No Iscariot is Scariett: “THE 100 BEST, NOT SO WELL KNOWN, POETS IN ENGLISH, PART ONE”

In choosing such a list, how such a list is arrived at—should be at least, if not more, interesting than the list itself.

It began with a friend mentioning how much they loved Wendy Cope—a delightful poet not excessively well-known. Why not compile a list, I thought, of 100 poets like Wendy Cope. Poets not crowned with fame—but—in some other life—good enough that they might be.

Wendy Cope, then, makes the list, and to ground ourselves, one poem by each poet ought to be included:

The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange —
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave —
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

It’s the kind of poem people who are not exceptionally smart and become professors don’t know what to do with, but which sensitive people, who aren’t necessarily literary professionals, absolutely love. But guiltily? Should we love “The Orange?” Absolutely. The poem’s lovely waltz rhythm—corresponding to the math in line 4—is genius. The final line, suddenly introducing the luxury of present tense, since, after all, the poet “had some time over,” is genius, too.

A search for 99 Wendy Copes has begun.

First, actual friends are considered.

I’ve never really enjoyed the company of poets. Poets don’t make good companions, generally. It doesn’t help me as a poet to be around other poets. I know that I don’t come across as a poet to others, so it’s natural for me to think: what is the point of poets hanging out? Let the vulnerable ego keep to itself.

Scarriet was born out of Foetry.com, which flourished about 25 years ago. Controversial, written up in major newspapers (Boston Globe, New York Times, LA Times), Foetry (Alan Cordle) was responsible for alerting the poetry world to distinguished contests in which judges were friends or teachers of the winners.

Thanks to Foetry, the early 21st century was an embarrassing episode for po-biz.

Since the first World War, poets turned increasingly to cliques in universities to grow an audience, and as WC Williams (who didn’t rhyme) replaced Tennyson (who did), the public continued to shrink, and everything came to a head as students, who desired attention, and poets, who desired to earn a living “teaching” these students, became the way generations of “stars” were born. Instead of a poet winning praise in the press or making young people swoon at poetry readings, the mid-20th-century model became Robert Lowell, who taught at Paul Engle’s Iowa Writers Workshop and later at Boston College the students who became the next heralded generation—not because their books were reviewed in newspapers and the public rushed out to buy their books—but because captive students had no choice but to read them. The “new writing” was presented to them in textbooks, the publishing of which was controlled by the “Fugitive/New Critics” (who gave Engle his 1932 Yale Younger prize) and their circle of contacts who were good at manufacturing a pyramid scheme of poets joining poets—as a real public for poetry disappeared.

This is not to say poetry doesn’t belong in universities. But Ezra Pound (a failed poet in the 20s, a failed poetry textbook writer in the 30s, and a failed war propagandist in the 40s) found success with his idea (it was John Crowe Ransom’s idea, too) that “new” poetry should be taught in the universities, allowing contemporaries (quietly and slowly getting rid of Milton and Keats) to win easy laurels in the new syllabi.

The poetry anthology is a lost art. It doesn’t sell—and the public will not read the list we are presently compiling—why should they? Poets please poets—not the public.

Poets who have respectable teaching jobs in universities don’t want to hear this kind of talk, naturally.

Safe to say, I know very few poets personally. I met Ben Mazer, an ambitious poet, in Harvard Square. I avoided him for many years. That’s about it. I don’t have time for poets who pretend to be people.

Back to the search for Wendy Copes.

Next, online poets and poems.

Most poets don’t casually drop their latest poems on Facebook. They publish in journals, earn MFAs, teach, network, give readings, publish with a known poetry publisher, win a prize, or two, and become known that way. I’m suspicious of this process. The process takes on a life of its own—there is a tremendous obligation to pay homage to the process itself.

Contemporaries who skip this process and use the internet to self-publish are far more likely to catch my eye:

Beatrice guides Dante to Paradise

Walking past the department of French,
The stairs stared at us as in Hitchcock films;
We talked while my boots traced her footsteps:
“Do we have time?” “We have enough of it.”

