The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetr

This selection of poems, one each from 93 poets, constitutes a pitched argument made by editor (and publisher) Messerli. The annual Stein Awards anthology (this is the second) presents those poets whose work gets reviewed in no mainstream journals or newspapers. These poems and prose pieces, according to Messerli, share a recognition that ""the reader's mind is a dynamic that functions with the poet to create meaning,"" which means that the poems are demanding, open in form, semantically and syntactically ambiguous. Generally speaking, this can make for some tough going, but Messerli has chosen well here, for the vast majority of these poems are playful, fairly accessible and rhythmically diverting: ""They stop to read the sky, the boys/ with their long backs turned/ to a red sun where it's dyeing/ the lake fake. And knock each other down/ according to coloring./Why do some fall this way or that?/ Why are some pink, some green, some orange, some white?/History is tyranny,/ each child a study of night./ When a heart is cold (inside and deep)/ it means it's ripe.""--Fanny Howe). The volume can stand as a user-friendly introduction to an impressive array of experimentation; here one finds the masters of the avant-garde--Harry Mathews, Clark Coolige, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, as well as newer voices--Cole Swensen, Tan Lin. Although having but one poem from each poet can leave the reader wanting more, a helpful contributors' list directs the interested to the poets' other publications. (Mar.)