WHO'S WHO


Ashbery, John

Will dominate
the last third of the century

as Yeats
dominated the first.

* * *

Boyle, Kay

Friends with

Djuna Barnes,
Samuel Beckett,
James Joyce

and many others.

* * *

Corso, Gregory

"How I love to probe life,"
Corso has written.

* * *

Dodd, Wayne

Captures the sequences of our lives --
riding the school bus
as light breaks from the earth
like birdsong
standing beside the ashes
of a house destroyed
in the isolated strangeness of night --
investing these moments
with the irreducible, untranslatable quality
of archetypes.

* * *

Evans, George

George Evans manages
a harshly common ground,
which is where we all began

certainly,

but which it takes all one's wit
and art
to come back to.

* * *

Flanagan, Bob

A member
of the swelling
Hanuman stable.

* * *

Gil de Biedma, Jaime

Gil de Biedma's poetry
will probably be
the solid residue left
after the century burns up.

* * *

Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata

She sheds her light
on what it is
to be a woman.

* * *

Itwaru, Arnold

As human beings,
we are shamed
by Arnold Itwaru.

* * *

Jenkins, Joyce

Possesses all the required equipment:

the light,
the hat,
the bird,
the rope.

* * *

Klepfisz, Irena

Her poems are a tribute
to strength in the midst
of terrible alienation.

* * *

Levy, Andrew

Andrew Levy activates
the ongoing struggle

to write

with the shadow of the head
falling over the page.

* * *

Miller, Joseph

He has learned
that to stand in a room
taken with something

and find yourself
at the edge of a field

is not absentmindedness
but a giving over
to the forces at hand.

* * *

Nettlebeck, F.A.

An unsettling voice
from the far shore
of the contemporary
Sleep of Reason.

* * *

Olson, Charles

One of
The ones

We have
Had

To study.

* * *

Plath, Sylvia

In a curious way,
the poems read
as though they were written
posthumously.

* * *

Quignard, Pascal

Explores the past
in the present

and the present
in the past.

* * *

Raworth, Tom

Tom Raworth's recognition
in the U.S.
equals that
of any British poet.

* * *

Saenz, Benjamin Alire

A poet who moves
and expands
life

as poetry should.

* * *

Tindall, J.J.

In J.J. Tindall's poetry
the trinity of father, son
and holy ghost

is as simple and plain
as a man named Joe

and as complex,
celebratory,
moody,
frightening,
and abstract

as a dream about him.

* * *

Uguay, Marie

She died young
in 1981.

* * *

Villaurrutia, Xavier

Was openly homosexual

and

a major poet.

* * *

Weiner, Hannah

Sees
words.

* * *

Xi, Xi

Xi Xi
is very much
a writer

"Made in Hong Kong."

* * *

Young, Gary

What more
could poetry ask for?

* * *

Zamora, Daisy

She is part of a generation
that has things to say

that no one
will ever say again.