I’ll try to post something about poetry very soon, including a list of the poetry I find essential. At the moment, though, IT’S COMICS TIME!!!!!!! (Read this as The Thing would say it.)

…But so you have someplace to start (and since it’s best to just jump right in), I’d suggest Frank O’Hara. You can get all of his poems in a single beautiful, complete volume (well, the poems of his that survived).

Here’s one of his best poems, to get started:
http://wings.buffalo.edu/cas/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Frank_O%27Hara.html

From there, you can explore the rest of the New York School (I personally adore Kenneth Koch), or move forward and/or backward.

John Ashbery is also an excellent place to start; his work has always struck me as being very relevant to prose writers (and only partly because he himself sometimes uses prose). SOME TREES makes a good entry point. As does THREE POEMS.

Moving forward more toward today, Susan Howe is utterly brilliant.

Moving backward, check out Lorine Niedecker (again one of many greats). Who will lead you to the other Objectivists.

Niedecker also leads to Louis Zukofsky, who leads to Gertrude Stein. Both LZ and GS wrote prose as well as poetry (and things in between).

…well, I’ll try to put together a more proper list soon, but the above are all Twentieth Century poets whom I consider important and canonical. There are many others! Meanwhile, I’m sure others will have opinions!

Hey, are you at your office on a Saturday, or did you get your internet back at home?

http://www.noemipress.org/scanlon.html

Adam, would you be interested in reviewing it for Big Other? If so, I’ll have them send you a copy.

I’ve been thinking that I should do some posts on poetry. Too many fiction writers I know never read any.

Personally, I consider poetry fundamental; I can’t imagine reading literature without reading poetry. It’s almost where writing starts for me.

Besides Batman comic books.