To Joan Kane: Nee Naviyuk Poem by Frank Avon

I 'found' the quoted phrases above in one of the 75 poems of this years 'Best American Poetry' - 'Exhibits from the Dark Museum' by Joan Naviyuk Kane. As my quotations (hopefully) indicate, I love the imagery and language the poet uses in her lines. It's intriguing; it's engaging; it's puzzling. It's also an example of why most American readers no longer read poetry - even those of us who love and quote Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Howard Nemerov, James Dickey, Nikki Giovanni.

Like most Modernist poetry, like most the the 'best' poems in the 'Best American Poetry' series, Kane's poem eschews 'meaning' in favor of 'experience, ' or something to that effect. There are many, many poets out there writing in another, more accessible tradition, such as, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Billy Collins and the poets Collins collected in his 'Poetry 180' and '180 More.' Why do more of them not make the volumes of this series?

Sherman Alexie, in this year's volume, has more than ususal. His selections also represent the diversity of modern America - ethnic, racial, gender, even religious - and a great variety of poetic forms and voices. This makes his volume unusual in the series. But I keep imagining to myself what an impact a poet like Joan Naviyuk Kane could have if she were simply willing to speak to readers, instead of her fellow Modernists. Her voice could be 'a sforzando of light' on the American poetic landscape of the 21st century.