Top-Selling Twelve Books in Poetry Criticism, 2059
The Ducati and the Tricorn: Coded Syllabics in Frederick Seidel’s Late Love Poems to Marianne Moore [George Van Waters]
Machiavellian Democracy: The Secret History of Steve Evans’s Attention Span [Emma Lazarus]
A Dacha for Everyone: Poetry Magazine, Cultural Corporatism, and the End of the American Avant-Garde [Alice Stone Blackwell]
The Man Who Imagined Too Much: Triumph and Tragedy in the Critical Life of Joshua Baldwin [Theodore Parker]
Donner’s Return: Utopia and Cannibalism in the Macrobiotic Poetry Commune, 2014-2016 [Lydia Sigourney]
Panopticon of Poets: Blog Comment Box Culture from 2000 to 2020 [Joseph Rodman Drake]
The Remains of the Day: Essays on the “Hidden Plot” Correspondence between Kenneth Goldsmith and Robert P. Baird [ed. David A. Warden]
National Identity and Poetic Crisis: A Study of the Reception of Paul Muldoon’s Atacama Earthwork Poems in Chile [Lizette Woodworth Reese]
Taking Stock of the Master Shock: An Annotated Facsimile of Emily Dickinson’s Discovered Correspondence with Karl Marx [ed. Abiah Root]
The Welsh Turn: Explorations of Third-Generation Flarf Cynghanedd, in Context of Awdl-gywydd, Byr-a-thoddaid, Cywydd Llosgyrnog, Gorchest Beirdd, Rhupunt Hwyaf, and Tawddgyrch Cadwynog Meters [ed. Benjamin Friedlander III]
Obsession with Oblivion: Tropes of Death in New Yorker Poetry, 2000-2050 [Graf von Auersperg]
A Bard for the People: Essays on Barrett Watten’s Tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate [ed. Lucy Larcom and Edward Rowland Sill]
You forgot to mention Homage to the Last Avant-Garde, Part Deux, by Michael Robbins (reprint, Phoenix Poets)
The Poetics of Al Jolson, by Kent Johnson (reissued, VoxBlaze)
The Ghost of Robert Lowell, by Johann Sonnevi (Mozart’s Brain Press)
One Hundred Years of Quietude, by Gabriel Garcia Stillman (National Poetry Foundation)
My Word Hoard Did This to Me: Flarf and the Fate of Post-Modernism, by Jordan Rivers (Hard Scull Press)
The Comment Box: Selected E-mails of Don Share, ed. by Lilly O. Valley (HarperCollinsNortonStrausGraywolf)
Good ones, Don.
I have no doubt there will be a dissertation, in decades to come, on the poetics of comment boxes!
Kent, I am in awe of your faith in the future of poetry.
Looks like my S=H=A=Z=A=M: Allen Grossman in Wonderland (Lulu.com) sank like a stone. I’m relieved that Homage, Part Deux will be doing all right. Am I right in thinking that I assigned copyright to the estate of Jordan Davis in my living will?
Death panels will have made living wills unnecessary by 2059, Michael!
>Kent, I am in awe of your faith in the future of poetry.
It’s a bit embarrassing in these present climes, I know.
And don’t come back and correct me for the redundancy of “these present”!
Hey, speaking of the New Yorker, and maybe I shouldbn’t say this, but sometimes when you open up the DE site you can see, for about three seconds, the long list of who is logged in to view the site. And I saw, really, TWO people from The New Yorker there!
Kent, I am in awe of your faith in the present and future of comment boxes.
You help inspire me, Jordan.
I have never been able to see such a list! There go my chances for a third poem.
We’re waiting for the second one, Michael. Is it about death?
In 2059, the only place to read a book will be on the screen affixed to the underside of a toilet lid or something! And the only place to find a toilet will be in a movie theater in “Arizona.” That’s what you call tragedy.
Well, it’s called “Lust for Life,” so yes.
sometimes when you open up the DE site you can see, for about three seconds, the long list of who is logged in to view the site
Sorry to spoil your Condé Nast-flavored fantasies, but what Kent’s seeing is what any of you can see if you click on one of the words under the “links” section to the right of this page.
Ha! That’s hilarious.
Oh well.
