Starting to make some interesting use of its $100 million endowment, the Poetry Foundation has put up the skeleton of a massive poetry website that promises, at first blush, to be quite a bit more than just the archives of the narrow School of Quietude (SoQ) ‘zine that begat this organization. One part of the site consists of best-seller lists derived from Nielsen BookScan. If ever you wanted to know why it matters that the SoQ dominates the eight trade publishers who, in turn, dominate book review section advertising in newspapers & distribution through the chains, this list is it.

More hopeful, perhaps, is a still mostly unpopulated “Poetry Tool” – attention Flarfists!! – that, far from being a tool (sorry ‘bout that, flarfonauts) appears instead to be the embryo of a poetry archive. The “tool” divvies up poems via this list of top-level subcategories:

·         Category

·        Occasion

·        Title

·        First Line

·        Recently Added

·        Glossary Term

·        Most Popular

“Category,” as it turns out, is a marker for content, of which the following kinds are possible:

·        Cycle of Life

·        Relationships

·        Activities

·        Nature

·        Religion

·        Arts & Sciences

·        Social Commentaries

·         Mythology & Folklore

One wonders where, say, the poems of Clark Coolidge fit in that slicing of the pie. The same question arises for the subcategory “Occasion,” which at the very least is more festive (save maybe for funerals & farewells):

·        Anniversary

·        Birth

·        Birthdays

·        Christmas

·        Cinco de Mayo

·        Easter

·        Engagements

·        Farewells & Good Luck

·        Father's Day

·        Funerals

·        Get Well & Recovery

·        Graduation

·        Gratitude & Apologies

·        Halloween

·        Hanukah

·        Independence Day

·        Kwanzaa

·        Labor Day

·        Memorial Day

·        Mother's Day

·        New Year's

·        Passover

·        Ramadan

·        Rosh Hashanah

·        September 11th

·        St. Patrick's Day

·        Thanksgiving

·        Toasts & Celebrations

·        Valentine's Day

·        Weddings

·        Yom Kippur

Why not occasions like Doubt, Ennui or Pissiness?

One subcategory that absolutely fascinates me is “Glossary Term.” That’s actually the subcategory for forms, but why, I wonder, can’t they say that? It includes:

·        Aubade

·        Ballad

·        Blank Verse

·        Common Measure

·        Concrete Poetry

·        Couplet

·        Double Dactyl

·        Dramatic Monologue

·        Elegy

·        Epigram

·        Epistle

·        Epithalamion

·         Free Verse

·        Haiku

·        Limerick

·        Mixed

·        Ode

·        Ottava Rima

·        Pantoum

·        Pastoral

·        Prose

·        Rhymed Stanzas

·        Sestina

·        Sonnet

·        Syllabic Verse

·        Terza Rima

·        Villanelle

Alas, no flarf there.

But my favorite, hands down, is one of the subcategories not of poems, but of poets – “School or Period”:

·        Middle English

·        Renaissance

·        17th Century

·        Augustan

·        Romantic

·        Victorian

·        Georgian

·        Modern

·        Beat

·        Black Mountain

·        Confessional

·        Fugitive

·        Harlem Renaissance

·        Imagist

·        Language Poetry

·        New York School

·        Objectivist

That list suggests ten broad divisions for the 20^th century, three for the 19^th, one each for the two prior, then broader groupings before that (Do I hear the Beowulf poet protesting?). Of the ten subcategories for the 20^th century, tho, only two, Confessional & Fugitive, are School of Quietude affairs (and Confessional, remember, was concocted by M.L. Rosenthal in order to make dullards like Lowell & Sexton “interesting” by insinuating some imaginary likeness to Ginsberg & O’Hara). Four – Imagist, Modern, Objectivist & Harlem Renaissance – clearly fall within avant traditions, while four others – Beat, Black Mountain, New York School and Language Poetry – can more accurately be characterized as post-avant.

You say you don’t fit into any of these categories? Maybe the Poetry Foundation doesn’t think you exist. Better get to work on those double dactyl toasts & celebrations.