Revanthi Ragunathan has reminded me how different the poetry world can
be from the world I experience in Raleigh, NC, where the best and
largest independent bookstore, one recognized as the independent
American bookseller of the year, has fewer poetry titles on its shelves
than I do at home. David Bircumshaw similarly reminded me of the
difference between the English and US situations.
I should have known better. On this issue, an excerpt from a 1993 essay
by Gioia, found at http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ebohemia.htm :
"The fifth point is that there still exists a huge audience for poetry
in America, old and new, but it is now so segmented, that it shares
almost no common ground. There is no longer a viable mainstream in
American poetry, at least among poets under 60. New American poetry
instead is segmented by region, aesthetic, ideology, gender, race, and
genre. The academic subculture of poetry represents only one small but
highly visible part of this large, diverse, and atomized audience. Those
poets who are read and discussed in lower Manhattan are not the same as
those who are esteemed in Palo Alto and Seattle, or argued over in San
Antonio and Charlotte. If there are half a million regular readers of
poetry in America (and I would guess that the number is at least that),
it usually seems as if no two are reading the same book."
Another quote, likely to be taken in many different spirits on this list:
"New Formalism, for example, which is sometimes misleadingly portrayed
as an academic literary movement, is actually of a piece with rap and
cowboy poetry in recognizing the auditory nature of poetry."
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