If you’d been present at the Bowery Poetry Club’s dream weekend on May Day 2004, you’d have earned a degree in poetry. Next best, read these writers, and you’ll have waltzed with some exciting partners and staked a great view of the American poetic landscape.
1. How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love, by E. Ethelbert Miller
(Curbstone Press, 2004) Miller’s new book makes a good case for his being Mayor of DC (he’s lived in Washington for years, where he professes and directs at Howard). The work is direct and atilt, politics lurks in love, they sing. When he reads, it’s song, too, a rev and rush into silence and thought. 
2. Where River Meets Ocean, by devorah major
(City Lights Books, San Francisco Poet Laureate series, 2003) devorah major is the current Poet laureate of San Francisco, and City Lights’ SF Poets Laureate series is another example of how forward Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights are in defining US poetics. Where River Meets Ocean includes her Inaugural Address, an arresting blend of poetry, prose, rhetoric.
3. Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems, by Amiri Baraka
(Small Press Distribution, 2003) Amiri Baraka is “the Father of contemporary Black Literature,” the Beat poet LeRoi Jones, the former Poet Laureate of New Jersey who was ousted only when the State Legislature abolished that position, and still the newest kid on the block when he starts swinging with his controversial masterpiece, “Somebody Blew Up America.” In performance it’s woven into the strains of Monk’s Mysteriosoas performed by his band, Blue Ark; in the book it’s just the words, thanks.4. Words Need Love Too, by Kamau Brathwaite
(Small Press Distribution, 2000) Kamau Brathwaite is Poet Laureate of the Caribbean. He is of the place and the sea and he is language in all forms natural which includes: cyberrealities. He is indescribable television -- I’d start with his new book Words Need Love Too (House of Nehisi), then try Trenchtown Rock (Lost Roads) and his dialogue with Nathaniel Mackey, conVersations.5. The Fugs Final CD (Part I), with Tuli Kupferberg
(Artemis Records, 2003) Kupferberg is a comic poet anarchist Fug. You can hear his latest warblings (including the parasong, “Why Must I Be a Septuagenarian in Love” (which now must be updated to “octogenarian”) on The Fugs Last Album, Volume 1, and you can come across his amazing self-help books, 1,001 ways to Avoid the Draft or Make Love or Live Without Working yardsales across America.6. Lay Back the Darkness, by Edward Hirsch
(Random House, 2003) Ed Hirsch is a fine, fine poet, an ambassador for poetry, and was recently appointed Director of the Guggenheim Foundation. He plunges directly into madness and love and pain as if they are things you can talk about. Which he does, in his poetry. His newest book, Lay Back the Darkness, is a fine place to start; he’s at the top of his game.7. Samaritan, by Richard Price
(Vintage Books, 2004) Price is not a poet, but why not give props where props is due? He takes on the big subjects and gives them great stories to provoke mind workings, pleasure jilts, and rollicks, i.e., I think he’s great. Freedom Land, Clockers, his new Samaritan, and his first The Wanderers -– go!