speaking so friendly of the big poem arena, Allen Bramhall rightly points to Rachel Blau du Plessis. There are many others missing from my list - hoovers I should know better. How could I leave out Susan Howe's historical collage-researches, for example.

Maybe that's why I had one of my occasional poetry dreams last night. In this one, a young blonde poet named Debbie(! - no relation to actual person that I know of) shows me her work, cut from some magazines like coupons. In fact, a couple of the poems incorporate coupon-phrases.

In this kind of dream which I have now & then, I read actual poems. I see them close up, line by line. "Debbie's" were so clever, witty, tender, brimming with sheer playful joy & verbal verve - I felt humbled & awkward offering my praise. I woke up wondering what remote & now inaccessible brain-region evoked all this.