*
For the eeriest poetry post of the day, see this:
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/02/poetry_review_the_illiterate_b.html
Maybe Biespiel isn't being disingenuous about Meredith, maybe he really admires him—well!
Meredith was the PoBiz equivalent of a figure you often see in politics:
a mediocre rich guy who buys his way into favor, onto boards and committees,
and through decades of backroom deals and bribes and kickbacks and collecting IOUs
finally weasels his way up the ladder, a "pol" who gets his pay-off in the form of
a cabinet post or an ambassadorship or the governor's mansion,
i.e. the PolBiz equivalent of the Pulitzer, NBA, etc.
Meredith: just another Ivyleague richguy poet like all the other IV-richguy poets whose oh so prestigious work is deepsixed six months after they die. (Howard Moss et al.)
*
Hey, all you Pulitzer Prize poets, you National Book Award-winning poets, you Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, all you Yale Younger poets, aren't you proud to share those honors with him, with William Meredith? —Because he copped every one of them: he won the Pulitzer, and the National Book Award, and he was a Chancellor of AAP, and he was a Yale Younger poet!
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