Turning away from Comparative Literature,
I looked down from dizzying heights;
A little wind would twirl her hair,
As we spoke of ELT, and suicide.

I stood against an infernal heat,
And watched the city through her eyes:
The Hindu Hostel, and the Howrah Bridge;
The moving cars appeared like toys,

And men, like ants, toiled for food:
My views hadn’t altered with altitude.

This poem by Deepanjan Chhetri (India), who I really know nothing about, I saw on Facebook. It’s as good as anything I’ve seen recently in a book. And so it makes the list.

I am nothing if not critical, and therefore I don’t count too many poets from the online method of discovery. A dozen, perhaps?

Now we come to my personal library of David Lehman’s Best American Poetry, an invaluable record of contemporary American poetry since 1988.

Who has time to read the millions of poems hidden in thousands of poetry periodicals and books published each year?

I sure don’t.

Snobbery is necessary.

“Better” poems selected from the “better” poets published in the “better” magazines land in BAP—otherwise the critical eye would be overwhelmed.

Jim Behrle, poet, humorist, and gadfly, has kept alive the “foetry” spirit with his BAP cartoons, pointing out, for instance, that Lehman’s BAP 2019 volume, guest edited by Major Jackson, featured a “best” poem by Major Jackson himself, a “best” poem by Major Jackson’s wife, and “best” poems by the faculty at the NYU Creative Writing program, where Jackson was employed at the time. This included a “best” poem by Sharon Olds on the large penis of Rasputin, which Behrle of course ridiculed.

David Lehman, BAP founder, who gives his guest editors free reign, no doubt chuckles, and secretly sides, with Behrle—who is still carrying on his mission.

David Lehman is surely aware that the BAP series serves another valuable purpose. Perusing an annual BAP volume in about an hour, one glimpses the spirit of poetry which appeals to contemporary taste. Its character is different from the 19th century, the early 20th century, the mid-20th century. Having just looked at The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988-1997, Harold Bloom, editor, David Lehman, series editor; and Best American Poetry 2006, Billy Collins, editor, David Lehman, series editor; one has no doubt what this character is.

It is humor.

Compared to 19th century Romanticism/Victorianism and 20th century Modernism, the poetry from the late 20th century to the present day is a lark.

This is not say there isn’t anxiety or serious feelings involved—but this is a far cry from a poem which is serious at its core. The serious poem doesn’t really exist anymore in respectable poetry circles.

This may be a stunning discovery.

It is nonetheless true.

For the Wendy Cope school, or thousands of contemporary poets toiling in obscurity who will never be published in BAP, it’s different. Again, keep the distinction in mind. A poem which includes a jest or two for contrasting effect is not the same thing as the poem which is a laugh-riot in its soul.

The two lyric poems looked at previously are serious. Wendy Cope may have joked about an orange and the laughter may have been real—but this is but a part of a poem, which clearly has not been written for the sake of witty discourse. Nor is Deepanjan Chhetri kidding around. His poem, though it doesn’t strain after it, has a certain solemn, even sublime, beauty.

Here, from BAP, selected by Harold Bloom for his Best of the Best 1988 to 1997, is a poem by Aaron Fogel. Fogel and Lehman no doubt met at Columbia, where both earned a Ph.D.

“The Printer’s Error”

Fellow compositors
and pressworkers!

I, Chief Printer
Frank Steinman,
having worked fifty-seven
years at my trade,
and served for five years
as president
of the Holliston
Printers’ Council,
being of sound mind
though near death,
leave this testimonial
concerning the nature
of printers’ errors.

First I hold that
all books and all
printed matter have
errors, obvious or no,
and that these are
their most significant moments,
not to be tampered with
by the vanity and folly
of ignorant, academic
textual editors.
Second: I hold that there are
three types of errors, in ascending
order of importance:
One: chance errors
of the printer’s trembling hand
not to be corrected incautiously
by foolish scholars
and other such rabble
because trembling is part
of divine creation itself.
Two: silent, cool sabotage
by the printer,
the manual laborer
whose protests
have at times taken this
historical form,
covert interferences
not to be corrected
censoriously by the hand
of the second and far
more ignorant saboteur,
the textual editor.
Three: editors
from the touch of God,
divine and often
obscure corrections
of whole books by
nearly unnoticed changes
of single letters
sometimes meaningful but
about which the less said
by preemptive commentary
the better.
Third: I hold that all three
sorts of error,
errors by chance,
errors by workers’ protest,
and errors by
God’s work,
are in practice the
same and indistinguishable.

