Contemporary Poetry

: a web symposium  |  Spring 2006

All poems we term "original" violate or adapt a reader’s understanding of what a poem is supposed to do. In striving to establish a voice or signature—a new way of deploying poetic language to capture a sensibility—a poet makes his or her own requirements for the poems’, and the reader’s, success. This symposium intends to introduce several newly discovered and recovered original voices and to give readers a means of approach. Our panels include introductions to the work of American poets born after 1960 who have begun to make their mark on the 21st Century. Also featured are essays addressing the work of older contemporary poets who have unfairly missed the attention of most readers, scholars, and anthologists. Each essay is an introduction to a book of poems and to a poet’s voice—not a complete account but a means of entry, a way forward.