Ten most Influential Books (Literary Criticism)

I've been working on a list of books that have influenced me in literary criticsm. This is not a list of all books that have influenced me generally, just the ones in the genre of literary criticism and theory. This is in roughly chronological order of when I was influenced.

1 X.J. Kennedy. An Introduction to Poetry.

I didn't know this was a college textbook when I started reading it when I was about 12-years old. I know the book has gone through many revisions and editions, but the one I am interested in is, I believe, the 1971 edition. I studied this book until it fell apart, for three or four years. I still remember parts of it: a comparison between several different translations of a sonnet by Baudelaire... This book taught me the essence of what I still know. today. It made me a professor.

2. The ABC of Reading.

I loved Pound's idea that you could just study poetry by paying close attention to it, in its auditory, visual, and purely linguistic aspects. It taught me to listen.

3. Perloff. The Poetics of Indeterminacy.

This is the book I wanted to have written about the time I was graduating from college. It was published in 1981, the year I graduated and began graduate school. It helped establish a new view of the canon and a critical model of crispness and clarity. Rimbaud to Cage indeed.

4. Burke. A Rhetoric of Motives.

I used Kenneth Burke quite a bit in a formative stage of my career. He seemed the perfect bridge between rhetoric as formalism and rhetoric as action.

5. Barthes. Critical Essays.

I really went to school with Barthes. I wasn't interested in structuralism as method as much as in the growth of a critic's mind.

6. Borges. Otras inquiiciones.

I went to school with Borges too. One of the true greats of literary theory. The idea that Kafka could create his own precursors, for example...

7. Morton Feldman. Give my Regards to Eighth Street

Not a work of literary criticism per se, but a deep source of analogies for literature.

8. Lorca. Conferencias.

The work of a creative artist reflecting on poetry, with insights that are wholly unique.

9. Ricardo Gullón. Una poética para Antonio Machado.

I love the concept of writing a poetics for Machado. Not an interpretation of Machado's poetry, but a way of extracting an implicit poetics from Machado's poetry, subsequently dedicated to Machado.

10. Julián Jiménez Heffernan. Los papeles rotos.

What this book taught me was that there was something like the Spanish equivalent of me: someone who knew both traditions and was truly bi-poetic. It's also great to have the example of someone who has exactly my interests but is way smarter than me.

Such list-making is always a bit arbitrary. I'm sure that on another day I would come up with a slightly different list.

The second 1%:

Definición de savia. Clave de los tres reinos. Antífona del otoño en el valle del Bierzo. Noche abierta. El hombro izquierdo. La mujer automática. Naturaleza no recuperable. Las fronteras. La lentitud de los bueyes. The Cradle of the Real Life. La última costa. House (Blown Apart). Aphorisms. Spring in this World of Poor Mutts. Un lugar que no existe. Vigilia en Cabo Sur. The Harbormaster of Hong Kong. Espejo de la gran niebla. Poema de uno que pasa. Romancero gitano. Poema del cante jondo. A Little White Shadow. Toner. Las palomas mensajeras sólo saben volver. And the Word. Things on Which I've stumbled. Ins and Outs of the Forest Rivers. Splay Anthem. For the Fighting Spirits of a Walnut. Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision. La tumba de Keats. Herejías elegidas. Esa polilla que delante de mí revolotea. Folding Ruler Star. ¿Águila o sol? N/0. Silence and Metaphor. Company of Moths. Plain Song. The Age of Huts. La palabra en archipiélago / La parole en Archipel. Matar a Platón. Mainland. Rommel Drives on Into Egypt. Locations. Air. Book of Magaine Verse. Response. Geography III. Lightduress. Fair Realism. Eunoia. The Wonderful Focus of You. What. Paradise. Breath's Burials. Breathturn. Conjuros. The Hawk in the Rain. The Captain Lands in Paradise. A Certain Slant of Sunlight. El equipaje abierto. Lit. Tjanting. Aire sobre el aire. Un día sea. Range Finder. The Unicorns. Planetary Gear. Where Shall I wander? The Pronouns. Gone to Earth. Analogies of Escape. Ladera este. No amanece el cantor. Petroleum Hat. The Lost Pilot. The Absent Father in Dumbo. The Fatalist. Book of Haikus. Collected Poems of Barbara Guest. Keys to the Cavern. American Ones: Notes and Presentiments. Smithsonian Depositions and Subject to a Film. Echoes. Shadow Train. Some Trees.

