As Stan Lee Would Say, Excelsior!

The Academy of American Poets is presenting a month-long series of manifestoes from younger American poets like Cate Marvin:

"A good poem is like the space shuttle. It enters the reader’s mind and heart like a rocket. On leaving the atmosphere, it drops the launching gear of experience that served as impetus for its creation. Who wrote the poem, the life the person lived or is living, will not matter once the poem takes on a life of its own. We are familiar with the poem that has failed to rid itself of the person who wrote it. Sentiment, cloying love of the self, and damages done to the self cling to the poem like the lingering smell of body odor one sometimes encounters when entering an elevator. The doors close, and while we are inside the poem, reading it to the end (if one does not get off and take the stairs instead) is a claustrophobic experience, a forced cohabitance with a stench that is mortal."

The older generations of poets get their due at the site, too, thanks to the "Adopt-a-Poet" plan. For a $30 donation, you can "adopt" one of the poets in their reference directory, $70 is worth two, and $100 gets you five. Suzanne Vega's already adopted Edna St. Vincent Millay, but that doesn't mean you can't, too!