Poets You Ought To Know About, Part III
We've devoted July to expanding our library of Net links to help you find out about the poets whose work you ought to know. The library is now indexed in two separate files: 20th Century Poets & Contemporary Poets = living, reading, writing, practicing poets now = 21st Century Poets.
- Part I introduced Bob Holman's list of 15 must-read, must-hear wordworkers.
- Part II collected recommendations from our Museletter correspondents.
- And here is Part III, more poets you really ought to know. . . .
--Bob Holman & Margery Snyder
from BOB HOLMAN (New York):
from BOB REDMOND (Seattle):
from MARJ HAHNE (Philadelphia):
from SHANN PALMER (Virginia):
from MARGERY SNYDER (San Francisco):
Nathaniel Mackey
His ongoing “Songs of the Andoumboulou” (the “failed human experiments” in Dogon cosmology that Mackey believes are, ahem, us) is today's Great Epic Poem. And Kofi Natambu's riff on Whatsaid Serif (City Lights, 1998) is to read/listen to.
Mutabaruka
Mutabaruka's home page: driftin' through the streets of New Yawk barefoot poetry spoutin' the shout -- top of the dub poetz, the finer line. . . .
bill bissett
If John Cage and Shel Silverstein had a baby and it lived in Toronto, would it be bill bissett? Hear and see his pure language poems, and drawings at qwerte. His new book, b leev abul char ak trs, is out this year on Talon Books.
Billy Collins
Someone, oh it was the New York Times, called him the “most popular poet in America,” and there was recently a huge industry to-do about his dealings with the wrong side of the independents, Random House v. Pittsburgh Press. Check it out in Salon, and of course the poetry, audio and literal, at his own site, in The Cortland Review #7 & at Poetry Daily.
Clayton Eshleman
Heavy hitter from the Black Mountain school and beyond mountain rock, Eshleman goes farther back even than Rothenberg in tracing the origins of poetry -- that is, to the Paleolithic age itself.
Janine Pommy Vega
She is among the Beat pantheon (but the women always get short shrift) & has a new exciting book: Mad Dogs of Trieste: New & Selected Poems (Black Sparrow). You can read her “Greeting the Year 2000, With Respect” in Poets on the Line #3.
Barbara Daniels
The Woman Who Tries to Believe has made a believer out of me -- her chapbook is full of crystal phrases I hung onto -- clear, comprehensible, but also multi-faceted, word-spheres revealing more truths if you look more deeply.
E. Ethelbert Miller
Miller has authored five collections of poetry, and has directed the African American Resource Center at Howard University since 1974. His most recent book is a memoir, Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer.
Peter Murphy
Murphy has taught English and creative writing at Atlantic City High School for the past 25 years, many of his students having been recognized for their wordsmanship. In 1996 The New York Times profiled Murphy and his teaching in an article entitled “Revise, Revise, Revise!.” Murphy has also served as judge for the first three monthly InterBoard Poetry Competitions.
Ron Androla
Ron Androla is not a poet for the faint of heart: perhaps start with “Setting the cigarette down” in Stark Raving Sanity, then read all about him at Thunder Sandwich.
Jim Chandler
Chandler has a lot going on: his Webzine Thunder Sandwich, poems in PoetryMagazine.com and a personal online collection called Chap My Ass. What an amazing guy!
Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros is famous enough to qualify for her own page in the Internet School Library Teacher Resource File, a good place for any reader to begin. Read two of her poems at Making Face, Making Soul..., a chicana feminist homepage: “Old Maids” & “Las Girlfriends.”
Peter Howard
Peter Howard is a hypertext pioneer & his Web site, “Low Probability of Raccoons,” is a kick. He is also a sonnet demon: “Cabbage” at the UK Poets Loft will make you laugh. Many of his poems, like the two published in Eclectica, reflect his interests as a scientist & mathematician.
David Ignatow
David Ignatow was the kind of poet most poets wish they could be -- his heart-rich poems have been called “deceptively plain-spoken.” His last book was Living Is What I Wanted (BOA Editions, 1999 -- a sampling is available online at Poetry Daily.
Denis Johnson
Denis Johnson lives in Idaho & is well known as a novelist. Karen Volkman reviewed his collected poems, Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly (HarperCollins, 1996), in Boston Review (scroll down). You can read his poem “Our Sadness” at the DIA Readings in Contemporary Poetry site.
M.L. Liebler
Liebler is known as the poet with the Magic Poetry Band in Detroit. You can read his poems in Rattle, then check out his new book, Stripping the Adult Century Bare (Burning Cities Press, 2000). His heroes are Jesus & John Lennon.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a woman writer of color who combined the personal and the political with exceptional skill. She died in 1992 after a long battle with cancer. Poems like “Coal” will live as this strong woman's loving legacy. You can experience some of that legacy at the site for A Litany for Survival, the documentary film made about her.
