself, adding such diverse poets as Lucille Clifton, Adrienne Rich, Robert Creeley, and Michael Palmer to its Board of Chancellors.
- The American Poetry & Literacy Project has given away tens of thousands of poetry books, talked numerous local phone companies into using poems for filler in their Yellow Pages and overseen a program where a book of poems was tucked into the glove compartment of every new Volkswagen sold this April.
- The first People’s Poetry Gathering in New York City drew 10,000 people for 100 events with 200 poets, including readings by African jalis, Mexican decimistas, US blues poets, teen-age slammers, and Ani DiFranco.
- Poetry events everywhere from Lexington, Kentucky to Rotterdam, Holland garnered enthusiastic crowds.
- Even the pop singer Jewel published a book of poetry! and sold a ton, too!
- As for music/poetry crossings-over: more hip hop, freestyle rappers than ever are making their way as poets -- check out Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn in last year’s hit film, Slam.
- And speaking of Slam -- 1999 marks the tenth anniversary of the National Poetry Slam. Teams from 48 locales will be competing for the Boot at Chicago, where Slam was born, this August, having their poems scored between a 0 (a poem that should never have been written) & a 10 (orbiting cloud cuckoo land).
- Meanwhile, at the Taos Poetry Circus this June, Sherman Alexie, whose movie Smoke Signals contained poems and poets galore, will defend his World Heavyweight Poetry Bout crown against the searing High Priestess of Word, LA’s Wanda Coleman.
- And more Pinsky news! He has been recently reappointed to an unprecedented third term as Poet Laureate! And his newest book, The Sounds of Poetry, is dedicated to the pleasures of reading aloud, and being read aloud to.
- Volume II of Jerry Rothenberg and Pierre Joris’s magnificent reworking of twentieth century verse, Poems for the Millennium,* came out last year, as did a long-awaited reprint of Rothenberg’s Revolution of the Word,* filling in the gaps in US poetics 1914-1945 (Ginsberg on Rothenberg: “He’s saved us all twenty-five years”).
- The Internet, once thought of as the bane of poetry, has in fact been a vitalizing force for the art. There are poems written specifically for the Net, like Maria Damon and Miekal And’s “Literature Nation” and the folk scrolly; text sites developed by poets fed up with the corporatizing of book publishers; and great opportunities to find poems from the past -- even The World’s Worst Poem.
Let’s end with an adaptation of one of Bob’s poems, a welcome to all from us both,
Love Poems
We love poems
--Bob Holman & Margy Snyder
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