Common themes here: Silliman, Coolidge, Ashbery; Spanish, American, and Venezuelan poetry. Looking over the list there are some I don't remember too well, that didn't make as strong an impression. That's fine. What's surprising is that is a relatively small number.

I guess I decided it won't matter too much if some of the 9,000 turn out to be (involuntary) repeats. The list will be incomplete anyway, since I am leaving out the titles of works that I read but that I think are "not even bad," that don't even register with me in a useful way, negative or positive.

There's little dross here, actually. Nothing obliges me to read things I don't have to read, so let me be the first to congratulate myself on my good taste: Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Valentine--Lorca--David Shapiro--Olvido García Valdés--Paul Celan--Ashbery.










.

The 9,000 books project: The first 1%.

How to be Perfect. Arras. Coltsfoot Insularity. Fuera de mí. Más que el mar. Fábula del escriba. Brief Under Water. The Afterglow of Minor Pop Masterpieces. The Anger Scale. As in Every Deafness. Cuchillo casi flor. The Bird Hoverer. Habla (noventa poemas). Herodías. Counting on Planet Zero. Lázaro se sacude las ortigas. Some Words. If so, Tell me. Mis animales obligatorios. Our Selves. Apariciones profanas. Five T'ang Poets. Up to Speed. Under Flag. El hueco. Ese espacio, ese jardín. Arden las pérdidas. La poesía, ese cuerpo extraño. Y todos estábamos vivos. Partitura de la cigarra. Miniatures. Maxfield Parrish: Early & New Poems. Defensive Rapture. On My Way. Metaphor of the Trees and Last Poems. Reescritura. The Duino Elegies. The Shrubberies. To an Idea. Look Slimmer Instantly! The Blue Stairs. The Red Gaze. Ring of Fire. Jack Straw's Castle and Other Poems. Todos han muerto: poesía completa (1971-2006). Edades perdidas. Ca(z)a. Papiros amorosos. Los oriundos del paraíso. Los espacios cálidos. Rasgos comunes. Algunas palabras. Own Face. El sueño de las piedras. Libro de los trazados. Casi una leyenda. Descripción de la mentira. Ing. Material memoria. Shroud of the Gnome. Black Dog Songs. Drawn & Quartered. El movimiento de las flores. La mano muerta cuenta el dinero de la vida. Radi os. Forge. For Love: Poems 1950-1960. Del ojo al hueso. The Book of Who Are Was. To All Appearances. Sphericity. Words. Garbage. Calendas. Edenia. El ciego del alba. Travesía. Hilos. De este modo se llena un vacío. Dinde. Demo to Ink. Concierto animal. Inventario. Cien niños. Donde todo termina abre las alas. Las ínsulas extrañas. The Lyrics. Cuarzo. Estampas de ultramar.

I guess the conclusion is that poets aren't very good with titles. Only a few o these stand out as really kick-ass titles. How to be Perfect, Cuchillo casi flor, Look Slimmer Instantly!

Favorite so-called "classical" music. In no particular order.

1) Goldberg Variations.

2) Partita #3 for unaccompanied violin (Bach)

3) Mozart's string quarter # 19.

4) Rothko Chapel (Feldman)

5) Suite #3 for unaccompanied cello (Bach again).

6) Firebird Suite.

7) Beethoven's Symphony # 6 (Pastoral).

8) Brahms's Symphony # 1.

9) Barber's Adagio for Strings

Things I Liked as Kid, Some of Which I Still Like

1) National Geographic

2) Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in F, "Pastoral."

3) e.e. cummings

4) Raquel Welch

5) Fugues by Bach

6) Art Tatum

7) Ray Charles

8) Bookstores

9) Libraries

10) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Ten Goals, Some More Realistic than Others

1) Publish the book of poetry.

2) Do the same for book of poetry written in Spanish.

3) Become a truly excellent teacher.

4) Become a really good drummer.

5) Become a truly mediocre clarinet player.

6) Find a way of supplementing income (hint: it won't come from 1-5).

7) Learn to fix a flat tire on the bicycle.

8) Job at better university?

9) Saxophone?

10) Publish another scholarly book with U of C P.

My tendency to construct a pantheon of musical and artistic heroes, (with a few poets thrown in too of course). It's really a sense of creating a mythic construction of the self. I am the person influenced by these people, in the sense that they flow into me. Each is an alternate self or part of the self, but of the self conceived of as a kind of collector of artistic arrangers of the world. I'm not sure if it's especially commendable--or condemnable either. It's just the way I'm wired.

