I was thinking for a few days about a blog post about poets I liked that are influenced by Anselm Hollo, and this morning Ron Silliman tweeted that Hollo has been transferred to hospice. When I was an undergrad I wanted to study with Hollo, though he hadn't published much crit in book form - the indispensable Caws and Causeries wasn't out then. I got The New Sentence out of the school library, and at 4 am the next morning asked "where does this Silliman guy teach?" When I found out he didn't teach anywhere (though he'd give a sort of course as a blogger in the future), there was still Anselm at Naropa, so I didn't have to decide. Hollo was very kind to me during my cup of coffee there, but as is sometimes the case I soaked up a lot more from reading him. He said a few years ago in an interview that one can write poetry to create a record for oneself, and his record will live forever, though he didn't get the well-deserved Nobel I tried to nominate him for. I want to say on my blog that he's my favorite living poet.

The dedication and intensity of the dead
always were greater than ours.
No doubt it seemed that way to them too
as dusk was falling
on their last weary glimpse of a land
populated by twerps.