'The Best American Poetry Of 2015' Poem by Frank Avon

In the first place, the title is not a title; it's an advertisement - false advertising, actually.

More accurately, it should be 'Some Modernist American Lines Selected by One Person Who Was Selected by One Person Who Does the Selecting of the Selector Every Year'

But that might be considered too long for a title, so it could also be called 'Some Modernist Lines Selected by Someone in America in 2015'

Or maybe 'Some Lines'

But Modernist is somewhat important. for the person selected to do the selecting must be a Modernist Poet or not be selected by the Modernist Poet who does the selecting. The Poet must be a Modernist or he couldn't be a Poet, not one of the 'Best, ' and the poetry he selects must be Modernist or it would be considered Poetry.

This year one of the 'Best' was rejected by forty-nine editors before it was published by the fiftieth, and the Selector agreed with the fiftieth, so that's one out of sixty-one, so that's clearly a consensus that it's one of the 'Best.'

Not a one of them makes sense, for if they made sense, they wouldn't be Modernist, and if they weren't Modernist they wouldn't be Poetry, and if they weren't Poetry, they couldn't be one of the 'Best.'

Sometimes the Notes tell you what the Poem means; otherwise, you wouldn't know what it means or whether it means anything at all. Sometimes the notes don't and you don't. It's a matter of faith.

The Modernist Poems are selected from Modernist Reviews which are edited by Modernist Poets who also serve as judges for Poetry Awards which go to Modernist Poets who will serve as judges for some such Award in the next year or so. So with the publications and the editorships and the Awards and the critical essays explaining what the meaningless Poems mean, the Modernist Poets get tenure and promotions and salary increments in colleges and universities, each of which must have a Writing Workshop (patterned after Iowa's) staffed by Modernist Poets who select as their junior colleagues the students of other Modernist Poets in other colleges and universities, all of whom write external letters of reference for each other's Promotion & Tenure (P&T) Committees and referee submissions to the Reviews published by colleges and universities, each of which must have a Review.

It doesn't matter that Modernist Poems are meaningless, for their only readers are other Modernist Poets, who are also writing meaningless poems to submit to editors who are themselves Modernist Poets submitting poems to them. And the volumes they publish, every year or so, are edited by Modernist Poets and published by their presses and bought for the libraries of colleges and universities where all of them, having earned tenure and promotion, request that they be purchased.

So now you know how the 'Best' become the 'Best.'

That leaves the rest.

There are the rest of them (not the 'Best' of them) for the rest of us (not the Best of us) .

Maybe we should get together and publish a volume called 'Some of the Rest of the American Poems of 2015.'

Nah. Wouldn't sell. A title has to be an advertisement. 'The Best American Poetry of 2015.' Which will be bought for all the libraries of all the colleges and universities where all the 'Best Modernist American Poets' will request that they be purchased, hoping that next year one of their own 'Best Poems' will be selected by one Modernist Poet who selects them and who was selected by one Modernist Poet, whose forewords count as publications for the P&R committee who will recommend his continued tenure, promotion, and salary increments.

That's how the system works.

The Best and the rest.

May the rest R.I.P.