POETRY INTRODUCTION MANIFESTO

For too long have we listened to the poetry introduction.

The poetry introductions of the past were sententious displays of shallow erudition, wallowing in a mire of studied cleverness.

The new poetry introduction will be casual.

First of all, the poetry introduction will follow the reading rather than precede it.

Or it will be performed in private.

The mind which plunges into the poetry introduction shall relive with glowing excitement the best part of its childhood.

The new poetry introduction will be mumbled, half-audible, and thus ineffable.

For the time is ripe for a poetry introduction not of the harp but of the kettledrum.

Not of the prune, but of the tangelo.

It is incumbent upon us to try to see more and more clearly what is transpiring unbeknownst to the poet in the depths of her mind, even if she should begin to hold her own vortex against us …

So that we may feel it, throbbing.

The audience wants to know everything: predilections, preludes, preferences, poignency

Peppers, pitchforks, pinworms, palatino

Pearls, peanuts, paw-paw, peccadilloes

Puppies, pythons, ponies, provocations,

Palindromes, pastrami, pablum, and plywood.

A dazzling pact has been proposed between the poet and the pasty proclamations of his introducer:

It is up to him and to him alone to rise above the fleeting sentiment of the poet, like a salvo fired in salute.

We submit that the new poetry introduction can only hope to be crowned with success if it is carried out under conditions of moral asepsis which very few people in this day and age are interested in hearing about.

Yet it is a matter, not of remaining there at that point, but of not being able to do less than to strain desperately toward that limit.

The poetry introduction is less inclined than ever to dispense with this integrity, to abandon it, under the vague, the odious pretext that it has to “introduce.”

The poetry introducer no more need cite the banal catalog of the poet’s accomplishments, such as Mairead Byrne’s The Pillar

or Rachel Levitsky’s Under the Sun

or Kristen Prevallet’s Scratch Sides

or Kim Rosenfield’s Good Morning — Midnight —

or Marianne Shaneen’s The Peekaboo Theory

or Rod Smith’s Music or Honesty

No more shall the poetry introduction be detoured, indeed derailed, by the banal reminder that it is happy hour, that drinks are two for one, but that the kind audience should tip the bartender on the second round.

Likewise neither shall the new poetry introduction be bogged down in the morass of readings-to-come, such as Jerome Rothenberg and Charlie Morrow here, tonight, at 8:00 p.m.

or Eddie Berrigan and Heather Ramsdell at the Zinc Bar, tomorrow night, at 6:59

or the Major Jackson talk on Sun Ra, Monday night at the Project

or Frank Sherlock and Tracy Smith at the Project Wednesday night

or the Subpress collective reading here, next week, at 2:00 p.m.

or the reading which follows it, Robert Fitterman and Murat-Nemet Nejat, which will be free to those sticking around from the Subpress reading.

No, the new poetry introduction must bring about a transvaluation of all poetry values.

The new poetry introduction must have more confidence in the moment, this present moment, of the poetry introducer’s thought, than of the silent army of readers waiting to take the stage.

And so, without further ado, bother, fuss, fiddling around, or delay

Without further stalling, hesitation, barring, blockage, or impotent, repeated stabs at humor

Indeed, without further postponement

Or lag

Or dawdling filibuster

Let us expedite our hastening with all due speed and alacrity

And welcome our first reader, Rachel Levitsky.