A record of everything I've read and thought for several years. Surely there's value to that.


A given book by John Asbhery that I might own might be a) in my office at the University b) my Kansas apartment c) my house in St. Louis, or d) the trunk of my car. "Your Name Here" and "Can You Hear, Bird" are the best of his later collections. I have not yet started to read "Chinese Whispers." Two new books by Kenneth Koch, "Sun Out" and "A Possible World" also await me, along with Jordan Davis's "Poem on a Train." Everywhere I go in house, office, apartment, I leave behind stacks of books.

Supply of poetry outstrips demand, as has been noted by many others before me. Yet a single reader justifies the existence of a poet. Imagine a physical therapist with a single patient: surely that physical therapist should feel his or her life-work was wholly justified. Why should a poet with 600 serious readers, or even 50, feel less valuable? The argument that poetry is socially irrelevant, due to small size of audience, has always seemed fallacious to me. School children learn to write poetry based on the pedagogy of Kenneth Koch or Ron Padgett, who are in turn inspired by Raymond Roussel, a wealthy eccentric who had to pay for the publication of his own books. The idea that only poets read poetry can be turned around as follows: reading poetry should make one into a poet. Are there any good critics of poetry who are not poets themselves? Only a few names, like that of Marjorie Perloff, come to mind.