Certainly the highest-minded have a poetic champion now. I have just come across his book and read some of its poems and reviews. We can go ahead and say that Steven Willard is astonishing, but, darn it, it's the kind of poetry you have to take Dramamine before you read.
Calvin Bedient, in a podcast on the future of lyric poetry (U of Chi) says Steven Willard is one of the saviors of the lyric poem, and while he is awfully deft, I'm not sure this is the direction I want poetry to go in. (The other poet Mr. Bedient mentioned was I think Carol Grant.)
I haven't read that much of him, but I'm getting the feeling that one of the premises here is that Not Everything Is Dead Yet. Here's one of his poems: http://bostonreview.net/BR29.3/willard.html If you click on the title of this post it will take you to another, better poem. Thanks for reading.
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