  I never made it to my point in the last entry,  which was that,  in the B& N,  there was a decently large poetry section and there were only three books by Ashbery,  none of them his best.
 I was dismayed.  There are five thousand copies of Patricia Cornwell novels and stacks of Clinton's bloated memoir nearly the size of his ego but there are three tiny books by perhaps the greatest living poet in America!  If people read more Ashbery,  they'd be better people.  There were a half- dozen books by recent poetic luminaries (
i. e.  recent poet- laureates and those few lucky ones who have gotten some media exposure and fought back the instinct to pull a Franzen and say 'fuck off' to the establishment)  such as PInksy,  Collins ,
 Gioia,  Oliver,  etc ( though I may be mistaking a name or two)  about whether poetry has meaning anymore,  or silly introductions to poetry that focus,
 as usual,  on the elements of metrics that would put anyone to sleep and only briefly acknowledge the sophisticated plays of meaning,  quasi- ironies,  the mouth- feel of language,
 the breathtaking vistas of the mind,  the subtle symbolisms ( as opposed to knock- you- over- the-
head Eliot- isms and such)  -  the things that make poetry worth reading and,  even more,  worth writing.
 These heartfelt but hobbled excuses for accessible poetry books!  I can just hear the editor in my head,  hacking good intentions into pabulum with the hatchet of market forces.  The top selling book of poems is edited by Garrison Keillor.  Wobegon poetry,  where every child is above average and every poem swiftly offers up its deepest treasures like a two-
bit ho.  I fucking love John Ashbery.  Reading him makes me feel whole,  makes me feel that a state of internal conflict,  mixed signals,  and curious reflection is the nature of the soul,
 which suits me just fine.  And when I read C. D.  Wright,  I feel a yearning that grabs my bowels and threatens to tear them out of my body,  a rending love,
 and also a quiet one.  There are others -  Jorie Graham ( brings out my inner Joni Mitchell)  Timothy Donnelly ( jealousy,
 I admit it.  even,  as I go back,  Ginsberg,  Whitman,  Rimbaud,
 Akhmatova,  Stevens.  But in the reputations of the older poets gets lost the contemporary poetic soul,  poorly represented in the stacks and relegated to our KGB bars and lit program touring circuits or,  worse,  to Yaddo.
 Ah,  the poetic life.  William Carlos Williams had it right -  don't quit your day job.  And to anyone who reads this,  please,
 for the love of whatever it is you hold as holy,  read " Self- Portrait in a Convex Mirror.  N.