If someone does not appear on my list, it is not because of a lack of respect in any sense, but simply because they aren't personally engaging at that deep level. For example, Reverdy and not Apollinaire, though I'm sure Apollinaire is more important than Reverdy in the grand scheme of things.

Not surprisingly, there are more men than women on the list. The MLA guide to language gender and professional writing tells you to avoid catalogues or lists of great male figures, that rhetorical flourish of citing names like that. I'll never be able to avoid that gesture though. I guess the genius model is suspect. I had this argument with someone a few years back. Someone who didn't believe in geniuses. I won the argument by playing the Coltrane card.


Ashbery. Bach. Barthes. Baudelaire. Borges. Bracho. Brown (Clifford). Camarón. Ceravolo. Chambers. Charles. Coleman. Coltrane. Coolidge. Cornell. Creeley. Evans. Feldman. Gamoneda. García Lorca. Guest. Hawkins. Hodges. Holiday. Jones (Elvin). Koch. Lezama Lima. Miles. Monk. Montejo. O'Hara. Parker. Powell. Puente. Reverdy. Rodríguez. Rollins. Rothko. Roussel. Shapiro. Schuyler. Stevens. Tatum. Vallejo. Varela. Velasco. Williams (Tony + William Carlos). Wittgenstein. Young (Lester that is).

That's just a fraction of my admirations. Some I admire greatly but wouldn't put on the list because they simply do not belong to my intimate sphere.

My favorite musical styles, in no particular order.

1) Anything Afro-Cuban (son, rumba, salsa, jazz-cuban fusions.)

2) Bop and hard bop, up through 1960s Blue Note recordings.

3) Baroque, especially Bach.

4) Morton Feldman.

5) Classic soul, funk, etc... (Aretha, James Brown, Ray Charles...)

6) European orchestral music of the 19th century, through Stravinsky.

7) Bluegrass...

8) Avant-garde jazz, especially Ornette and Coltrane.

9) Good versions.

10) Brazilian popular music, Samba, Bossa Nova.

Not necessarily in this order, but

Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Billy Stayhorn, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Johnny Green, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin. Jerome Kern, Fats Waller, Dorothy Fields, Rodgers and Hammerstein...

What can I say, I'm a sucker for a good song. It's just one of those thiings, just one of those marvelous things, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. A foggy day in London town.. A piano tinkling in the next apartment, those stumbling things that told you what my heart meant. Someone to watch over me.

I never thought much of moonlight skies, I never winked back at fireflies. The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea. The way we danced till three. A fine romance. You say tomato and I say tomahto. Suddenly I saw polkdots and moonbeams. I'm going to sit right down and write a letter and make believe it came from you. I'm a sentimental sap that's all, what's the use of trying not to fall. Holding hands at midnight, neaht the moonlit sky, It's nice work if you can get it and you can get it if you try. It's the tender trap. Tangerine, with her lips of flame. In the wee small hours of the morning. East of the sun and west of the moon, and then I saw the midnight sun. It's moonlight in Vermont and Autumn in New York, April in Paris. I'll remember April and be glad.

I bought you violets for your furs. I get no kick from cocaine. I can't get started with you.

All of me, why not take all of me. Can't you see, I'm no good without you. You got the part that once was my heart so why not take all of me.

A player almost anonymous... I won't make you guess about this list. These are (some of) my favorite players who aren't household names or super "canonical" figures:

Illinois Jacquet. He was a straight-ahead tenor who did a lot of work in the JATP.

Harold Land. Another straight-forward tenor mostly known for his role in the Clifford Brown/Max Roach groups. He could hold his own with Clifford Brown so that's saying quite a bit.

Paul Chambers. Maybe he's a bit too famous for this group, because of his work with Miles Davis and Coltrane. Still I am obsessed with Paul Chambers. I can't figure out what makes his playing so perfect.

Sonny Clark. He had some excellent recordings with a trio with Philly Joe and Chambers. He wouldn't necessarily be in anyone's group of top 10 piano players of all time, but his groove is so deep.

Billy Higgins. He is countless records but never achieved the degree of recognition of a Tony Williams.

I guess what I like about these players is that they all follow established modes of playing with a great personal style, but without necessarily being innovators or virtuosi of genius. I wouldn't make exaggerated claims for any of them (except Paul Chambers), but simply say they are the ones who make the music feel good, give it substance and richness at a level just *below* that of the canonical forgers of a new style. They are all very "tasty" players in the mode of Teddy Wilson or Jo Jones. They aren't the Art Tatums or Elvin Joneses of the world.

