Lost Horse Press New Poets Series: New Poets, Short Books, Volume V (Lost Horse Press New Poets: New Poets - Short Books)

. . . Our country is being attacked from without and within. Ideologues have taken the place of thinkers and judges, democracy has been distorted by TV politics, and the socalled American Dream is fast disappearing as health, safety and privacy become increasingly the luxuries of the wealthy. As always, the soul of a nation survives in the interstices of political and economic events. It survives, preeminently, in the arts. Art makes life better, even in the harshest of circumstances. In the glut of poetic gymnastics, amusements, hip talk, glittering confessions and conventional commentary, there will yet and always be, I believe, poets who write from inside, for whom poetry is a way of thinking from within emotion, and for whom a poem is about what happens as you write, read or hear it. No village explainer can tell you why this matters or persuade you to love it. I have cared for my students, and for these New Poets, more than they know. But they had to do the work themselves for it to matter. As I said, check back in ten years. Maybe twenty. Marvin Bell, 10 November 2010