Tale of Two Editors

Chris Wiman

Don Share

When I asked Don [Share] if it was even possible to manage keeping up with the world of contemporary poetry—as multiplicitious and ever-evolving, in both form and dissemination, as it is—he simply asked if any of us would go see a doctor who “couldn’t keep up.”—"CPR Visits the PoFo"

I think a strong case can be made that the more respect you have for poetry, the less of it you will find adequate to your taste and needs. There is a limit to this logic, of course, or else Plato would be the patron saint of the art. But still, an overdeveloped appetite for poetry is no guarantee of taste or even of love, and institutionalized efforts at actually encouraging the over-consumption of poetry always seem a bit freakish, ill-conceived, and peculiarly American, like those mythic truck stops where anyone who can eat his own weight in rump roast doesn't have to pay for it.—Chris Wiman, "In Praise of Rareness"