Let’s not forget:
“The Ruined Circulars : a Select Anthology of Henry Gould’s Rejected Letters to the Editor of New Yorker Magazine, 1960-2035″ (NY : Knock-Opf Bros., 2058)
ARE YOU LISTENING, NEW YORKER PEOPLE???????????
Oh, that’s a relief. I didn’t even know we had a “links” section.
Very funny.
I must add a link to my list of essays that should probably never be written…there is, I warn, a Canadian bias here.
http://lemonhound.blogspot.com/2009/01/speaking-of-everywhere-you-look-there.html
What is the flavor of Condé-Nast?
Taste the flavor.
LH,
I just saw your list, which is very funny and clever. I note that you had about nineteen people write in to your blog, every one of them telling you how funny and clever they thought your list was. Did you notice that with the exception of yours there is not a single comment here saying how funny and clever *my* list is??
Therefore, I thank you for saying so. I try hard, and it is difficult for me when my efforts fall flat.
But at least Paul Muldoon wrote me, back-channel. For some reason he wants me to send him poems for the New Yorker.
And Jordan, don’t write to correct the pronoun/ antecedent problem. Thank you.
At POETRY we write people front-channel. I’m just saying…
> not a single comment here
I know, Kent! It’s endless loves-me-loves-me-not here. But the negs, don’t they show that we care?
I found a pack of old letters from Emily Dickinson & Karl Marx at a yard sale in Pawtucket the other day… I wonder if Abiah Root could use them for his future book? Some of them are pretty funny & clever… ED calls him “Marxie”, & sometimes “Groucho” (when he fusses too much about Capitalism & such)… Karl writes some pretty bad love poems addressed to her… all in hymnal meter, of course… all & all it’s pretty interesting stuff… I wonder if Paul Muldoon at the NYorker would be into it? Do you mind asking him, Kent? Thanks.
Kent,
For the record I usually don’t get many comments, and few such supportive statements. It’s usually more indirect and public snipes and snarks.
But I do believe in feedback and send it when I can. All kinds, not just the pats. Immediate and otherwise.
>At POETRY we write people front-channel.
I think I need to stop writing in these comment boxes. Since yesterday, I’ve made nine awkward phrasings and three grammar errors. Jordan has probably counted eleven and four.
Please write me, Don. Here. Ask me for peoms or an essay.
KJ, I’m not keeping score! Though like everyone else here, I do enjoy playing ad hoc line judge and giving a point now and again.
The New Yorker just wrote (back-channel), requesting I retract my comment about being asked to submit poems to the magazine.
I’m telling you, I try to be lighthearted and what do I get? Silence, disdain, and legal threats!
Kent, I’d like to solicit a poem from you for an online journal I’m starting called Future Neglected Poets of America, which will appear briefly in comment boxes on Seth Abramson’s blog. I’ve already written two poems for it under Jordan’s name & seventeen under my own.
Kent! Are you trying to get me in trouble with The New Yorker?!
>Kent! Are you trying to get me in trou ble with The New Yorker?!
Michael, as you’ve told us, you’re writing your dissertation on Paul Muldoon. How could you get in trouble with the New Yorker?
Damn it, Kent!
Also, that is only one chapter!
The other twelve are on John Barr.
Oh, and by the way, Seth Abramson has taken his blog down. I suspect (though “just saying,” as Don likes to say, for I have no direct knowledge) that David Lehman threatened to sue him.
Yeah, I had to nix the chapter on David Lehman.
Oh and Jordan, since you like to wear those thigh-high black Grammar riding boots with the spiked heels, let’s see if you know this one, big shot, because I’ll bet you don’t, huh?
In Latin, what happens 1) to the indirect object pronoun in third-person double object constructions with a conjugated verb? And 2) where do the object pronouns go (this is a trick question, careful) if you have an infinitive or present-participle verbal phrase in the clause?
Eh? You tell me, Cicero. You’ve got five minutes. Anything beyond that, and it means you were looking it up.
Kent, they canned Latin at my high school after the first year.
But thanks for sharing your New American Poetry Tom of Finland fantasy!
Alright, Jordan’s five minutes are up.
This comments stream is now closed. I’m going home to drink some hot chocolate and watch C.O.P.S.
