Neglected is a slippery term; here I define it as poets who are
probably unknown to almost everyone on this list and whom many would
like if they knew about them.
Benoy Majumdar. You'll find this in various spellings.
Indian/Bengali poet whose work was published in the Hudson Review and a
few other respectable journals around 1970 in English translations by J.
Datta. I read many of these translations in college in a manuscript
which one of Datta's students (he taught for a while at my university,
though I never knew him) had. A wonderful poet, combining almost
seamlessly the symbolic traditions of Indian erotic spiritual verse with
modern surrealist disjunction of sensibility. Personally he was a
mathematician and engineer who had a history of mental problems and was
confined in various institutions. I don't know if he's still around.
Some years ago I corresponded briefly by email with an engineer from
India who said that Majumdar was very well known locally in East India,
and that he (the engineer) had many of his poems by heart. Something
attractive about a culture where engineers keep whole bodies of
contemporary poetry in their heads.
Nikephoros Vrettakos. Very well known in Greece though almost not at
all elsewhere. Died a few years ago at an advanced age. In my opinion
one of the best poets of the century. I published a translation of him
a while back in The Poet's Voice (Bath). A few years ago an issue of
the American journal of Modern Greek studies, The Charioteer, published
a special issue on him which included many translations.
MacKnight Black. Died I think in 1931. Had a reputation in the U.S.
but has been almost totally forgotten, though Vantage published him
again in 1970. Wrote odes to skyscrapers, dynamoes, and engines. His
rather naive socialist faith in the glories of industry seems dated
today and his range is narrow, but within that range he created
something really new which no one so far as I know has picked up on.
Miltos Sahtouris. Another Greek poet, writes wonderfully incisive
surrealist poetry possessed of a terrifying and dreamlike clarity. Like
Vrettakos, well known in Greece but not elsewhere. In my opinion the
poet who work most effectively embodies the senselessness of human
culture in the late 20th century. Was still publishing as of a few
years ago though he'd be well into his seventies. There's a slim volume
of translations into English by Kimon Friar (With Face to the Wall,
Charioteer Press, 1998.)
Douglas Blazeck. A working-man's poet who really was a working man,
wrote extremely gritty poems somewhat in the manner of Bukowski but I
think better. Published a dozen or so books in the midwest and west
coast in the late sixties, then seems to have disappeared. Never heard
what happened to him.
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