Anthologies Beget Anthologies: BlazeVox Books Announces a Call for Nominations to Better American Poetry

EDITORIAL STATEMENT <\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

Our goal is to model a collaborative editorial venture that breaks with the anemic capitalizing tradition and goes ahead of institutional efforts that rank poems as the “best”. The “best” hides the subjective goals and values of the few determining what work should receive visibility and reward. The “best” implies that some voices should be prioritized over others. We wish to challenge the idea that a few gatekeepers should oversee the publishing order each year by actively defining and maintaining a hierarchy of voices, an order that replicates the status quo that tokenizes and marginalizes difference. Our efforts will intentionally shift favor so that the literary landscape within this anthology reflects a ranging plurality of voices in American poetry and illuminates the possibilities of sharing space.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

To this end, we have decided to call our endeavor Bettering American Poetry.<\/em> For us, this means that rather than seek out the kind of work that best exemplifies “American poetry” as such, our task is to spotlight the poems that are working to radicalize and reinvigorate our American imagination. We feel that to “better” American poetry is to jam dominant systems of taste to the best of our abilities, and to resignify the very phrase “American poetry” with the languages that it so desperately lacks. We intend to center voices of resistance, subjectivities that emerge from the radical margins, artists whose Americanness transcends nationalism and other borders, perspectives historically denied institutional backing--in short, poets and poetries that are urgent and necessary but do not get along nicely with Power. And in this process, we recognize that “bettering” is, always, an ongoing act: it is a struggle against the obliterating forces of American history, politics, imagination and poetics. We don’t pretend it is possible to have finished bettering American poetry, which is why we dedicate ourselves to the task anew, daily. This anthology represents just one, concerted effort to better American poetry, but it is one that we hope will resonate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

As editors, we share a collective spirit but represent an array of tastes, visions and desires. Please check out our bios below for a glimpse into our poetry predilections. Several of us have also made statements included in “What Is Literary Activism?” at Poetry Foundation.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n