Miles Davis
Billie Holiday
Lester Young
Charlie Parker
Bill Evans
John Coltrane
Frank Sinatra
Ella Fitzgerald
Clifford Brown
Johnny Hodges
Dinah Washington
Milt Jackson
Sarah Vaughn


What is this a list of? (What is it's guiding principle?) Who else belongs on this list? Is the order I've put the names here the correct one?

Here are my favorite singers of jazz, in no particular order of preference. I can't rank them really. Did I do this before? If I did I apologize:

Dinah Washington. She's like Billie Holiday but with a stronger voice. Very bluesy even in her more popular facets. Check out "Dinah Jams."

Ray Charles. I know he isn't a "jazz singer" per se. It doesn't really matter to me. Make your own list if you don't like it,

Billie Holiday. That's pretty obvious. She is simply one of the great jazz musicians period.

Armstrong. Yes, I know he can be quite awful. I can't stand to hear "Hello Dolly" or "Mack the Knife." You have to go back to the early days to find better stuff by him. How about the duets with Ella? You can't beat those.

Nat King Cole. Ok. That's an interesting one. He is obviously a jazz musician, but is he a jazz singer? Or does his singing represent a turn away from jazz? I love his voice and his phrasing. He inspired the early Ray Charles, even. He is "jazz" even when he is not "jazz."

Ella Fitzgerald. Another obvious one. Get away from the novelty numbers and into the song books.

Billy Eckstine. The male Sarah Vaughn? You got to give him his due.

Sarah Vaughn. I love that over-the-top quality to her performances. There is the sheer power and range of her voice, but I prefer her when she is the most "swinging." I hated her "Send in the Clowns," maybe because I hate all of Sondheim's music.

Sinatra. Ok. Sinatra could be awful too, when he became his mannerisms. A lot of singers do that. I like him best with those Nelson Riddle string arrangements. Sweet.

Antonio Benedetti. Tony Bennett is the purest jazz singer among the Italian crooners. He has his mannerisms too. If you like those mannerisms you will like him.

Shirley Horn. Not for nothing was she Miles Davis' favorite singer.

Bessie Smith. This was jazz singing before there was jazz. It's the original source--or one of them at least.

This is a tricky category because it merges into plain old "pop" singing at a certain point--at one end--and into rhythm and blues at the other end. It's interesting that there are more pure jazz singers among the women, and more cross-overs among the men. Ella, Sarah, and Dinah are "jazzier" in the generic sense than Frank, Ray Chas., the later Armstrong, or Nat Cole--or even Mel Tormé, who doesn't make my list.

Not my 10 favorite jazz albums of all time (but pretty darn close


Lester Young and Teddy Wilson. Pres and Teddy.
Herbie Hancock. Empyrean Isles.
Miles Davis. Birth of the Cool. Kind of Blue. Miles Smiles.
Coltrane. Coltrane's Sound. Equinox. Soultrane.
Ornette Coleman. The Shape of Jazz to Come.
Bobby Hutcherson. Dialogue.
Art Tatum. Complete Capitol Recordings.
Cecil Taylor / Elvin Jones / Dewey Redman. Momentum Space.
Bill Evans. Waltz for Debby.
Rollins. Saxophone Collosus.
Charlie Parker (and Miles Davis). Bird Song.
Thelonious Monk. Brilliant Corners.
Art Blakey. Live at Birdland.
Roach and Clifford Brown. Study in Brown, etc...
Coleman Hawkins. The Hawk Flies High.

My favorite rhythms are, I think


The walking bass--four quarternotes evenly accented. What could be more pure than that?

Spanish endecasílabo and heptasílabo in fruitful collaboration

Elvin's "Rolling Triplet" feel

Latin elegiac couplets. [see below]

Afro-Cuban cowbell in 6/8.

Son montuño

Bebop. Max Roach bass-drum accents

French alexandrine

A funk beat with swung sixteenth-notes under a James Brown track

Various flamenco rhythms in 6/8 (just getting into these)


There are others. Iambic pentameter? Octosílabo? Waltz? But these are my favorites. I'm surprised to find IP missing from the list, but what can I do? Don't blame me, I'm only reporting what I feel... I don't particuarly care for Englsh ballad meter or Reggae.

