Start from Where You Are

For every comparison, there is an axis of difference and an axis of similarity: every generation differs from its predecessors in some ways (as it reinvents them), and resembles them in other ways (as it reinvents them). If, as Yeats said, out of our arguments with ourselves we make poetry, the young poets in “Standing on the Verge” can start that argument from pretty much anywhere, can frame that argument in such diverse ways as to be almost unprecedented in their inclusiveness.

Starting from anywhere. Certainly this group of poems feels like it has the power to start from anywhere: any subject can start the poem; any speech act or kind of figurative language can start the poem. There is greater diversity—of experience, of voice, of aesthetics—here than in most anthologies; perhaps this is due to the character of the generation represented here, as well as to the society they inherit and contest.

Perhaps, if these poems are young, it is in that they search out extremes, of voice, of experience—as poetic events, their needs are palpable. Sometimes the voices in these poems embody the fundamental questioning of life and of identity which has so often made youth into a storm of our culture. Many of these poems tend towards outrage, many others of them toward investigation; often, these poems appear not to be surprised by anything, but that mask soon slips, as well it should. Whatever else these poems are, they are surprising, demanding, generous and searching. Their real and imagined struggles are complex and fertile. Often they end by demanding a further investigation—yet another reimagining of their subjects—by the reader. Combining image and voice, exploring lyric structure and personal and social conflict, they give the first experience of a world that is still ahead of most poetry being written today.

My deep gratitude to Askold Melnyczuk and D. M. de La Perrière.

February, 1993
Providence, Rhode Island