SOURCE: "Pick a Peck of Poets," in Village Voice, Vol. XXXIII, No. 32, August 9, 1988, pp. 49, 53.

In the following review, Mobilio faults American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late primarily for packing too many poets into too few pages, resulting in a poor presentation of the poets' individual voices.

These are strange days for American verse. The community of poets has never been bigger or more professionally published, yet poetry has never been more neglected by serious readers. Consider the sheer volume of verse seeing print each year. There are tens of thousands of published poets in the U.S., and they vie for space in hundreds of university- and state-funded journals. A few dozen small presses kick in with shelves of chapbooks, collecteds, and selecteds. If even poets can't keep track of all this, no wonder lay readers can hardly get their bearings.

But who really reads? A guess might include...