BAP : Best Academic Poetry

Latest tempest in the American Sneezepot has to do with the 2015 edition of the avuncular Best American Poetry anthology.  Apparently a "white" poet passed as a "yellow" poet, & was accepted as such by the editor of the anthology, who then defended his decision to keep the winning poem (editor seems to have found himself in no-win situation).

Anyway, the most curious thing to me about the editor's (Sherman Alexie's) defense of his modus operandi was statement that 99% of the chosen poets were professors.  Who woulda thunk it?

Anyhow, a Twitter exchange with Sina Queyras about this lil' imbroglio resulted in the following hepicene poem by Yorick truly :

NOM DE PLUM

I have eaten
the poems
that were in
the anthology

and which
you were probably
saving
for 2016

Forgive me
they were so
so

Plums in anthology basket

Have been spending a lot of time the last few days with an old (but not too old) Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, 1250-1950 (ed. Helen Gardner), and a study of same period by Douglas Bush (English Poetry, publ. the year I was born, 1952).

Absorbing, humbling, curious. Sort of like sortes virgilianae or throwing the I Ching (dim memories of earlier readings).