Now that National Poetry Month's Over...

Charles Bernstein explains why we all just got played for chumps.

[T]hese organizations have decided to promote not poetry but the idea of poetry, and the idea of poetry too often has meant almost no poetry at all. Time and time again we hear the official spokespersons tell us they want to support projects that give speedy and efficient access to poetry and that the biggest obstacle to this access is, indeed, poetry, which may not provide the kind of easy reading required by such mandates.

Meanwhile, at Oxford, they've got a chair for a professor who promotes poetry all year long. As I've noted, there's actually some competition for the post this time around, and now Sam "Golden Rule" Jones passes along word from The Scotsman that three more names have been put forward, including Anne Carson and Ian McMillan.