Therefore I,
Frank Steinman,
typographer
for thirty-seven years,
and cooperative Master
of the Holliston Guild
eight years,
being of sound mind and body
though near death
urge the abolition
of all editorial work
whatsoever
and manumission
from all textual editing
to leave what was
as it was, and
as it became,
except insofar as editing
is itself an error, and

therefore also divine.

*********

Why humor?

Here’s some reasons:

As formalist poetry in the 20th century faded, poets unconsciously turned to the joke as a model—since the joke has, to some degree, a form: beginning, middle, punchline.

The loss of religious feeling with its sublime effects can yet be recalled half-seriously or wittily—trendy poets, separated from the past, can have their cake and eat it.

Finally, the learned verbosity of wit and fun (for want of a better word) is probably the best way for modern (complex) anxiety to express itself.

The “David Lehman poem”—named after the series editor of perhaps the primary poetry zeitgeist publication of the late 20th century to our present day—it might not be unfair to call it that. Let’s look at a few more examples.

“The Warmth of Hot Chocolate” by Thylias Moss 1989

Somebody told me I didn’t exist even though he was
looking dead at me. He said since I defied logic,
I wasn’t real for reality is one of logic’s foundations.
He said I was a contradiction of terms, that one side
of me cancelled out the other side leaving nothing.
His shaking knees were like polite maracas in the small
clicking they made. His moustache seemed a misplaced
smile. My compliments did not deter him from insisting
he conversed with an empty space since there was no
such thing as an angel who doesn’t believe in God.
I showed him where my wings had been recently trimmed.
Everybody thinks they grow out of the back, some people
even assume shoulder blades are all that man has left
of past glory, but my wings actually grow from my scalp,
a heavy hair that stiffens for flight by the release
of chemical secretions activated whenever I jump off a
bridge. Many angels are discovered when people trying
to commit suicide ride and tame the air. I was just
such an accident. We’re simply a different species,
not intrinsically holy, just intrinsically airborne.
Demons have practical reasons for not flying: it’s too
hot in their homebase to endure all the hair; besides,
the heat makes the chemicals boil away so demons plummet
when they jump and keep falling. Their homebase isn’t
solid. Demons fall perpetually, deeper and deeper into
evil until they reach a level where to ascend is
to fall.
I think God covets my wings. He forgot to create some
for himself when he was forging himself out of pure thoughts
rambling through the universe on the backs of neurons.
Pure thoughts were the original cowboys. I suggested
to God that he jump off a bridge to activate the wings
he was sure to have, you never forget yourself when you
divvy up the booty, but he didn’t have enough faith that
his fall wouldn’t be endless. I suggested that he did
in fact create wings for himself but had forgotten; his
first godly act had been performed a long time ago, afterall.
I don’t believe in him; he’s just a comfortable
acquaintance, a close associate with whom I can
be myself. To believe in him would place him in
the center of the universe when he’s more secure
in the fringes, the farthest corner so that he
doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to nab the
backstabbers who want promotions but are tired of
waiting for him to die and set in motion the natural
evolution. God doesn’t want to evolve. Has been
against evolution from its creation. He doesn’t
figure many possibilities are open to him. I think
he’s wise to bide his time although he pales in the
moonlight to just a glow, just the warmth of hot
chocolate spreading through the body like a subcu-
taneous halo. But to trust him implicitly would
be a mistake for he then would not have to maintain
his worthiness to be God. Even the thinnest
flyweight modicum of doubt gives God the necessity
to prove he’s worthy of the implicit trust I can
never give because I protect him from corruption,
from the complacence that rises within him sometimes,
a shadowy, ever-descending brother.