Phillip Foss

Patterns/Contexts/Time: A Symposium on Contemporary Poetry, ed. Phillip Foss & Bernstein in Tyuonyi (Sante Fe, 1990), 128pp: pdf

Twenty-five years ago Phillip Foss and I edited this issues Tyuonyi (6/7 1990), now available from the EPC Digital Library as a free pdf.  (236pp.)  

Phil introduced the issue this way:
This issue of Tyuonyi, Patterns / Contexts / Time: A Symposium on Contemporary Poetry, exists because of collective desire. Ninety-seven poets from the United States, Canada, New Zealand, England, and Australia felt the desire to respond. Their responses were to a series of questions devised by Charles Bernstein and myself. The questions were designed to be inclusive enough to address the issues which engaged us, but vague enough not to restrict the potential responses of the respondents. We wanted to create a forum wherein the real issues that compelled poets could be addressed without a felt adherence to any presuppositions. The volume of response was very gratifying and the range of response far beyond my expectation. 

THE QUESTIONS:
•What patterns, if any, do you see developing that are presently influencing habits of reading or readership within poetry?
•What are the values or limitations of these developing, or undeveloped, patterns?
•What context, if any, do you see your work as part of?
•What context, if any, do you see for the work of those contemporary poets whom you find most interesting?
•What's the most disturbing (or irritating) thing associated with poetry or your work as a poet?
•What sources do you find most useful in keeping informed about contemporary poetry?
•Do universities play any role for you in terms of your work as a poet?
•Do you ever think about what you will be doing in ten years? What? etc etc.