Jane Mead
Mead is a tight poet; her words are precise, even if they concern muddy shoes. Poetry Daily has an interview with her & Wake Forest University has a biographical note & selected poems from her book The Lord and the General Din of the World (Sarabande Books, 1996).
Todd Moore
Moore's has at least two chapbooks in print: Shotgun Blues from Phony Lid's Pick Pocket Books chapbook series & The Corpse Is Dreaming, a chapbook excerpt from his epic poem about John Dillinger published in the Little Red Books series by Lummox Press. You can also read his work on the Web, in Poets on the Line.
Lorine Niedecker
She was the only woman considered a member of the Objectivist poets. “The wild and wavy event / now chintz at the window / was revolution...” begins one of her wildly political works, from her book The Granite Pail (Gnomon Press, 1996). Read more about her in the “Gallery of Underrated Poets” at Taverner's Koans.
Michael Palmer
One of the new chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, Michael Palmer has published numerous books of poetry. A comprehensive bio & collected criticism of his work are at the Modern American Poetry site, & excerpts from an interview with Palmer are at the University of Massachusetts' Jubilat lit journal.
Frank Parker
Parker is an avid hiker and outdoorsman; interests only exceeded by his love of jazz. His minimalist work can be found at his own site & at Poets4Peace.
Silvia Brandon Pérez
Silvia Brandon Pérez is a multi-lingual editor, author, mother, lawyer, who was born in Havana, Cuba in 1949. She edits the Spanish edition of Poems Niederngasse and has poems published all over the Web in both Spanish and English in such zines as The 2River View & Conspire.
Alan Reynolds
Reynolds is an American living abroad who has the wonderful happenstance of his poems being recorded and read by someone else. Read his poem “Deathless” at A Little Poetry.
Floyd Skloot
Floyd Skloot has a wonderful book of poems called Music Appreciation (University Press of Florida, 1994) & poems online in The New Criterion & Caffeine Destiny.
May Swenson
This late great poet was known as a translator & playwright as well as a poet during her 50 years of writing, & now there's an award in her name. Robert Hass chose her poem “Question” for his Poet's Choice newspaper column in September 1998.
James Tate
Tate is like an easy Ashbery, fun and serious at the same time. He writes poem like “The Wrong Way Home” & “Days of Pie and Coffee,” and his book Worshipful Company of Fletchers (HarperCollins, 1995) won the National Book Award.
Cheryl “Cat” Townsend
Cat Townsend is a photographer, artist & poet of emerging talent. Her work appears online in Thunder Sandwich & at FiftyGod.
Tomas Tranströmer
Tranströmer is a distinguished Swedish poet -- his work isn't easy and there are many translators, including May Swenson. It's worth the effort and worth a read. Four of his poems in the original Swedish, with English translations by Malena Mörling, are in The Electronic Poetry Review.
Diane Wakoski
Wakoski is a long-time postmodern icon who has a lot to say in interviews. In her considerable body of work, poems like “The Oarsman” & “Red Bandanna” are Beat-perfect. Catch her dark humor in her selected poems, Emerald Ice (Black Sparrow Press, 1988).
Jim Watson-Gove
He's a Beat survivor who has published zines since the 60's: Showcase, Lemmings (70's), Minotaur (80's and 90's) and since his retirement last year, he edits Baker Street Irregular. His poems have appeared online in Disquieting Muses, The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks & The Crazy Child Scribbler.
Yusef Komunyakaa
Our correspondent choose Komunyakaa's as favorite recent performance: “He's a very musical reader, and his 'earthy' voice lends itself to the material he reads. Sort of like wooden windchimes and a tenor sax.” You can hear him read such poems as “Yellowjackets” & “Slam Dunk & Hook” in Real Audio at the Internet Poetry Archive & several other poems in the archived radio show All Things Considered.
Dorianne Laux
Dorianne Laux is a poet who reveals the inner sheen of ordinary, difficult daily life by paying attention to life and craft. She began as a single mother, supporting herself in a series of working-class jobs & writing poems during her breaks. Now she teaches writing at the University of Oregon & you can read her work everywhere online: in CrossXConnect, Ploughshares, Alsop Review, Rattle & an interview in Perihelion.
Alison Luterman
I've been reading Alison Luterman's poems in The Sun Magazine for years now -- she often takes my breath away & compels rereading with the beauty of her lines & the subtle depth of her heart. None of her many poems published in The Sun are reprinted on their Web site, but you can read her work online in Kshanti Literary Review & in John Kececioglu's “personal” collection.
Frank O'Hara
A musician before he was a poet, then word-musician, poet's poet, artist's poet, poet of Lunch Poems (City Lights Pocket Poets, 1986) & Meditations in an Emergency (Grove Press, 1957), Frank O'Hara lived only 40 years but his light still shines among the New York School.