[update: moving to front]

I need a second list, this time of 100 poets who did not make the first list, because of my insufficient knowledge of them, my ambivalence--innumerable reasons, really... Maybe I just don't know the poet's first name. This list may be more fun to draw up--less pressure. These are just poets I've taken an interest in at some point. Maybe I've just loved one or two of their poems. Some are personal friends like Juan Carlos Mestre and Geoffrey Chaucer.

I've noticed something: very few of the poets in KK's RWDYGTR? are missing from among my own favorites. Koch did not appear to like much bad poetry.
This list is not a canon: it is expandable up to the limits of my own knowledge: I'm sure I will do a third hundred soon. Plus, it is valid only for JM. I'm not going to put Stefan George on it, because I haven't read him. I would never say he's not canonical for German poetry.

Blanca Andreu. David Antin. Rae Armantrout. María Victoria Atencia. Charles Bernstein. Anselm Berrigan. John Berryman. Elizabeth Bishop. David Bromige. Michael Brownstein.

Buson. John Cage. Guillermo Carnero. Luisa Castro. Geoffrey Chaucer. Isla Correyero. John Donne. Garcilaso de la Vega. Thomas Fink. Nada Gordon.

Thom Gunn. Menchu Gutiérrez. Robert Hayden. Lyn Hejinian. Anthony Hecht. Miguel Hernández. Friedrich Hölderlin. Susan Howe. David Huerta. Amalia Iglesias.

James Joyce. Maryrose Larkin. D.H. Lawrence. Frank Lima. Jorge Manrique. Harry Mathews. Jonathan Mayhew. Juan Carlos Mestre. Kasey Silem Mohammad. Eugenio Montejo.

Marianne Moore. Sawako Nakayasu. Gérard de Nerval. Alejandro Oliveros. Octavio Paz. Saint-John Perse. Sylvia Plath. Po Chu-I. Marcel Proust. Jorge Riechmann.

Theodore Roethke. Queneau. Pierre de Ronsard. Ana Rossetti. Leslie Scalapino. Christopher Smart. Arthur Sze. Gilbert Sorrentino. James Tate. Dylan Thomas.

Tony Towle. David Trinidad. Paul Valéry. Paul Verlaine. Thomas Waller. Wang Wei. Lewis Warsh. Ludwig Wittgenstein. James Wright. Richard Wright.

Louis Zukofksy.

I can be a pluralist and still dislike a good deal, still express that dislike in strong terms. Does anyone think of him or herself as having narrow taste? It is highly unlikely. Everyone knows you're supposed to have broad taste.

So my taste is extremely broad. There is no historical period or geographical region I reject. Of course, it's also *clustered* in certain areas, with clusters inside the clusters. I do prefer Japanese, Chinese, American, South American, Carribean, and West European poetries. I like ancient and modern, with some medieval thrown in. I like Basho and Issa too. Koch and Schuyler.

I like elite styles, neo-baroques, various neo-classicisms from Racine to Pope, romanticisms, and avant-gardes. I also like popular stuff: traditional balladry, Robert Burns, and Elizabethan song. I'm fond of Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and other Tin Pan Alley lyricists, Po Chu I. I like canonical things and things that are hot off the presses.

I'm not strongly a fan of contemporary free verse lyric confession, Tennyson or even Browning, Spanish neo-classicism, Oscar Hammerstein, or Bob Dylan. I don't like Benedetti, Lowell (Robert or Amy), Russell Edson, Phlip Larkin, Norman Dubie. I see these gaps as insignificant in the larger scheme of things. There are good poets I don't like (Browning, Larkin), and other poets I don't like who are pretty insignificant from a historical perspective (Armando Palacio Valdés.)

I'd like to write the defense of the uncommon reader. The common reader likes poetry from A to A-and-a-half. Pinsky through Collins. The uncommon reader likes poetry from A to beyond Z, with a few gaps along the way. Honestly speaking, nobody likes everything anyway. Don't pretend Pinsky through Collins through Gluck is the entire universe of poetry, or even one one-hundreth part of it. I'd much rather be an uncommon reader because, frankly, there are no limits except time, and not knowing Rumanian and Hungarian and 100 other languages.

My 100 favorite poets. A list in progress. In alphabetical order. Once I get to 100 I will start revising. A poet can be kicked off the list if I remember I like another better. Why do I like silly lists like this? This is my "team." These poets have my back, so to speak; I can call on them for help at any time. At least one of them will be able to help me out of a jam. The final list will also give a completely accurate vision of who I am.