I hope you’re all feeling just bloody chipper about not giving even a teeny chuckle to my damn funny list of titles. As Diane Keaton (playing John Reed’s girlfriend) says to Jack Nicholson (playing Henry Miller) in Reds, “What you live for is to hurt.”
I mean, not even BACK-CHANNEL did I receive a nice comment.
Kentuck, I thought Hen’s note about ED and KM was a nice comment. I myself was and am too stunned by the obvious-yet-heretofore-ignored connection between MM and Seidel to say *anything* about the list.
>Kentuck, I thought Hen’s note about ED and KM was a nice comment.
No, it wasn’t. I’ve known HG for years, thank you, and I’m quite familiar with his mean little jabs and needles.
And how am I supposed to read that “UCK”??
I mean, not even BACK-CHANNEL
What to say, Kenterson? No one’s safe from DE’s patented anti-inclusion program. You earn your laughs bleeding or not at all…
Touchy!
Oh, and Anahid, the flavor of Condé Nast is halfway between iced tea and indigo schnapps.
Jesus, Bobby, did you have to link to that stupid post & stupider comments stream? I will never be able to unread it. You owe me two & a half minutes.
Kent’s nickname is Kentameter, I’ll have you know, & he had better be kidding with all this sensitive flower stuff.
What about Kentagram? or Kent Circle? The Kentos? Kentilever? Archbishop of Kenterbury?
>& he had better be kidding with all this sensitive flower stuff.
Alright Predator, now you *really* have me worried.
Kentenkerous!
Jordan FTW. Nothing left to do but put up pictures of the Hindenburg going down that say PWND.
I will never be able to unread it.
I was about to make a joke about how the Digital Emunction Unreader was going to be the invention that made us all Seidel-sized fortunes, but then I realized that the joke would be compromised not only by the actual existence of such a thing but also by the fact that such a thing would be the very medium in which the joke got told. Hooray for depressing ironies.
One other thing. Under Predator’s post on Bill Knott, I sent in a comment, the first one, praising his words. Then BairdBoss wrote in, praising him for it, too. So what does Predator do? He thanks BairdBoss! But does he thank me? O No siree. Can’t do *that*.
Uh, I know you guys have cell phones and text back and forth all the time, but what’s FTW and what’s PWND?
>Under Predator’s post on Bill Knott, I sent in a comment, the first one, praising his words.
OMG, possesives don’t function as antecedents.
This has been a horrific day.
KENT! Thank you for yr typically generous comment under my Bill Knott post! I would’ve responded to it, but I was too busy fielding backchannel memos from The New Yorker. Uh, off-topic, but do you have a good lawyer?
I feel honored just to sit in on these jam sessions.
>I feel honored just to sit in on these jam sessions.
He deigns to say, in Central European accent, in his tall black boots, crop under arm, wiping his monocle…
(hey, please weigh in on Bill’s response to my post, linked to in the comments: how serious is he? an eternal question.)
> deigns
You say anybody deigning here, Kent, you hit them.
>(hey, please weigh in on Bill’s response to my post, linked to in the comments: how serious is he? an eter nal question.)
Typical: Robbins comes down under my post, after calling me the Hindenburg, to beg for comments to HIS post.
Ok ok, break it up break it up.
>No, it wasn’t. I’ve known HG for years, thank you, and I’m quite familiar with his mean little jabs and needles.
O Kent-O, now you are really in for it, oh boy. Where did I put my marshmallow crossbow? Where did I stash my rod of switch? You are in BEEG trouble with the Man! Uh-huh! Better watch out, mustachio’d fellow! Oh Yes!
Franz Wright, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry, said:
>and poor Kent is not a poet at all but a writer of mediocre prose –they sort of look like poems, from a distance–and numerous viciously unhappy blog entries. Maybe in another life.
O, all of you DE regulars who have so charily checked your praise for me… Eat your stingy hearts out.
Oops, posters get new comments in RSS feed, and I was thinking FW’s comment was under this post. But now I see it’s under the Poets on TV one.
National Identity and Poetic Crisis: A Study of the Reception of Paul Muldoon’s Atacama Earthwork Poems in Chile. Hopefully this study (which sounds terrific–no wonder it is a bestseller!) will not neglect to analyze what it means that the earthwork poems will have been built and maintained only because of a generous grant from BHP Billiton, otherwise known as el Instituto de Poesía del Sur.