BAM, YouTube, Grammys, Laureates, Chancellors, Awards & Howl’s 50th Birthday...2006... Good year, Poetry...
Poets stormed the Brooklyn Academy of Music: Carl Hancock Rux, Sekou Sundiata, and Mike Ladd all took the Next Big Step with huge, multimedia spectaculars rooted in word-word-word utterances of sparked raucous inner poetry. YouTube lit up with poems, including some terrific animations of Billy Collins’ work, especially “Forgetfulness” with animation by Julian Grey of Headgear.
The Grammy nominations mirrored the national consciousness. “Best Spoken Word Album (includes Poetry, Audio Books and Story Telling)” nominees were Bob Newhart, Bill Maher, Jimmy Carter, Al Franken, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee. Go to “Best Historical Album” to find the well-made Poetry on Record, 98 Poets Read their Work from Shout Factory (Rebekah Presson Mosby, compilation producer and Randy Perry, mastering engineer).
The Poet Laureate turnover from Ted Kooser, who lives on 62 acres in Garland, Nebraska, to Donald Hall, who lives on his grandfather’s farm in Wilmot, New Hampshire, kept the pastoral in U.S. poetry.... The New York Times Book Review did a “Poetry Chronicle” every six months written by Joel Brouwer and Eric McHenry. Go figure how they make their decisions: in the past two years they’ve found Noelle Kocot, Elizabeth Alexander, Adrian Castro, Juliana Spahr on the wise and wonderful tip, and 61 poets from the tenure track.... In an interview in the Times Book Review, Helen Vendler declared she isn’t interested in young poets. Surprise.... Michael Palmer, a brilliant, underrated poet, won the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award (we’re talking 100 g’s, “The Speed of Sound”).... And new chancellors of the Academy this year include Lyn Hejinian!, Carl Phillips and Sharon Olds....
Speaking of underrated, Samuel Menashe won the Poetry Foundation’s first “Neglected Masters” award in 2004 -- having won it, he no longer qualifies for it! -- and his new Selected came out from Library of America this year.... Nathaniel Mackey’s Splay Anthem continues his Andoumboulouous skritch twist and won the National Book Award in 2006. Mackey, much touted in these pixels, has written his most complex work yet. (We recommend starting with School of Udhra, Whatsaid Serif.... The release of Ishmael Reed’s collected poems should be a national holiday!... More and more local towns have begun to appoint Poets Laureates: Jack Hirschman in San Francisco, Brenda Connor-Bey in Greenburgh, New York, M.L. Liebler (soon to be featured on this site) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan...
“Howl”’s 50th Birthday was this year! The Poem That Changed America: “Howl” Fifty Years Later edited by Jason Shinder (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) -- go hard cover and you get the CD of the first recorded reading of “Howl.” It sounds like a remix of the one previously released in the Holy Soul Jellyroll box set, very moving pieces, all very personal, which is the way Ginsberg hits you. Anne Waldman, Mark Doty, Bob Rosenthal, Andrei Codrescu, Eileen Myles, Gordon Ball, Alicia Ostriker, Billy Collins, Philip Lopate, Eliot Katz, Marge Piercy, Robert Polito (“Howl” and Lowell, Dylan, Bidart!), Rick Moody, Robert Pinsky, David Gates and more... Bill Morgan, Ginsberg’s Boswell, has two books just out: I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (Viking), the first full-length biography, and Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression (City Lights Publishers). Morgan is clear and knowledgeable -- a force.
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