DISCUSSED: Rival Schools, Jorie Graham, Purple Cows, High-School
Yearbooks, Beauty, The N-Word, Mechanical People, Beach
Vacations, Florida, Tilting Planes, Nostalgia for Long
Arguments, Inaccurate But Influential History, John Ashbery,
Frank O’Hara, Naked Poetry, Post-Nirvana Indie Rock, The War of
the Anthologies, Apparent Obliquity, Confessional Poetry,
Artificial Egos, “You,” Ange Mlinko, Allan Peterson, Rediscovery
of the Essayistic Digression, Kay Ryan   Invited to offer a
“defense of poetry,” Randall Jarrell complained fifty years ago
that poetry doesn’t need to be defended, it needs to be read.
Since then, fewer and fewer Americans (at least in proportional
terms) have read it. When successful young poets compare
themselves to their friends who haven’t yet published a book,
they may feel lucky; when they compare themselves to Allegra
Goodman or Jonathan Safran Foer or Zadie Smith or—but pick your
own Best New Novelist—even the most-celebrated serious young
poets can find it hard to know they exist.  T