I like quite a bit of the new Poetry issue. Don't have it in front of me, so can't say what.

the Don Paterson "aphorisms" - clever, but tending toward the painfully sour.

enjoyed Garry Wills essay on translation of Grks & Rmns.

liked some of the poems -

Amit Majmudar (featured poet) : have to say I skimmed them. didn't like much.

Patty Seyburn - FUNNY - but unfortunately the 1st 2-3 stanzas were the best.

Mike White - haven't read yet

Rachel Hadas - a very nice poem, though I feel like the set-up has been done before (the plot). Liked it though

Gillian Allnutt - very interesting, impressive, terse. Unusual phonics, syntax shifts. but a little derivative (Celan, G. Hill)

Wilmer Mills - I think I liked this one a lot but can't remember it now (read them last night). (helpful, aren't I??)

John Surowiecki - OK, maybe a little facile

Frederick Feirstein - nice : but kind of a genre poem. You have to do something very unusual with this for it not to sound like previous poems

Elise Partridge - original, confident, unusual. sets up situation & plays with it -very accomplished, quick. Too bad both poems have exactly same structure (imperative address to poems' protagonists at the conclusion)

Robert Wrigley - funny! good poem. again, though, it weakens toward the end, sort of fizzles

Robin Ekiss - haven't read yet. (sorry, bored with any titles that go : " [fill in the blank] In Love"

Mark Halliday - this guy has his chops down COLD. rueful fun - pieces of fluff

JD Whitney - haven't read yet

Daisy Fried - review of Camille Paglia's book of poetry crit. Nicely done, funny.

Garry Wills - worth re-reading

******

are we in a sort of Jazz Age??? the period style is witty, clever, comic, light, sharp, hard, ironic, anti-ironic ironic.

younger readers perhaps don't realize - or they realize much better than we old-timers do - how different this sounds from 25 yrs ago. the days of the wistful-stentorian laid-back free-verse rambles.

I know, I'm way behind the times. this probably started happening about 20 yrs ago, right???