As dozens of literary magazines have published
poems of mine for fifty years,
they have been reprinted
in The Young American Poetry (1968),
Once Again (1968),
Poetry (1970),
New Generation: Poetry (1971),
Sports Poems (1971),
La Lettre et L’Image (1970),
Letter and Image (1970),
Buchstabenbilder und Bildalphabete (1970),
Mixed-Media–Poetry: Anthology (1972),
Text-Bilder Visuelle Poesie International (1972),
New American Poetry (1973),
Probes: An Introduction to Poetry (1973),
Poetry: An Introduction to Writing (1973),
The Norton Introduction to Poetry (1973),
Speaking Pictures (1975),
For Poets (1975),
Appreciating Poetry (1975),
American Poetry and Poets of Four Centuries (1976),
The Treasury of American Poetry (1978),
Oggi Poesia Domani (1979),
Another Almanac of Words at Play (1980),
An Introduction to Poetry (1982),
Poetry & Language (1983),
Visioni Violazioni Vivisezioni (1983),
Visual & Concrete Poetry (1983),
Milkweed: A Gathering of Haiku (1987),
Snow Summits in the Sun (1990),
Poema Mundo (1993),
Visual Poetry: An International Anthology (1993),
Is Poetry a Visual Art? (1993),
Typoèsie (1993),
Poésure et peintrie (1993),
Visuelle Poesie aus den USA (1995),
Approaching Poetry (1998),
What Book!: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop (1998),
Spud Songs: An Anthology of Potato Poems (1999),
The Cerulean Anthology of Sci-Fi/Outer Space/Fantasy Poetry and Prose Poems (1999),
Pantópico 2 (mil) + 1 (2000),
An International Anthology of Sound Poetry (2000),
& Squared: An/theology of Pwoermds (2004),
Inside the Outside: An Anthology of Avant-Garde American Poets (2006),
Media Poetry (2007),
Visual Poetry in the Avant Writing Collection (2007),
The Last Vispo Anthology (2012),
and Literature: An Introduction (2016),
among other anthologies.
Individual entries
acknowledging my poetry
have appeared in various editions
of Wikipedia,
Contemporary Poets,
Who’s Who in America,
Who’s Who in the World,
Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers,
Who’s Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, and Poets,
The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature,
Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers,
International Who’s Who of Authors and Writers,
The Facts on File Companion to American Poetry,
The Facts on File Companion to 20th Century Poetry,
Contemporary Jewish-American Dramatists and Poets,
The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature,
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry,
and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature.
Nonetheless,
the Poetry Foundation doesn’t acknowledge me.
Nor does the Academy of American Poets
or the American Academy of Arts & Letters.
Nor Poets’ House (NY).
Nor the St. Marks Poetry Project.
Nor the Institute for the Humanities
at New York University,
where I incidentally swim
and springboard dive regularly.
Nor the Century Association (NY).
Neither Ubuweb.com
nor the YMHA Poetry Center in New York
nor the American Poetry Archives in San Francisco.
Nor the Literature department
of the National Endowment for the Arts.
I’ve never been invited to conduct a “poetry workshop”
or to become a “poet laureate,” even of my immediate neighborhood.
Books of my poetry
have never been reviewed
in the NYRB,
NYTBR,
TLS,
LRB,
and Poetry,
among other most visible gatekeepers.
Nor have I ever
been interviewed
in print or over any air,
solely about my poetry.
Different worlds must we be inhabiting.
Doesn’t this summary
measure how
a genuine avant-garde
must still exist?
Copyright c 2018 by Richard Kostelanetz