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Jeff McDaniel is a poet of many worlds -- he's a slammer, a professor (at Sarah Lawrence), a great writer (three amazing books for Manic D Press: Alibi School in 1995, followed by The Forgiveness Parade in 1998 and brand-new, The Splinter Factory, 2002).
So when we were discussing the various crises of the Chancellorships at the Academy of American Poets, Jeff started spouting his own total crossover list. Challenged to create a whole new Academy, he gave us the following roster to share with you all, and we've added links and publications so that you can experience their work for yourself.
Bob Holman & Margy Snyder
THE REAL CHANCELLORS
1 Kamau Daa'ood
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• Leimert Park (Mama Foundation, 1997)
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Co-founder of the World Stage, a community-oriented arts space in LA, he has a heart the size of a trampoline, and a voice as strong as a fire hydrant in July.
2 A.E. Stallings
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• Archaic Smile (University of Evansville Press, 1999)
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She's living in exile in Greece. The neo-formalists should be parading her around town on their shoulders.
3 Mayda Del Valle
Our reigning National Poetry Slam champion. (Each year the slam champ should rotate onto the Board of Chancellors.)
4 Joshua Beckman
He has a helium balloon for a heart; his special project will be to set up a reading series on the Staten Island Ferry.
5 Johanna Fuhrman
She's Monday nights at St. Mark's Poetry Project; has a giant scuba diving tank filled with Jack Spicer's last breath inside her lungs.
6 Bill Knott (Chairperson)
The ultimate outsider must be firmly entrenched in the center for things to be turned inside out.
7 Yusef Komunyakaa
We are grateful for the I's in his head (and the other twenty-five letters too).
8 Amy Gerstler
She has a telescope in her eyeballs that lets her see a person's soul.
9 Thomas Lux
His left ventricle is an opera house with homeless people in the first ten rows. His special project will be to make the Pentagon levitate.
10 Thomas Sayers Ellis
The dragon of the future, who can breathe ambrosia and ice as well as fire.
11 Rebecca Wolff
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• Manderley (National Poetry Series: University of Illinois Press, 1991)
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The architect of Fences (and bridges) will be in charge of designing blueprints for the apocalypse.
12 D.A. Powell
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• Lunch (Wesleyan University Press, 2000)
• Tea (Wesleyan University Press, 1998)
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He's the minister of wit, with a tornado of paper cuts for a tongue.
13 Adrian C. Lewis
Designated driver when the heart becomes a Mack truck.
14 Lawson Fusao Inada
The immediate deputy of civil rights, whose duties will include selecting a poet laureate for “Camp X-ray.”
15 Jan Richman
She will be in charge of building surrealist cathedrals in every state, and the “have you hugged a poet today?” campaign.
SPECIAL BULLETIN: National Poetry Month will hereby be abolished and replaced with National Poetry Minute, when everyone in the entire nation will be required by law to read the same poem in unison so that our brothers and sisters around the world will know that we Americans have heartbeats. The poem will be prefaced with the following official preamble: “Yo, this goes out to all my homeys chilling on Mars.”
Jeffrey McDaniel
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