[UPDATE: What I've learned is that my taste is very conventionally canonical. Any eccentricity is at the very edges of the list. Take a way a Catalan poet and a few minor poets of the New York School, and my list looks very much like the canon. The only unconventionality is in the omissions, quite possibly. It's also true that I don't have much space left over for the Charles Wrights of the world. The Dave Smiths and Charles Simics. I'm not trying to denigrate such poets, but I just don't feel them to be among my personal top 100. I'm not even sure if Andrew Marvell will make the list, so don't ask me about Gregory Orr or Mark Strand.]

[UPDATE 2: 97. I have 3 more to go. Roethke and Dylan Thomas are the ones that might have to go soon. Do I really even like these poets? Each one of these poets sings in a different key.]

[UPDATE 3: 100. Now begin the revisions, where I eliminate the 10 poets I like least and add another 10]

Vicente Aleixandre. Guiillaume Apollinaire. John Ashbery. W.H. Auden. Basho. Charles Baudelaire. Samuel Beckett. Ted Berrigan. William Blake. Jorge Luis Borges.

Coral Bracho. André Breton. William Bronk. Lord Byron. Thomas Campion. Catullus. Constantine Cavafy. Paul Celan. Joseph Ceravolo. Luis Cernuda.

René Char. John Clare. Clark Coolidge. Hart Crane. Robert Creeley. E.E. Cummings. HD. Dante. Jordan Davis. Emily Dickinson.

T.S. Eliot. Robert Frost. Antonio Gamoneda. Concha García. Federico García Lorca. Drew Gardner. Pere Gimferrer. Allen Ginsberg. Luis de Góngora. Barbara Guest.

Jorge Guillén. Thomas Hardy. Robert Herrick. Homer. Horace. Fanny Howe. Issa. Lisa Jarnot. Juan Ramón Jiménez.
Ronald Johnson.

John Keats. Jack Kerouac. Kenneth Koch. José Lezama Lima. Fray Luis de León. Antonio Machado. Jackson Mac Low. Stéphane Mallarmé. Vladimir Mayakvosky. Bernadette Mayer.

Jess Mynes. Lorine Niedecker. Pablo Neruda. Alice Notley. Frank O'Hara. Ovid. Ron Padgett. Leopoldo María Panero. Li Po. Fernando Pessoa.

Petrarch. Francis Ponge. Ezra Pound. "Psalms." Francisco de Quevedo. Pierre Reverdy. Rainier Maria Rilke. Arthur Rimbaud. Claudio Rodríguez. Jerome Rothenberg.

Raymond Roussel. Pedro Salinas. James Schuyler. William Shakespeare. David Shapiro. P.B. Shelley. Ron Silliman. Jack Spicer. Gertrude Stein. Wallace Stevens.

Tu Fu. José Angel Valente. César Vallejo. Blanca Varela. Lola Velasco. Walt Whitman. William Carlos Williams. Wyatt. W.B. Yeats. Juan de Yépez (alias Saint John of the Cross).

Here are a few of my favorite small jazz groups, in no particular order. My choices aren't particularly original, I'm afraid. I'm thinking of groups that were real groups, not just people who got together just to record. These are not just collections of musicians, but organic units.

Miles Davis Quintet of the 1950s with Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe.

Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s with Shorter, Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams.

Other permutations of Miles Davis groups with Cannonball Adderly, Bill Evans, Jimmy Cobb.

John Coltrane Quartet with Tyner and Elvin Jones. Various bass players but mostly Jimmy Garrison. Add Eric Dolphy to the group too.

Ornette Coleman Quartets with Cherry, Billy HIggins, Haden. (and other permuations with LaFaro and Blackwell).

Clifford Brown/Max Roach groups with Harold Land on tenor, Richie Cole on piano.

Early Art Blakey groups with Clifford Brown.

Parker, Dizzy, with Max Roach and various piano and bass.

Mingus groups with Danny Richmond on drums, Jackie Byard, and Dolphy. Various other players like Booker Little on trumpet.

Monk with Sonny Rollins, Max Roach.

Early Monk with Art Blakey.

Why should I resist thinking that the second generation New York poets are great in their own right? Did I think there was some sort of quota on how many interesting poets could exist in any one geographical configuration?

My top ten poets (those I have been reading most assiduously the past 5 or 10 years)

1. Antonio Gamoneda
2. Barbara Guest
3. Raymond Roussel
4. John Ashbery
4. José Angel Valente
5. Clark Coolidge
6. Samuel Beckett
7. Joseph Ceravolo
8. William Bronk
9. James Schuyler
10. Claudio Rodríguez