The DC Poetry web site is one of the smartest ideas I’ve seen in terms of both documenting a community & making poetry more widely available. The site includes schedules for (& a few poems from pretty much everyone who in recent years has read in) the Ruthless Grip, in your ear & Bridge Street Books reading series, plus some historical documents, such Joan Retallack’s 1988 essay, “Mass Transit: The Dupont Circle Circle” [not a typo], chronicling the early history of post-avant poetics in the nation’s capitol. 

 

Rae Armantrout asked me if I’d read any poetry by Richard Roundy, a writer whose work she has found interesting of late, and – though I’ve got “Occupation of Green,” a longish poem that appeared in Sal Mimeo 3 awhile back, my first impulse wasn’t to plough through my mags, but to Google the man – and by far the best sampling of work I’ve found comes from the DC site, a trio of lovely & funny poems that seem fairly different from his work in Sal & even that which appeared back in 1995 in RIF/T 5.

 

While I’m there, it’s impossible not to take a look-see at all the other great poetry this site has been gathering. In addition to Bob Perelman, Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Kit Robinson, Tina Darragh & other members of my age cohort, there are lots of younger poets included as well. Particularly tasty I found was an essay by blogger Katie Degentesh on my favorite food, the banana.* Other bloggers who have work incorporated here include K. Silem Mohammad, Jordan Davis, Drew Gardner, Patrick Durgin, Nada Gordon, Michael Magee, Gary Sullivan, CA Conrad & Tom Devaney (of the Philly Sound** poets). An even greater number of non-bloggers appear – the 190 or so poets among the blogroll to my left here turn out to be just the tip o’ of the iceberg when it comes to poetry these days. For example, the best link list I’ve ever seen for the poetry of Mary Burger is to be found in the “Fall 1999” of the 2000 anthology web page.

 

Some of the link sites have gone dark (where are you now, Shawn Walker?), especially for poets listed in the site’s first season, but on the whole this is a terrific resource – not just for poets in DC, but anywhere at all. Jennifer Coleman, Allison Cobb, the reading coordinators and whoever else has taken part in this project have done – and are still doing – a wonderful job connecting community & poetry in the best possible ways.

 

 

 

 

* Degentesh also has a homophonic translation from the Bhagavad-Gita that I sure wish I’d known about when I was thinking about such things a few weeks ago: “this samizdat should have a child.”

 

** Which as a collective blog is becoming a serious resource of its own these days.